$25 Restaurant.com GC with $25 Purchase at Drusgstore.com

Plus, free shipping with purchases over $25. Also, drugstore.com is having a Up to 60% off sale.

Buyer Beware on these restaurant.com GC's....

they are NOT for rest.com but another site with less offerings and other pitfalls.

http://www.fatwallet.com/forums/deal-discussion/1160812/

satchelsofgold said:   To be clear:

restaurant.com sells $25 certs for $10. They are always running 80-90% off codes, so you pay $1 or $2 for the $25 cert.

BUT. As MisterCheap points out, the GCs as in OP are to a far more limited selection of restaurants, so they are worth even less than the $1 or $2 you would pay for your choice of restaurant by buying the voucher directly.

I guess if this still stacks with other deals (CashBack/drugstore.com dollars/free samples/etc.) AND if you're going to order from drugstore.com anyway it's better than nothing. But I would value this "$25" certificate at somewhere between zero and one dollar.

more and more offerings on the real restaurant.com are showing up as "Promo Codes Do Not Apply" and you can't even get the 80% deal on those either.

satchelsofgold said:   Ah, I didn't realize that. Can you use promo codes on the subset of restaurants that show up on TheIdealMeal? If so, then this deal still tops out at $1-2.

IdealMeal is strictly for redemption of gc's and credits...can't actually purchase anything there. have to have a credit already.

satchelsofgold said:   MISTERCHEAP said:   satchelsofgold said:   Ah, I didn't realize that. Can you use promo codes on the subset of restaurants that show up on TheIdealMeal? If so, then this deal still tops out at $1-2.

IdealMeal is strictly for redemption of gc's and credits...can't actually purchase anything there. have to have a credit already.

I understand that. What I'm saying is, IdealMeal holds a subset of restaurants. If the restaurants in this subset are not "Promo Codes Do Not Apply" at rest.com, then you can use a coupon code at restaurant.com to purchase vouchers to restaurants in the subset. That makes a $25 gift card redeemable at IdealMeal worth only $1-2, because you would only pay that much for a $25 voucher to any of the subset restaurants if you bought it directly from rest.com.

the idealmeal rests. tend to be the "bottom of the barrel" choices and do allow promo codes at rest.com for purchase.

the problem is...let's say you by a rest.com cert at a promo code NOT allowed establishement, and pay the full $10 for the $25 cert.

a month later, the rest. goes out of business, and you complain to rest.com. they WILL NOT refund you your $10, they'll issue you a $25 cert credit at Ideal Meal to now use on their sluggo offerings. So in this scenario, you've paid $10 for a cert that is truly worth $1-2 (with a code), since you can't find anything comparable to the original place you intended to use it at.

satchelsofgold said:   MISTERCHEAP said:   
the problem is...let's say you by a rest.com cert at a promo code NOT allowed establishement, and pay the full $10 for the $25 cert.

a month later, the rest. goes out of business, and you complain to rest.com. they WILL NOT refund you your $10, they'll issue you a $25 cert credit at Ideal Meal to now use on their sluggo offerings. So in this scenario, you've paid $10 for a cert that is truly worth $1-2 (with a code), since you can't find anything comparable to the original place you intended to use it at.

Well, there are two issues here. The first is, what's wrong with the deal OP posted in this thread. What's wrong with this deal is that it pretends to be a $25 perk when it's really only a $1-2 perk, because you're getting an IdealMeal certificate.

The second issue is rest.com's lousy business practices generally. I've had the scenario you describe happen to me and it's really shady. It's not really relevant to this thread, but it's always worth pointing out what a lousy company rest.com is, and the deal just keeps getting worse and worse.

which is exactly why I call it a "bait/switch" in my DD thread. If you're buying a restaurant.com gift card, that's the website it should be good at. Not some "imposter, substitute" site like idealmeal which is not the mirror of rest.com.