In my last post announcing an 80% Off Restaurant.com coupon, I decided to highlight some things to bear in mind before buying a dining certificate package.  Jeff Conlin from Restaurant.com responded to that post in a message to me:

Mighty Bargain Hunter,

Thank you for your recent write-up about Restaurant.com. I appreciate your thorough thoughts and critical look at our site, particularly with your financial savings expertise. I wanted to reach out and address a few points in the piece to clarify our services for you and your visitors.

First, thank you very much for using Restaurant.com. I’m just sorry to hear that you found a favorite restaurant only to discover that it was no longer participating in the program. If your issue was not resolved we will follow up and take care of the matter immediately. Our policy for any similar instance of a restaurant no longer taking part in the program is to issue credit to customers holding their unused gift certificates. That credit can then be applied for thousands of other options on our site. Again, I apologize for the disappointing experience and please do let me know if it’s still unresolved.

Second, a binding contract is in place between restaurant owners and Restaurant.com, requiring restaurants to honor our restaurant gift certificates. The contracts allow us to promote their restaurants and obligate them to honor the certificates. We need a restaurant’s permission and cooperation before ever including them within our program. As long as diners are using the gift certificate according to the stated terms, the restaurant is required to accept the gift certificate. We never like to hear when restaurants fail to hold up their end of our agreement and it’s neither our policy nor our practice to allow restaurants to breach their contracts at the expense of our customers. If there’s ever any doubt, customers can always reach us at 1-800-979-8985 or at info@restaurant.com.

Finally, you are correct to point out that one gift certificate is valid per restaurant per month. This term and others are stated before, during and after purchase. Terms of use are a very important part of using our gift certificates. We post them conspicuously in the following locations:

• Main “Terms” link at the footer of each page
• Within each specific restaurant micro-site page
• On the actual printed gift certificate

I hope the above information answers some of the questions that you raised. I also hope that we can get you back to visit another Restaurant.com restaurant soon!

[ ... ]

Thanks again,

Jeff

Jeff Conlin
VP, PR & Corporate Communications
Restaurant.com

A couple of comments on his note:

1. First, it was not the case that a restaurant failed to honor a certificate that I had printed out because they had dropped out of the program.  The restaurant dropped out of the program entirely, which they are entitled to do, which meant that I could not exchange my Dinner of the Month certificates (essentially uncommitted dining certificates for particular restaurants) for that restaurant anymore.  Every certificate that I’ve printed out for a specific restaurant has been honored.
2. I wasn’t sure about the one certificate per restaurant per month rule, but Jeff clarified that this is true.
3. I’m very satisfied with Restaurant.com and the fact that they took the time to write a note to me improves my feelings about them.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

First off, a big thank-you to beta testers Flexo, SuburbanDollar, J from Budgets are Sexy, The Frugal Lawyer, and a number of others who expressed interest.

Now that the hosting platform is in open beta, so am I …

… Please allow me to introduce Cash Commons!

Cash Commons is a place for asking any and all questions about money. Personal finance, debt reduction, student loans, debt consolidation, banking, mortgages, investing, saving money, spending money, and earning money, of course, but also coins, currency, games about money, books about money, money and the Bible, money gurus … anything about money.

I’ve used this platform elsewhere and it’s simply the best knowledge exchange platform I’ve seen.  It’s a joy to use, and it works extremely well at getting the right answers to the top, completely naturally.

Registering is a piece of cake (and you get lots of goodies with your registration, like reputation, badges, stats, the ability to track favorites, etc.), but you can also ask questions without registering if you like.

I’ve already posted a few questions of my own over there, like:

• How to deal with receipts without discarding any of them?
• When are federal income tax rules for a given year firmed up?
• What’s the purpose of a mortgage offset account?

There aren’t any answers (yet) but that’s fine.  I have gotten answers to others, like:

• What are the consequences of having a loan go into forbearance?

