Restaurant.com

A lady at my office was looking for a mediterranean restaurant's website and went here by accident. I told her a million times that don't go to websites that aren't official. That's how she got the company scammed out of like $1600 by booking a hotel from some scam email (yet she complains if we accidentally print something wrong and waste a 1 cent piece of paper and .003 cents of ink, but that's another story). It's like I'd rather believe information coming from Sony's official website, not just some information someone posted on Google. Anyone can make anything up and make it look real.

Anyway, this place is legit and they're really good. Before placing an order I called the restaurant to make sure they participate. You can get $25 gift certificates to restaurants for as low as $2 each! They're normally $10, but they frequently have 70% and 80% off coupons! The certificates have no expiration date.

There's a catch. Most of the $25 coupons state this: Dine in only, Must buy $35 worth of food (usually not including drinks), and 18% gratuity added prior to discount. Some state not valid on Fri or Sat. Make sure you read before making your purchase. You can only use one certificate per restaurant per month.

If you plan your meal right, so you can get it about $35 + 18% tip which you're going to leave a tip anyway, minus the $25 certificate you end up paying about $14. Not bad.

When you buy a certificate you can use it immediately, just print it out. You can also give them to someone else if you want. You can buy a bunch at once and they'll stay in your account. A new feature, which is nice, when you use a certificate it will automatically show up as used. You used to have to manually mark them.

I spoke with someone at restaurant.com and they were fairly good at responding and very nice. I only have a few minor gripes with their website, which are probably stuff they will address in the future. You can search by zip code, state, or city. I'd like to be able to combine that and search by restaurant name and city, since some cities have multiple zip codes and it might be hard to locate them. Maybe the option to add multiple zip codes in one search.

The other thing I'd like to see is user reviews and rating, but this one might alienate some restaurants from wanting to be listed on their website, because they wouldn't want any bad reviews. But I think that's a good thing, because I probably wouldn't have gone to the bad place. I think if they have the ability to see you've used your certificate then I think they should allow a review.