john j.

I was excited to see that I could buy, and I quote, Restaurant "gift certificates" for less than half price. In my particular case, I bought and paid for 50 dollars in "certificates" for 20 dollars. Then I went to the Restaurant.com website and began shopping for restaurants that I could patronize. The selection wasn't bad, and I found a few I was willing to try. I am alone, so I purchased five of the ten dollar variety certificates. You don't walk in and get ten dollars worth of food and walk out. I figured as much, but then let me tell you what you DO get. There is a minimum purchase of 20 dollars on a ten dollar coupon. So I figured what the heck? Half off the meal! Not bad, I can make this work.
So I carefully ordered a steak and enchilada lunch that was 14 dollars, an iced tea for 2, and eyeballed some of the desserts to order later, to get my dollar amount up over 20. The meal was good so I won't pick on the restaurant. I ate everything including my dessert and the food total was $20.90. The automatic gratuity on that was $3.76. Tax was $1.89, so the total was 26.55. Then they took off the 10 dollars and it came to 16.55.
So, as careful as I was, restricting my choices to the ones that made the most sense for the coupon I was trying to use, I spent a fair amount of money for the meal, and had to pay the equivalent of four dollars to restaurant.com for the priveledge of doing so. I certainly didnt feel burned, don't get me wrong. But there are lots of coupons in the newspaper or online for deals on meals, two for ones, all that kind of stuff, and you don't have to pay for them, not to mention having to register to the website (spam alert), select the restaurant up front, read all the restrictions (food only, no booze, restricted hours, not good on so-and-so,).
So if I do as well as I did today, with my four other certificates, and I do the math, 26.55 times 5 is 132.75. I will save 50 dollars in the process, but subtract from that the fact that I paid 20 dollars to restaurant.com for the right to order the certificates, I will save 30 dollars total. That's if I actually make it to all the restaurants within the required times and restrictions. That is a twenty three percent savings at best. And it was a lot of work getting that.
I don't know about you, but I would rather pull into any restaurant I want, order whatever i want, whenever I want, and pay for the priveledge of doing so. I think the only winner here is restaurant.com.

Then they add the 18 percent gratuity on the full amount