Steven D.

I received a $100 restaurant.com gift card as a gift (of course); what I am getting at is that I never personally paid for the gift card or a certificate through restaurant.com. When I saw all the restaurants that were listed on the website/app, I thought it would be neat to check out so many mom and pop restaurants as well as cafes. My first two restaurant experiences/uses of the gift card went by without incident. On my third try, the restaurant owner claimed his restaurant just ended up on the website, he did not recognize/honor the certificates, and he never came to any deals with restaurant.com. Moreover, he claimed that restaurant.com would not respond to his inquiries. I went to another restaurant after this without incident. Noting that several restaurants from the website/app no longer existed. At this point, I was thinking the website/app was not up to date and the owner's situation from the third try was a one off incident. I recently traveled to the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where I came across several restaurants that reiterated what the owner from my third try stated. In addition, they verified that, aside from receiving the forced/surprise advertisement on the restaurant.com website/app, they received no monetary benefit at all from restaurant.com. One restaurant owner went so far as to give me my $10.00 discount without using the certificate. After I experienced multiple incidents like this, I decided to leave $25 on the card and throw it in the trash. This idea is good (certificates for mom and pop restaurants). I appreciate the idea. However, after digging into what restaurant.com does, its business practices are so shady that I want nothing to do with it.