Friday, April 15, 2011

Dominos Pizza is in the Dog House

I have found some AMAZING deals using Groupon, CityDeals, and livingSocial, among other sites. A company wanting to get more business and find new customers uses these sites to offer a steep discount for their product, bringing in a great deal of business, and allowing people to try something new, expecting they'll also get return business from these new customers. I have been buying their deals to reduce the cost of date nights for my hubby and I!

One of the deals that was advertised on Groupon was "any large pizza for $8 up to a $20 value," with the stipulation that you could only buy three coupons, and they expired about six weeks later. Okay, that's a great deal! We enjoy a good meat lovers pizza and it's nice to have the option of pizza already paid for!

For starters, Dominos made it very difficult to order. First you had to start on a specific website (not bad), and put in your coupon code, which was a mile long, and then put in your passcode and email address. Then Dominos would email you the real coupon code that would need to be used before paying for your online order, after which you also had to enter a gift certificate number. UGH!

The first time it took me awhile to figure out the process. I finally got it ordered and sent Matt to pick it up, but expected some questions upon arrival. As I suspected, they wanted to use our coupon as "credit" towards our purchase, then owing approximately $12 on the pizza. I sent two pictures to Matt's phone, one showing the original deal, the other showing the coupon code that was sent to my email. They gave him heck and finally let him go with our dinner while they figure out how to enter the other $12 worth of "free" pizza into their computer. Grrr, argh. A couple weeks later, I pulled out the next coupon to try it again. This time, after going through the whole process AND filling in what type of pizza we wanted, upon entering the coupon code, the Dominos website gave me a message, "This store is not accepting this coupon code at this time." Oh you've got to be kidding me.

So, instead of calling the main office and figuring out how to deal with the Groupon code number, they simply found a way to block the code. Needless to say, I am not happy with Dominos. They will not be getting business from us for a VERY long time. I am grateful to Groupon, who is willing to refund my money on the coupons not used because of lack of customer service on the part of the advertising business. Now to find Groupon's phone number. Wish me luck!

Other deals I have found are 50-75% off restaurant coupons, 50+% off hotel stays, and even 50% off movie tickets! We have several coupons waiting to be used, including tickets for the family to go to Clark Planetarium! A couple of the sites will give you credit on your account for referring a friend. One site gives you your purchase free if three other friends buys the same deal. Another site gives you $10 credit when a friend opens an account with them. SO awesome. I ended up with a $10 credit on CityDeals. Here's how I used it. They ran a one day promotion for 15% off all their restaurants, which made the Thai Basil (not far from us) $6 for $20 worth of food! So cool. I decided to buy two coupons, making my total after the discount code $13.60. Then I applied the $10 credit towards my purchase and paid $3.60 for $40 worth of food at the Thai Basil!!! I am very excited about this! The fine print says I can only use one coupon at a time unless I take a party of five or more. Cool beans. I'm good with that.

In the meantime, Dominos Pizza is in the Dog House.

2 comments:

Jen said...

As you know, I work for Dominos. I'll just put up a word in their defense. The stores only recently got training on the groupon deals (as in we were learning how to use them today). And it is just as confusing to us as it is to you. I have no idea whether the problem is with the Domino's online system or the groupon system. We did discover that the customer needs to supply the groupon coupon as well as the gift card number they are emailed separately to get the full price off, and then they need to pay sales tax after that. Confusing, yes. Why so confusing, I don't know. If you do happen to still have the groupons, the Tooele store will honor them (probably Grantsville and Cedar City, too).

Love ya!

Bluedaisy said...

Jen, I was glad to get your response! It's good to see that the employees are being trained as to how to use the codes. At the Riverton store, they had never heard of the promotion. I know that Dominos has run the promotion again recently, hopefully it'll work out easier this time for everybody. Good news is always appreciated!

Love you too!
Christy