Restaurant.com
reviews and complaints

Restaurant wouldn't accept because they said they were losing too much. No response from customer service. Wasted my money.

Currently Restaurant.com has a Class Action Lawsuit pending in the State of Florida (March 17, 2011) for signing up companies that don't even exist or are Out-Of-Business and listing them on their webpages for consumers to purchase their certificates. Merchants complained in several States because restaurant.com is selling more certificates then the merchant agreed to, Instead of having a 90-Day expiration on each certificate, Restaurant.com changed the expiration to "Never Expires" on certificates without the knowledge to merchants and if the merchants refused to accept the coupons they could be sued for $17, 000 by restaurant.com. Merchants would attempt to call or write to cancel contracts and instead Restaurant.com would state they never received their contract cancellation and would continue to sell certificates.

Currently in the State of Florida as of March 17, 2011 there is a Class Action Lawsuit filed against Restaurant.com Customers Who Allegedly Purchased Restaurant Coupons At Closed Restaurants in Florida File Class Action Lawsuit Complaint Against Restaurant.com.

A class action lawsuit complaint has been filed against Restaurant.com, Inc. (“Restaurant.com” or ”Defendant”) in the Circuit Court of the 11th Judicial Circuit in and for Miami-Dade County Florida (styled Cristy Cora v. Restaurant.com, Inc., Class Action Case No. 11-08065CA), alleging, among other things, that Restaurant.com sells restaurant coupons to internet customers for certain restaurants that are no longer in business, purportedly in violation of section 501.95, Fla. Stat., the CARD Act and the EFTA, 15 U.S.C. section 1693 et seq., according to the Restaurant.com coupon class action lawsuit complaint.

The Restaurant.com class action lawsuit complaint reportedly is brought on behalf of the following putative class of persons, unless otherwise excluded:

All of Defendant’s Florida customers who bought restaurant coupons at closed restaurants.

For more information on the Restaurant.com restaurant coupon class action lawsuit, read the Restaurant.com coupon class action lawsuit complaint: http://classactionlawsuitsinthenews.com/class-action-lawsuit-complaints/restaurant-com-class-action-lawsuit-complaint/comment-page-1/#comment-99496

Also note that several merchants in several U.S. States complained that Restaurant.com would sell more certificates then agreed in original contract, Restaurant.com would modify the agreement without knowledge to the merchant(s). Restaurant.com would sell certificates that would state a "Never Expire" expiration date on all certificates and force the merchant to accept them for 5 years after they cancel their account or be forced to re-imburse restaurant.com as much as $17, 000.00 for refusing to accept certificates at their restaurant. Restaurant.com is been known to avoid calling back merchants. I highly recommend that you file a class action lawsuit in your state against this company for damages.

One thing I learned is whenever you have a complaint you need to do a few things

1) File a complaint against the company thru the Better Business Bureau. Any complaints posted will be available here: http://www.bbb.org

2) File a complaint with your State Attorney General office, These guys investigate deceptive practices, Click here to find one in your State. http://workathomemoms.about.com/od/workathomescams/a/State-Attorney-General.htm

3) Consult an Attorney and file a lawsuit.

4) Contact the Media: Television, Cable, Newspapers, Radio - Get the word out about the bad practices of a company, Remember companies hate "Bad Press" and they'll do anything from being listed on the local news!

5) Protest - Get your friends involved and protest.

Just to let you know that the Better Business Bureau has 587 complaints against Restaurant.com (RDC) in 3 years from both consumers & merchants, This will help your case.

I bought the savings certificate from restaurant.com for Viiolas in Quincy. !$10 for a $25 certificate. The comments were all fantastic. When our party of 3 arrived we were told they did not have the veal, beef, or chicken listed on the menu. (hadn't been delivered that day). Turns out they are going out of business. We were told this after our arrival. The wonderful waitress accepted our certificate (Thank you), but shame on restaurant.com for not using due diligence in restaurant reviews. I wonder who on the staff of restaurrants.com actually verified all those comments of excellence.

Their website shows certificate availability, but will only allow purchase by "new money" via credit card and will not allow you to redeem an eGift certificate (which I previously purchased from them directly via credit card) for the purchase. The only reason I have eGift certificates is because restaurants for which I previously purchased gift certs (BY CREDIT CARD) went out of business, and restaurant.com refuses to give refunds but assures you that you will get an 'even exchange' of an eGift certificate to use on future purchases. This is a total scam -- if it is not illegal, it is barely skirting the law and is very clearly a conscious choice to screw over their paying customers. The restaurant listing for which I tried buying a cert did not state anything about not being able to redeem w/eGift certificates. I used the "chat" feature w/customer svc rep to get it resolved, and he informed me that they have two separate inventories -- one for credit card purchases and one for eGift card redemption. And, magically, they have plenty of stock for customers giving them "new" money via credit card but none available for those of us w/eGift certificates. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH THIS DISREPUTABLE COMPANY WHO BASICALLY STEALS YOUR MONEY. What good are certificates if they won't allow you to redeem them at restaurants at which you actually want to eat?