These are real money questions I have. I’m not just posting stuff that I know already.  I’d love to have my questions answered, and if you know the answers to any of them, I’d love to hear them.

But presumably you have money questions as well that you want answered, and you can ask, too!

Everyone has the right to use the questions and answers on Cash Commons how they see fit, as long as the source is properly attributed.  This is in accordance with this Creative Commons license.

(I mentioned that this is a beta — meaning that the platform is still under development (as is the website as a whole) so things might not look, or run, exactly right yet.)

What I’m hoping for with Cash Commons is a place for getting rapid, correct answers to all kinds of questions about money, and that we can all learn from one another.  Everyone is an expert in something, and everyone can learn something.

And for now, you’re guaranteed that if you post a question over there I’ll take a crack at answering it.   Care to join?

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

I have a new site in the works and would love some trailblazers to come over to take it for a spin!

All you need to bring with you is some questions about money.  For bonus points, you can bring some answers for other people’s money questions.

Just contact me and I’ll hook you up!

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

Aww, shucks!  This contest has expired.  But if you have excellent credit you can still get great rates if you borrow from Lending Club!

You could get enough funds in your Lending Club account for one hundred peer to peer loans — if you just happen to be Lending Club’s 25,000th registered investor!

Lending Club has gotten even better recently with its secondary marketplace, so not only is it possible to fund loans — which have had a net average annualized return of over 9.6% — but it’s also possible to buy and sell notes mid-term, essentially the same way mortgage companies do.  (Certain restrictions and eligibility requirements apply.)  In other words, there are now options for investing in loans besides holding them to maturity.

Anyway, back to the $2,500.  Here’s what you need to do for your shot at it:

1. Open a Lending Club investing account for free and complete the registration process — which includes creating a password, verifying your ID, and linking up a bank account — before the clock strikes midnight on the East coast on October 1st, 2009.
2. There is no step 2.  You do not even need to fund your account to enter!

The winner will be announced October 1st, 2009.  If you’re the winner, please let me know and I’ll brag about you!

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

(This post is a bit off-topic but I want to get the word out quickly on this.)

I’ll take time now to thank Debt Sucks for hosting this week’s Carnival of Debt Reduction and also for his next post on why he’s never, ever hosting a blog carnival again.

I’ve been watching as hosting carnivals has gotten to be more and more work for very little reward.  There were thirty submissions to Jake’s carnival this past week, and he included only four of them.  He deemed the rest to be spam, off-topic, or astray of the rules that I had set up.

And I applaud him for holding a high standard like that.  Carnivals have gotten out of hand with the volume of submissions, and if these things are to remain useful and viable, the rules have to change.

BlogCarnival.com has done a lot to make the blog carnival popular.  There’s a flip side to that popularity though:  blog carnivals are easy one-way links for the submitter.  Intentionally or otherwise, it’s become too easy for people to submit to carnivals there.  There is no limit to how many times a particular URL can be submitted at BlogCarnival.com.  What’s more, I know of services that will submit one link per week to between ten and fifteen carnivals through BlogCarnival.com, for only $25 per month!  This is possible because there is standalone software that automates the submission process.

So, starting as of about 25 minutes ago, I’ve deactivated the submission form over at BlogCarnival.  The only way to submit to the Carnival of Debt Reduction is now through this submission form on the carnival’s website.

I’ll also be encouraging hosts to be more selective about what posts they include.  Free Money Finance has a good thing going with the Best of Money Carnival.  It was a breeze to host that one.

What I’m hoping this will do is reduce the number of submissions from search-engine optimization companies on behalf of paying clients.  They’ll still be able to do it if they really want to, but now they can’t just click a button to submit a post to the Carnival of Debt Reduction.  They have to come over to the form on the website and do it all themselves.

I’m hoping that’s too much work for them.  I’m also hoping that it’s not too much work for people from whom I actually welcome submissions.

(If you already submitted your post for next week’s Carnival over at BlogCarnival.com, don’t worry, it got through.)

