OpenTable

Booked table for 5, when we show up restaurant said I had no reservation, had to wait for a table, looked like I messed up/forgot to book to everyone else.

Next day open table sent me an email saying I forgot to show up or failed to cancel the booking.

I complained, they sent me "300 points", not sure what that even means as it appears you need 2000 points to earn $26. So essentially they sent me a sixth of a meal in points as an apology.

I should have just called the restaurant!

I have been using Open Table (OT) since they began and have written many restaurant reviews, mostly all highly positive. This is my first review of open table, and it is negative. Recently, OT has made it harder to get your reservation reward points. You have to check a box requesting the 100 points for the typical reservation. It should be the other way around... the 100 points should be automatic, and if you don't want them for some reason, you can check a box saying you don't want them. So as a result of this little greedy change to the site that was certainly not obvious sand not announced, i missed out on 300 points. I sent several messages requesting that the points get restored, and never received a single reply. No apology, no explanation, no attempt to appease a long term customer. I have started using other services and believe that OT's disregard for customer satisfaction is the beginning of their demise. Maybe the leadership needs to be replaced.

Don't believe OpenTable when they say there is no seating at the time you want. I wanted a table at Trader Vic's in Portland OR, at 7:00 on a Thursday evening. OpenTable said the only available seating was at 5:00 and 9:00, we took the 5:00 even though it was really difficult to make that happen. The dinner was great, drinks good, atmosphere nice, but a lot of empty tables, all night until about 8:30 when we left. In short, if you want to get a table at a certain time and OpenTable says it's not available, call the restaurant and make the reservations yourself.

The site does nothing that you can't do directly at the restaurant itself. Except for the earned points for booking through them that add up to dining dollars. The problem is getting them! The first time we used open table we booked a regular 100 point table and didn't get the points. The second time we booked a 1000 point table and kept the reservation. We followed the proper links and met all requirements but got no points either time. Apparently some people get them, but some don't. They either have a computer glitch or ridiculous loop holes that are impossible to figure out. I'm a successful business owner and customer service specialist and my husband is a software engineer so we should be able to handle this! I contacted customer service and they were terrible! They finally agreed to "give us" 200 points instead of the 1100 they owed us. Very disappointing!

This site makes it easier to make reservations that you would make anyway. But by making it easier, they do draw customers to restaurants on their site. They should at least offer decent support to their users BUT THEY DO NOT. I cashed in points and was supposed to get a giftcard, but it never arrived. Good luck trying to contact their site to followup. They do offer a chat option (I waited for an hour in the queue then got cut off.) There is no way to email them. They really suck.