YOU BE THE MANAGER! $10 bonus gift card edition

[Dan Druff]

Situation:

I do take-out from a restaurant near me, which is a small chain. It has about 6 locations total, and all of the restaurants are fairly large, doing brisk business from what I can see. (I'm establishing this so you understand that, while not a huge corporation, it's not a charming mom-and-pop cafe struggling to get by.)

They issue a $10 off on a $40 purchase pretty much constantly. At any point you can find one of these coupons either online (where you can obviously print an unlimited number) or in the mail. So it's pretty much established that if you want $10 off $40, you can get it at any time with very little effort.

They recently had a sale of gift cards. The sale was, "For every $50 in gift cards you buy, you get a $10 certificate to spend here." I decided to purchase six of them, costing me $300, and getting me six extra $10 certificates. There were only two restrictions on the certificate:

1) They can't be combined with other $10 certificates (that is, I can't walk in with all six of them and ask for $60 in food for free.) It does NOT say they can't be combined with coupons or promotions -- only that they can't be combined with each other!

2) They have to be used within a specific two-month period. This was a pain, as they forward-dated them about 2 months, so I had to remember to use them two months later, and two months after that they would be useless.

Well, the date arrived where the certificates were good. I ordered $45 worth of food, and showed up with both my $10 certificate and my $10 coupon. I expected to be charged $25. Instead, the manager refused to accept them both.

Manager: It says here that the coupon cannot be combined with any other offer or discount.

Me: This isn't an offer or discount. It's a certificate that's supposed to be worth $10 here during these dates. It's not a coupon, and it's not a discount.

Manager: That's still a discount. I'm sorry, you just can't use them together.

Me: So what about the gift card? Could I use that?

Manager: Yes, of course you could.

Me: When I bought the gift cards, I was told that these certificates were the same as gift cards, except they were only valid for a certain time frame, and couldn't be combined with each other.

Manager: Well... umm... there was a little confusion here for awhile, I know that. But that's not what was intended. We never meant to allow two $10 discounts at once.

Me: Then what was the point of buying these gift cards on this promotion if a $10 discount is always available through a coupon, no matter what?

Manager: I understand your point, but again, our policy is only one $10 discount per meal.

He said that he would have to consult his district manager over the next few days, and would get back to me. I agreed to not use the certificate for the time being, until the district manager could rule on it, and just used the coupon.

If you were the district manager, how would you rule on this one?

Also keep in mind that I am a regular customer, and the manager recognized me. And for your information, I have not complained about any order in the entire time I've been going to this place.

[Steve-O]

He has to accept them both since you were told they were essentially GC's and not a coupon. Intent and what is actually stated are two different things.

The DM should allow you to use them in conjunction with their regular coupon and clear up the wording for the next promotion

*EDIT: Did I just agree with Druff on two different customer service threads?

[Hockey Guy]

If I was the manager I'd bite the bullet & accept them both since it probably doesn't apply to all that many customers & they are obviously aware of the unintended consequences of their gift card promotion. They should have made a distintion between coupons & gift cards. Gift cards, IMO, should never expire which is my first clue that they intended these as coupons.

You may feel the $10 off coupon is really easy to get but they probably don't since, most likely, a fairly small percentage of their customers would use them, probably less than 10%.

Just out of curiosity, if you paid the bill with one of your $50 gift cards could you still use one of these coupons that are easy to obtain?

[Dan Druff]

If I was the manager I'd bite the bullet & accept them both since it probably doesn't apply to all that many customers & they are obviously aware of the unintended consequences of their gift card promotion. They should have made a distintion between coupons & gift cards. Gift cards, IMO, should never expire which is my first clue that they intended these as coupons.

You may feel the $10 off coupon is really easy to get but they probably don't since, most likely, a fairly small percentage of their customers would use them, probably less than 10%.

Just out of curiosity, if you paid the bill with one of your $50 gift cards could you still use one of these coupons that are easy to obtain?

Yes. The manager confirmed that you can combine a gift card and a coupon, but just not a $10 certificate and a coupon. That's when I told him (truthfully) that I was promised that the certificates were equivalent to the gift cards when I bought them, with only those two exceptions (can't combine certificates, restricted dates) noted above.

I was also making the point that the $10 certificates were useless to any savings-minded customer (and in fact worse than the coupon) if an equivalent coupon is always available. I said that, especially for this reason, they should make it clear when people buy them that they can't be combined with the coupons.

After initially arguing this point with me, he conceded that I was correct that they should have warned people prior to purchase, and that it's likely that the person selling me the gift card didn't know about this. Still, he didn't have the power to make the decision, and had to ask the district manager.

[Crowe Diddly]

If you want to be a real pain, you could point out the fact that federal law covers the issuing of gift cards, and store-issued cards cannot expire within five years. If they're labelled everywhere as gift cards and not coupons, you could probably push this as far as you like.

State law might mean they can't ever expire, state-depending.