OK, back to regular content.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

It’s a great honor to be a new member of the Money Tips Network, a network of personal finance blogs aiming to “educate the public with honest and helpful money tips.”

What else can I say?  I join quite the stellar group of bloggers:

• Bargaineering
• Consumerism Commentary
• The Digerati Life
• Five Cent Nickel
• Free Money Finance
• The Frugal Duchess
• Generation X Finance
• Get Rich Slowly
• No Credit Needed
• The Simple Dollar
• Squawkfox
• Stop Buying Crap
• Wise Bread

No doubt you’ve read at least a few of them but please check out the ones you don’t.  They’re all well worth your time.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

Well, it’s either the smallest discrete unit of money in the known universe, or it’s a new social money site place for people who deal with money started up by Flexo at Consumerism Commentary.

I’ve been playing with Money Quantum in private beta.  The site is built on the Ning social platform engine, and though the comparison with, and perhaps longing for, the capability of Facebook is inevitable, Money Quantum doesn’t have all the creepy big-brother overtone of Facebook, either.  Which is a plus:  I’m mildly disturbed about having my “profile” built up a little bit each time I say something on FB.  No company needs to get into my head that much.

It’s tailored for money talk at different levels of granularity.  There are general forums, and there are “groups” that whittle the discussion down to specific topics, like frugality, cheap dining, bargain hunting, peer-to-peer lending, home ownership, buy-and-hold investing, financial planning, retirement planning, and more.  (I’m a member of the Bargain Hunters group, for obvious reasons.)  There are other opportunities for making Money Quantum more personal, including video and photo feeds and blogs for individual members.  Or, there’s always the chat room!

There are lots of familiar faces over there (familiar to me as a blogger, anyway) but likely you’ll recognize some yourself.

The official launch date is August 11th, 2009, but if you absolutely, positively can’t wait, contact me and I’ll hook you up with an invitation.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

A merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.  Enjoy the day, and rejoice!

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I’m thankful to be able to write this blog and that I have you as readers.  (And of course I’m thankful for many other things.)

The four articles that Gary North published today on his website are free for anyone to read today.  You’ll find them in the Recent Articles section.  These four articles are centered around the topic of Thanksgiving.  These articles are good advice for anyone.  I don’t know how long they’ll be free, so even if you don’t read them today, just go over and print them out.  Gary North is a big influence on how I think about the economy, investment, and a host of other things.  So, there you go.

Have a great day filled with thankfulness.

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons

At the beginning of this week DallasNews.com, the website of the Dallas Morning News newspaper, began the Dollar Wise Blog as a “conversation about the best and most creative ways to save a buck in tough times.”

The posts so far are quick reads, with a good mix of general-interest posts, such as the merits of $3 wine, and Texas-specific posts, like scoring cheap gas in McKinney, a city 30 miles north of Dallas.  Overall it looks like the writers have a breezy tone, which is great.  They’re helping their readers through the slump with tips on getting back to the basics of saving money.

I found out about the Dollar Wise Blog in a really cool way: through my traffic stats.  It turns out they have Mighty Bargain Hunter in their sidebar already, which is a great honor!  They also have linked to several other great reads including Wise Bread and Frugal Dad, and a few others that are going promptly into my feed reader.

So I encourage you to check out the Dollar Wise Blog, especially if you live around Dallas because they’ll have a lot of good ideas especially for you.  I’ll offer one of my own:  Restaurant.com has almost 100 restaurants in their network within 15 miles of Dallas, and through Monday, November 17th, you can get 70% off their popular Dining Certificates and their Dinner of the Month Club by using coupon code DESSERT. This means that $25 worth of Dining Certificates costs only $3 instead of $10.  So check out Restaurant.com and see if one of your favorite restaurants is in the network!

** This coupon has expired, but check my coupon code page to see if there’s a fresh one! **

Hot hot hot money questions at Cash Commons