Victim Location 30318
Total money lost $15
Type of a scam Counterfeit Product
We do not sell gift certificates. This one from restaurant.com is fake.
Victim Location 52240
Type of a scam Online Purchase
They are selling gift certificates at half off for food in the restaurant w no authorization from me. I am the sole owner operator.
Victim Location 73003
Total money lost $165.78
Type of a scam Counterfeit Product
I am a restaurant owner of a small BBQ restaurant in Edmond Oklahoma. Last week, a customer came in to dine at my restaurant and at the end of his meal, he presented my server with a printed "gift certificate" that he purchased from restaurant.com for $25 off a meal purchase. Until that moment, I had never even heard of restaurant.com. When I told the customer that I did not know where it came from and that I couldn’t accept it, He got very angry. He claimed that he received an e-mail containing the offer for him to purchase a $25 gift certificate for $15 and he felt that we needed to honor our promotion. I explained to him that I had never authorized any outside entity to produce gift certificates or coupons on my behalf and that he should contact the site where he had purchased them. I began investigating this restaurant.com site and found that both of my locations had been added to this site. I then began attempts to contact the company to get some answers as to who and how my business ended up on the site. I have had no response from restaurant.com and since the initial "gift certificate" was presented, I have now had dozens of customers attempt to use them and even had two customers walk their tabs because of it. Yesterday I had to respond to a nasty Google review about it and it is now affecting my ratings. I have found multiple news posts from past years about this site, and blogs from both customers who could not redeem their certificates at restaurants, and from other restaurant owners like me who have been scammed. How can this company still be able to exist and get away with scamming businesses for this long without being shut down?? There must be laws that protect businesses from other entities issuing promotions on the business’s behalf without permission. Until this scamming company is dealt with, I will continue to refuse their coupons and spread word about them to my customers and fellow restaurants.