After speaking with two restaurants in my area who got involved with restaurant.com here are some very negative highlights: For small businesses this is a very expensive deal to participate in ie: to attract new customers through greater exposure and price incentives. It does not preclude existing customers from super-clearance pricing nor does it take into account any of the product's minimal or major daily market price increases. Lenghthy expiration dates and profit at -0 to just meeting overhead for the businesses involved is a recipe for disaster. Can these small businesses dependent on tourist $ afford to be involved with this deal? Don't be surprised when a restaurant shuts the door on your coupon to save themselves.

I got a "gift" from a friend. It had a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper with a code printed. Enter code & get $25 from restaurant.com ... there are many places on their website so I set up an account, entered my code & got the credit posted to my account.
1 week later I went to use it & the $25 was GONE. I emailed them. Here's the reply:
"...our system will hold the available balance for that redemption process only. If for any reason, you close out of the redemption site before selecting your restaurant, the available credit will no longer be in your shopping cart for security reasons."
Of course I threw away the code. I hope they can sleep at night. Make money by cheating people dot com is what it is.

I was given a Restaurant.com gift voucher a couple of months ago and recently decided to use it; if you go to their website to redeem it, Restaurant.com force you to make an account before they will let you convert a gift voucher into restaurant coupons. The selection of restaurants in my area was pretty limited - lots of places in malls that looked like they really needed the business, frankly - but we were able to find a couple of places worth a try.

Having redeemed my gift, I tried to close my account - only to find THERE IS NO WAY OF CLOSING AN ACCOUNT! This didn't seem very friendly, so I contacted customer support and asked them to close it for me - no response. I sent a reminder a week later. No response. And again - no response. So - for me it's clear. They advertise to restaurants as having lots of members, but the reality is that I count as a member- as does everyone else ever fooled into using a voucher who would quit if it was possible. Customer service is non-existent and the restaurant selection sucks. This is a scam site - avoid.

I received an email from my cell phone company telling me that if I switched to paperless bills they would give me $25 for restaurant.com. Great! I switched and went to the site to redeem my certificate and take my wife out to eat. Worst business ever.

You have to make minimum purchases when you buy the gift certificate on line...then when you get to the restaurant you can only use the money you paid to get the certificate on certain items and even then you can only use it if you spend a certain previous set amount, always more than the certificate you already purchased. Done Waste Your Time.

SHAME ON RESTAURANT.COM

READ FIRST! BEWARE! THE COMPANY DOES HAVE A REFUND POLICY!

Restaurant.com is ###! I purchased two (2) gift certificates for $100 for one restaurant. I read and understood the special instruction for that particular restaurant. Yet restaurant.com also had THEIR own terms and conditions, which prevents me to use both of my certificate at one time.

I called the customer support line which lead me to a dead end after waiting over 15 minutes. I then proceeded to call the ordering line and to my surprise only a 3 minutes wait. The representative informed me they can only give me an exchange for one of my certificate for a $100 at restaurant.com, yet they cannot just REFUND me my $40.

Unsatisfied with the options the representative gave me I asked nicely to speak with a supervisor/manager. I believe the representative basically gave me the run-a-around answer, "My supervisor is currently on the phone, I can have him/her call you back." I replied, "I will wait, " but that also was unacceptable, I guess they don't have a phone system can place me on HOLD? But when I called the customer support and the phone ordering line, I was miraculously placed on HOLD. So I then asked when I should be expecting a return call back, TWENTY-FOUR (24) HOUR! You got to be kidding me, seriously... I guess if I ran a shady, unprofessional and scam-like company like this, I would have the same company procedures!

If anyone has a similar story please post and reveal this company for what it truly is!

