My husband, son and I are enjoying a nice getaway at my in-laws place in Southern California. In lieu of the fact that the grandparents offered free babysitting, I began collecting different “freebies” or almost-freebies to use on our nights out. One of them was taking advantage of some 80% off coupons at restaurant.com, which worked out to $2 apiece, and the other was snagging some free movie passes on the recent Old Navy deal (if you were one of the first 50 customers in the store on a particular day and made a $20 purchase, you got 4 free movie passes).
With our son asleep at my in-laws’ place, we set out first for Al-Hamra, a Middle-Eastern place that I had gotten a Restaurant.com coupon for, and then a movie. Unfortunately, however, the owner of the restaurant said that they had ended their contract with Restaurant.com some time ago.
Now, I know it’s only $2, but it does peeve me a bit that Restaurant.com is selling gift certificates for places it no longer has contracts with. I plan on contacting them this week to complain and ask for it to be either refunded or credited to a current restaurant (and I have heard that these coupons have worked for others). In researching it on the internet, I also ran across some complaints here regarding Restaurant.com. Even if they are mostly on the up and up, it seems that sometimes people also get accidentally get charged for another service that they were signed up for through Restaurant.com, so keep an eye on your credit card bill if a charge to “Shopping Essentials” ever shows up.
Despite the rough beginning, however, we were fortunate enough to have a generous restaurant owner who gave us free drinks and baklava for dessert. The mezze platter for two that we shared was delicious, and more than filling. I was a little nervous that the Old Navy movie passes might not work, but they were accepted, and we watched an excellent film, Slumdog Millionare. It is a fictional story about a boy from the slums of India’s struggle to pursue his dreams, and has some troubling but realistic portrayals of the lives that many children lead there. So even though I plan on complaining about the Restaurant.com mixup, I also know that there are bigger things to lose sleep over and for which to truly rally people to do something.
1 Comment
December 22, 2008 at 6:13 am
That’s too bad about the restaurant.com certificates. We’ve used them several times with no problems, and even given them as gifts to family. Hope next time you get your bargain meal! :)