Posted on 10/05/2010 6:25:20 AM PDT by PJ-Comix
Okay, some of you requested that I post money saving tips since I have a reputation as "The Coupon Whisperer."
And my next tip has to do with Restaurant.Com. I admit that for some time I avoided it because I figured it might be some sort of gimmick to lure you into paying a lot more than you figured. Well, I finally gave it a try and have to say I was very pleased with the result. The first tip is to buy the Restaurant.Com gift certificates when they are ON SALE. Usually the sale is for 80% off but last week it was 90% off so I couldn't resist. I bought a $25 gift certificate for just $1.50 for Cannoli's Italian restaurant. Last night I took the certificate to Canolli's and am pleased to report that everything worked perfectly. Bill came to $39 so with the gift certificate discount, I only paid $14 plus tip. A great deal especially since the Large pizza, two strombolis, and the soup we ordered was way too much to eat at one sitting so half of it we took home with us to eat tonight.
Bottom line is that, with the help of that gift certificate, my wife and I will be eating a great dinner for two nights at the rate of about $6 per dinner per person.
If you are eating out at a restaurant, then you would actually have to be NUts not to take advantage of those gift certificates. I ended up paying much less than half of the normal bill. The best deals seem to be where you can use a $25 certificate on meals of $35 or more.
I’ve bought their coupons a number of times, always with a code that gives me a great discount.
Many of the restaurants don’t even require you to make the minimum purchase indicated on the coupon, so I now ask in advance just in case I don’t need to spend the whole $35 (or whatever the minimum is).
“I’d never heard of this, so just went for a peek.....almost immediately the security bells and whistles “this site cannot be trusted” went off.”
Your loss. I’ve used it for years, as have my family members and friends. I’ve never heard of anyone having any troubles.
It looked really interesting, but both times I started my search by area, the bells and whistles went zonkers - maybe I’ll give it another shot on the laptop later on.
Clipper Magazine is launching daily deals like this:
http://www.doubletakedeals.com/howitworks
They have a cool Iphone app here:
www.couponclipper.com
I have successfully used restaurant.com coupons 3 times for a savings of about $150 (likely not quite that much since we spent extra to make the minimum on the coupon), but I had my first failure this weekend when the restaurant had a sign up that said that restaurant.com was selling the coupons without permission and the coupons would not be honored (loss to me = $2).
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