Be careful of Restaurant.com. I bought a $10 gift certificate for Mongolian Grill in Mukilteo for $4. The place only does counter service, but insisted on the 18% gratuity in the fine print, basically eating up the entire savings.

The restaurant justified it as they needed to make back the loss they were taking on the gift certificate. I had to make 4 trips to get the food and drinks for my wife and kids to the table, and they couldn't even be bothered to offer a tray, but they felt they were entitled to an 18% tip because they gave me a discount that the tip eliminated.

And Restaurant.com basically said "well, we state that they can charge the tip" and if I didn't like it, I could scan through their listings to find the 6% of restaurants in my area that do have offers with them, but don't have the fine print about a gratuity. I say "scan through" because, of course, they don't actually let you sort or search by that criteria. If I want a restaurant that doesn't have a mandatory tip, the selection of deals in my area goes from 76 to 4.

I don't mind the 18% at a sit-down restaurant where I'd tip around that much anyway. Maybe I'd be out an extra $2 if I felt the service didn't rate a full 18%. But letting a self-serve place, where there's NO service to speak of, tack on the 18% and telling the customer it's "buyer beware" is bull. I'm never going back to that restaurant and Restaurant.com is never getting another penny from me.

This entry was posted on Monday, May 14th, 2012 at 12:45 pm and is filed under Just Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.