[Dan Druff]

If you want to be a real pain, you could point out the fact that federal law covers the issuing of gift cards, and store-issued cards cannot expire within five years. If they're labelled everywhere as gift cards and not coupons, you could probably push this as far as you like.

Actually, that's why they separated the gift cards from the certificates.

The gift cards had no expiration.

The certificates were not gift cards, but rather a bonus certificate that is good for $10 of food during certain dates only. They are allowed to assign dates to those, as long as they are given away at no extra cost.

The problem was that these were also not coupons, but rather an actual freebie attached to buying something. They were worth a real $10 in food. You could walk in, for example, and buy a $9+tax appetizer with one certificate, and pay nothing. You couldn't do that with a coupon.

So these weren't coupons or promotions -- they were a real $10 in food only redeemable during certain dates. So when the coupon only restricted "combining with other offers or discounts", this was neither an offer nor discount. Therefore, the restriction did not apply, but at the same time, I could not have enforced the "gift cards never expire" rule.

[Dan Druff]

Here is a similar facepalmish moment that occurred at a local eatery.

Another small chain sends you "bucks" for their business when they screw up a takeout order. They send them in multiples of $5.

So if I get home and say, "Hey you got this item wrong" and the item was worth $9, they send me two $5 certificates.

Obviously this isn't free money. It's store credit for the items they messed up.

I actually hate this system, because it requires the general manager to issue it, and I feel like he's going to see me as a scammer or an asshole if I request this too often. And this place is good, but they're pretty bad with making mistakes, and many of these mistakes are hard to catch unless you really open everything up and dig into all of the food (which I don't want to do).

So sometimes I actually just ignore the mistakes and say nothing.

But back to my story.

I went and brought in two of these to pay for a future meal, and also brought in a $5 off $20 coupon I printed from online. Again, these coupons are nearly constantly available.

Well, they balked at this, telling me that you can't combine these certificates with coupons. I was told that these were the same certificates as they sometimes give for a gift card promotion (sound familiar?) and that they say on them that you can't combine with coupons.

Indeed, it did say that on the certificates, but I tried to explain that I didn't receive these for buying a gift card, but rather as a form of money back for food that I paid for and was incorrect.

The people at the counter argued and refused to take them (with the coupon), and refused to listen to logic. Finally, I said, "Look, it's not my problem that you use the same certificates for both gift promotions and refunding the customer for messed up food. If I have to walk out this door without combining the coupon, I'm never walking back in."

They had a brief discussion with one another and decided to take it.

After this incident, I actually decided that they probably saw me as some sort of scammer/angle-shooter and severely cut down how often I go there for that reason.

[vegas1369]

Again, you are in the right. I've actually had to deal with this a lot in the past.

They screwed up the wording of their promotion. It doesn't matter what was "intended", only what is in print. Any reasonable GM and/or DM will understand that and issue you your discounts. If they don't you have every right to write up a terrible review on Yelp and would be completely justified IMO.

[unchainedghost]

If you want to be a real pain, you could point out the fact that federal law covers the issuing of gift cards, and store-issued cards cannot expire within five years. If they're labelled everywhere as gift cards and not coupons, you could probably push this as far as you like.

State law might mean they can't ever expire, state-depending.

This is the only thing said itt that does not make my head explode.

Druff, what the fuck is wrong with you that you think the ultra kike route is the only way of participating in the existence of being a human?

Ever think about tipping the bitch giving you your take out order?

Start spending a random buck or two. Life is too short to horde your piece of shit Jew gold like that.

[tigerpiper]

Hilarious, they need to honor all. You are obviously a person with money they want coming to the restaurant. Don't be stupid.

[BeerAndPoker]

This is a classic example of a restaurant not covering their tracks. I like to save money whenever I can and take advantage of coupon deals as long as it's within the rules but some people are notorious for getting whatever they can looking for ways to exploit a business within their rights because the company didn't cover their tracks. Many smaller restaurants just put out multiple offers not realizing until after the fact that people can stack deals with a coupon offer and something else because the fine print isn't clear enough and might say something like "can't be used with another coupon" when it should say "can't be used with any other coupon, special offer, gift certificate deal, or whatever else they might have offered in the past or intend to in the future".

These restaurants need to understand their are people looking to save every penny and will exploit them to the max if they don't make things crystal clear in regards to their offers and since this place didn't do that they need to either honor the coupon with gift certificate/card type deal or give a person their money back the gift certificates/cards where they got an extra discount if they chose to do so because someone like Druff thought they could use both and if they can't then why purchase multiple certificate/cards that have an expiration date when they don't have to as the coupons are widely available all the time?

Of course the restaurant will not refund the cost of those certificates/cards as they still will make money on the Druff's business regardless not to mention saving a customer for potentially years of business down the road. The place also can hope Druff don't use these certificates before they expire but lets face it with Druff that won't happen, however, the chance is worth taking with every customer as some might forget.