I got a pretty good coupon in the mail for a local restaurant so I decided to take my husband out to dinner tonight.
It was a 3 part coupon Part 1: Dinner for two for $20 Part 2: Buy dinner tonight and get your next dinner 50% off Part 3: 20% off your enitire purchase
One MAJOR part of us staying on budget is we don't eat out much. It used to be a really bad (pure laziness) habit of ours and we've wasted so much money on whimsical eating out that we rarely ever go to restaurants anymore except if it's already budgeted into an evening of entertainment.
But anyway this coupon made it worth going out to dinner so I took $40 out of entertainment and decided to get the $20 special.
Well, when we went to order the server said: Oh, you don't really need the coupon for that because it's something we do everyday anyway. We just sent the coupon out to advertise and let people know about this great deal.
So I said -ok- and we ordered one appetizer and two entree's for $20 I ordered a drink $7 Husband ordered a drink $3 and a side dish $3
So when they brought us the bill I presented the 20% off coupon since the girl said I didn't need the $20 coupon
Then the conversation went like this:
-You can't combine coupons -I'm not combining coupons. You said the $20 deal was something you do anyway. -Yes it is but it's still a special so I can't take 20% off of it. -ok then take the 20% off the things that were not on special. -Sorry, I can't do that. Once you choose a special you can't combine it with another special. -You just said the $20 dinner wasn't really a special. -Well, it is and it isn't so sorry, I can't accept the coupon.
Now I know it was only going to be less than $3 off my bill but the ONLY reason I went was because they sent me a coupon. For them not to accept it just pissed me off. I wasn't going to sit there and haggle over it but now I'm mad and I'm taking them off my entertainment choices.
She should have just taken the $20 coupon in the first place and I would have been happy.
OR
She should have taken the 20% off coupon and lost $2.60 to ensure that I had a good experience there and would come back.
Either way would have been fine with me. I know how coupons work. They're to make people -feel- like they're saving money and feel good about spending with you. The establishment isn't really losing anything by accepting those coupons or they wouldn't print them.
The thing that pisses me off that they would waste money sending out thousands of coupons to get customers in the restaurant and then not even accept them. The thing that ticks me off the most is that I live in a really really small town and my dining choices are already limited but if I'm going to end up haggling at the end of the evening I'm not going there again not even for parties and such where my entertainment bill is going to come to a helluva lot more than $40
So my daughter and SIL come up to visit tonight. The guys go out on a road hunt, I'm the driver. We get back to town and instead of having a quick dinner they decide to go out to eat.
Twice in a week is not really cool with me. I'm hating life that I went out on a whim the other night. I should have 'saved' that for an occasion like this but hey, they want to go out so out we go.
As I mentioned before I live in a really small town. There are not very many dining options so of the few available the same restaurant that we went to night before last gets picked again.
I don't want to be a spoil sport so I go along with it but when we get there I get the manager and explain to him what happened and how I didn't get to use my 20% off coupon the other night and that I wanted to use it tonight. The manager said "I'll see what I can do"
When my bill came it didn't have the 20% taken off of it.
I don't care about being a spoil sport anymore. I am NOT eating there again. I can't believe they did that to me two times in the same week! It's unheard of for me to eat out two times in a week anyway. This just reinforces my not eating out habit. Going back to really bad habits!
Wow, he gave you one of those non committal answers "I'll see what I can do". Makes you think he is taking care of it and then when he doesn't, well, he never actually said he would. At that point in time he should have asserted one way or another how that coupon can be used. Massive fail on his part.