They can't make money legitimately. They have sales where they give restaurant.com $25 gift certificates out for $1 or even free. They make the $1 (or extra site traffic). The restaurant (if it honors them correctly) has to give a $25 (or more) discount. Their "sell" to the restaurant is that there are terms to break even or make profit added to the certificate. So for a $25 Restaurant.com, it may state you need to spend at least $40 and the tip will be added before discount. That is to prevent $0 checks. If you spend the minimum of $40 your bill will be $22.20 (+tax) including tip (server gets $7.20 so restaurant gave $40 in food for $15. Believe me 90%+ of the time customers are right at the minimum. They sell you on getting "new" customers (most of which never return unless they have another discount, coupon, living social, groupon, etc.) or "cheap" regular customers buy them constantly. The only way this company could work legit is if they charged full price for the gift certificates and maybe took a 10% cut off the top for selling them and gave the rest to the restaurant. But then they wouldn't make enough. Instead its pretty much a scam. (Yes some people legitimately use these without knowing the real costs and you may get a scattering of customers that return but we gave out $5, 000+ in these a month for a year and since canceling we have finally had money to pay the bills, be prepared for a 75%+ food cost if you are a good legit restaurant like us and honored our end of the deal) and you can cancel them it just takes 15 months or so. Its just not a good business, probably legal but not moral. I just saw them giving $400 in certificates for $10 on some deal site and it was over 10, 000 sold so it just shows they know their certificates are worthless.
It can work as advertised if you are prepared for 75% food costs (and keep your quality up), have extra money, treat all customers the same, and also insist on very high "spends" (like $25 for min spend of $100) which they will discourage at first then use to try and keep you when you cancel (although try telling a cheap customer that they have to spend $100 to save $25, good luck.)
If you think this is going to help a struggling business it will only help the servers (at first) and you will think you are busier, but after a few weeks you see that you are screwed.

Business owners beware. This is a total scam. The sales person disclosed very little information and told me i would receive about 1 certificate a day. It quickly turned into a staple in my daily reports. I began to receive 3 to 6 certificates a day. When I contacted the company they gave me the run around and would not let me cancel my program. Stay away from this company they very unprofessional.

I bought a $25 gift certificate that stated a minimum purchase of $20 along with a couple of other restrictions. After I completed my transaction, I went to print it, and it stated I had to have a minimum purchase of $50! Now that is FALSE ADVERTISING and HIGHWAY ROBBERY! I know they will not give me my money back now, but it was only $4 so it isn't a huge deal. Just know to run the other direction when dealing with restaurant.com (HUGE SCAM).

This site is selling coupons to a local restaurant. I purchased on 2/29. On 3/2 I enter the restaurant, ask for my favorite table, the waiter leads me back, I lay the certificate on the table and am told by the server they are not honoring the certificates because Restaurant.com does not pay them for the certificates like they are supposed to and the little restaurant is not making money.

I love our little restaurant, I am not angry at them. So I called the other 2 little restaurants featured on restaurant.com for our area. Guess what? The same thing is happening to them, AND they have requested to be removed from the restaurant.com website and they will not take them off. I have suggested a class action suit and media attention.

"I purchased four gift certificates in 2011: one for Addis, an Ethiopian restaurant on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland, California; and two for Cocina Poblana, a restaurant in Jack London in Oakland, California. On Sunday, March 4, 2012, I redeemed my gift certificate at Addis restaurant -- though our server quietly revealed that the restaurant was extremely frustrated with their Restaurant.com experience and the confusion that often complicated their guests dining experiences. My father and I were unsure what she was referring to, but did note that even though the server repeatedly told us we "didn't have enough" on our bill to qualify to use the voucher, she returned with a $30 bill in addition to the $25 voucher I used.
I decided I would use my other gift certificates on Monday, March 5, 2012 at Cocina Poblana by taking my fiance out to a celebratory dinner. I made a reservation for 7 p.m. on Monday, March 5, 2012, making sure to mention that I would be paying for part of my meal by using the gift certificate from Restaurant.com. We arrived early and were seated promptly. After we finished our dinner, I tried to redeem my voucher and was told by our server that they no longer accepted gift certificates from Restaurant.com due to "recurring instances of fraud". The server even referenced the Restaurant.com associate who had came to the facility to market this promotion and several of the restaurant employees (and patrons, even!) called Restaurant.com a scam. We eventually just paid out-of-pocket, but we were both very upset with our dining experience and would like someone to take responsibility for what seems to be either blatant manipulation or an obvious propensity to scam or capitalize on the naivete mentality of consumers. I would prefer to settle this amicably, with a refund for both my Cocina Poblana gift certificates (two in total) and the gift certificate I bought my sister (just one... It remains unused, and will have to remain unused after this embarrassing experience.) The fact that almost everyone in the restaurant was aware (besides us) of the backwards nature of Restaurant.com is doing an extreme disservice to your business. "

______________________________________________________________

Above is the letter that I sent (via snail mail and e-mail, and several separate complaints bureaus) to Restaurant.com to demand a refund after my experiences. I will update this board if I receive a legitimate response. (I seriously doubt it though!) I suggest everyone continue to write Restaurant.com and individual consumer complaint boards to apply pressure to the company to initiate legitimate operational practices.

