Another dismayed Restaurant.com participant. Join the hundreds if not thousands of consumers who fall prey to their ploy and have been subjected to what you are undergoing time and time again.

I've had mixed experiences. Though I thoroughly read the terms and conditions, my last experience was bad. After emailing and phoning restaurant.com to double-check that this specific restaurant participated in their program, I bought a certificate, only to find out after the meal that the restaurant would not accept the certificate. It turns out that the establishment's owner was in a lawsuit with restaurant.com. Not only was it embarrassing, I ended up spending unexpected extra money.

I believe that Restaurant.com should take down any restaurant with which it is legally wrangling. The consumer ends up being the one hurt. And the restaurant gets in a pickle, too. As far as I'm concerned, since I adhered to all the terms and double-checked with restaurant.com on the restaurant's participation and since they did not remove the restaurant from their site after complaints and a lawsuit began, the management at restaurant.com is at fault…especially if they refuse to reimburse my out-of-pocket meal costs (from what I've heard, that won't happen).

If I were to ever buy a certificate from them again, I'd certainly phone the restaurant beforehand. However, in my location, most of the restaurants appear to be on the low end, so that is not likely to happen. The restaurant in the lawsuit is more upscale.

Good advice for people to phone the restaurants before signing up... same for those groupon sites too I bet

That is great advice Shirley, I can really understand the issue that you had experienced. To let you know most of us who answered the phone for RDC are in the dark a little bit. When you call and ask if a certain restaurant is still part of the program all that we can do is type a name in and the computer tells us yes or no. I agree the best way to go is call the restaurant in question to find out the correct information. I no longer work for them but I think that you have the right idea.

I've had a good experience. I purchased several of the $25. Certificates for $6. We only had to spend $35. You are going to pay tax and a gratuity at any restaurant except a fast-food place anyway, so what do you expect?

It looks like for all of 2012, this site is a scam. Darn. I love the restaurants they are featuring.