When approached by the malicious sales people from restaurant.com (RDC) I started out the conversation with "if you are here to try and sell vouchers, then the meeting is not necessary as we have many vouchers out there still unredeemed through Google offers, and Livingsocial." They were quick to say that we would benefit from exposure on their website and that it provides a way to make reservations quickly and easily. We were informed that we could sign up and have a place on their site so that when we were ready to have them sell vouchers it would already be in place. LIE, LIE, LIE! As soon as we were up on their website they started selling vouchers immediately. We put in a call to RDC who proptly replied that there is no delays to the sales of the vouchers. We had them quickly initiate the cancellation process which takes 90 DAYS?! They claim to want to help restaurants, yet they are hell bent only on their own profitability at the merchants expense. They are the only voucher sellers out there that do not split revenue with the merchants. Instead the only benefit they try to provide is by the patron by having them spend over the discount amount, and add 18% gratuity prior to the discount application, and that is it. Merchants beware the terms of their agreement is 1 year, where they will sell as many vouchers as possible, and the agreement is automatically renewed unless you cancel and the cancellation takes 90 days!?! RDC is only looking for its own benefit from the merchants without providing any benefit to the merchants (the very definition of a parasite). Restaurant owners beware DO NOT SIGN ON WITH restaurant.com THEY ARE CANCER TO YOUR BUSINESS and it is terminal. RDC is quite possibly the worst thing to ever happen to the restaurant industry. Parading around as if they can help your business while aiming only to sell as many vouchers as they can and all the while strong arming the small businesses by forcing them to dole out $10, $25, $35, $50, $100, $150 of your product for as long as they can, and even after you have cancelled out of their program they still expect you to honor the ones they have sold for a year after they were purchased. TELL EVERYONE DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH restaurant.com THEY WILL BLEED YOU TILL YOUR BUSINESS IS DEAD!

I bought a certificate on Thursday for a $25 certificate. went to the restaurant Sat and there is sign on the door that "due to fraud by restaurant.com we do not honor their certificates." This is not the first time this has happened. In the past restaurants had closed. they refuse a refund saying that when I ordered the certificate I agreed to their fine print which says no refunds. if that is their polcy I'm ok with that but I do think they must be made to stop selling certificates that they know are not going to be accepted.

I am a merchant who had signed up for restaurant.com though one of their field agents. The agent came to my pizza shop in Swansea, SC and presented the program to me. It seemed legitimate. We discussed possible issues upfront. She assured me that customers could only buy one certificate to my place and the program was designed to bring new customers to our restaurant. A few month in, I had a customer that was able to purchase $400 worth of $25 certificates for only $16. Restaurant.com was offering $25 certificates at Christmas for $1 and their was no limit on how many a person could buy. This totally defeats the purpose of the program from a merchants point of view! When I contacted restaurant.com, they quickly informed me that in the fine print of the documents we signed, it states that we are obligated to the program for a one year period. We waited our year out and then was told their was a 90 day waiting period. 90 days after providing written notice that we wanted out of the program, we are still on the site! It is very frustrating to me because we have no choice but to disappoint and frustrate our customers by not honoring the certificates. Restaurant.com now says that we must conduct a exit interview, which they are unable to schedule with me as of today. It is a terribly flawed system where restaurant.com does not disclose the terms of the agreement and then "forces" merchants to cooperate or be faced with a $1000 fine for breaching the contract! Just wanted to make you aware as to why so many merchants are turning and running from restaurant.com. I plan to post my story on as many review sites as I can in hope of keeping a merchant like me from doing business with restaurant.com. Just to clarify, restaurant.com keeps 100% of the money they sell the certificate for. Restaurants eat that cost as a way to bring in NEW business. That's the way the program is presented to the merchant. There is a minimum order that is supposed to cover food costs for the restaurant but in today's economy, restaurants are selling items with a 40% food cost. Its a horrible program and I hope that they will remove us soon!

Michael Brown
Paparonis Grill, LLC

My restaurant has been trying to end our 'contract' with Restaurant.com for 6 months. Initially it was only supposed to be a 6 month contract which would have ended in September... we have been fighting with them since November and now they are telling us that we have to do an 'exit interview' to end the contract. Although demeaning and embarrassing we complied only to find out that a week later we are STILL on the website, by which they have told us that it takes 5-10 business days to be removed. So we have been left with no further alternative than to post that we are NO LONGER ACCEPTING restaurant.com certificates. We are honoring the $5 people paid for the certificates, and just eating the cost ourselves because there is NO WAY restaurant.com is going to refund the poor customers. They have threatened legal action against us and have left us no other choice. HORRIBLE HORRIBLE WEBSITE!