Samsung 840 250GB SSD + $100 Restaurant.com GC $150 Shipped
 

There have been so many Samsung 840 SSD deals the past week...allow me to re-list them so you can put all deals into perspective:

Sunday - MacMall and B&H had the 250GB for $150. Both deals still alive.
Monday - Available for $140 from Adorama via eBay. Expired
Tuesday - Available for $150 + a game code from B&H. Expired

Today - MacMall is beating their original price by offering the Samsung 840 250GB SSD + $100 Restaurant.com Gift Card [macmall.com] for $149.99 + Free Shipping

This post can and should be edited by users like you :)
 

I was about to pull the trigger but fortunately read the comments first. The best that summarizes this:

TLC NAND is also not the greatest in terms of power usage, write speed, and longevity.

These GCs are usually saving you the tax portion of your meal.

l:lmao::lmao:

Understandably it's not as good as $100 in cash, but if you're out with a big group anyway (where your order will be $200+ or whatever the minimum restriction is), the GC still helps. And even if you give the GC a value of $0, $150 for this SSD is still the best current deal out there.

The GC is worth about $8, You can get these from there website many times during the year, Unfortunately for me, they couldn't pay me $8 to have a horrible time eating out with rules and restrictions. Restaurant.com is awful

What's the deal with the gift cards? I don't understand..

Agreed -- best deal -- or is it? Maybe by 1 penny if you DON'T use the gift card == Because with Restaurant GC's you aren't just getting free food -- you have to PAY more money to use them. It's not only not as good as cash, it's cash out of your pocket if you don't want to use them and do :)

Usually what I see is GC's from Restaurant.com saving you about 30-50% on Restaurants that are overpriced and you wouldn't normally go to (unknown, startups, often crappy food). That's just been my experience. You'll get some $20 gift card for $10, but you have to spend a minimum of X dollars, pre-tax, and pay a specific (or greater) gratuity. I'm sure not all are that way, but that's what I've run into. I usually end up never using them.

ATTENTION NEWBIES This deal is not what you think it is. Restaurant.com isn't as horrible as they say (it is pretty lame) but the real value of that $100 GC is very small. Like maybe 10 bucks.

Make sure you understand the deal before you pull the trigger.

The GC's are to a very limited number of restaurants, nowadays.

You usually have to spend about twice what the gift-card is worth for it to be valid at the restaurant of your choice.

I don't know what to think about restaurant.com coupons so I did a little digging and found out they use some shady practices when it comes to keeping restaurants on their list of eligible/available locations.

Accordng to this news report [oregonlive.com] they hold the restaurants hostage in a similar manner that yelp does with their "preferred reviews", demand a minimum of 90 days written notice to withdraw membership as well as issuing coupons that were not agreed upon beforehand by participating restaurants. Not surprising from a company based out of Chicago.

Your best bet is to call each restaurant ahead of time and ask them if they accept these coupons because the restaurant listed could be in the process of having themselves removed from this list.

FYI
Since people abused restaurant GC a lot, 99.99% restaurants in my area reject it :(

Just to comment, have you ever used restaurant.com coupons? Most places don't know what to do with them. It isn't worth a cent in my book.

HAHAHA. Thanks for this. I am indeed a newbie with restaurant.com. I thought it was $100 in food credit for a moment there. :shake:

So the $100 GC isn't $100 to spend on Restaurant.com, but $100 of Restaurant.com certificates?
So I could get 4x $25 certificates, and I have to spend 4x$50 plus %18 gratuity, so the deal ends up being $100 off of $236 + tax?

Is this correct?

My translation: It's a $100 gift card used to buy heavily restricted third party coupons which aren't really able to be used anywhere.

How do you abuse restaurant.com gc's? A coworker and I have probably used it 10-15 times at 3 separate restaurants and from what I remember, the restrictions/rules are quite clear on their use/acceptability.

I also have never had an issue when trying to use one.

I bought 25 dollar ones for a local Italian place, lots of them. And they had some restrictions (doesn't cover alcohol, automatic 18% tip included, had to spend $35, could only use once a month)...

Most of our meals would end up at around $15. We'd tip even more on top (make it about a 30% tip) to make the waiter not feel like we're lame.

(EDIT)
It very much depends on where you use it.

My veterinarian gave us a $100 restaurant.com gift card. We tried to order some lobster's from Lobstergram. It was all very confusing. I had to make a couple of calls to both Lobstergram and restaurant.com to understand it. It basically amounted to - In order to use the coupon you had to have a minimum order of $125 and if I remember correctly, they would only allow you to use $25 of the coupon towards the order. So you're still in for $100 out of pocket. I declined to do it. My wife and I agreed that we would burn the restaurant.com GC. And that's what we did. It was actually fun watching it go up in flames once we understood what it was.

So, yeah.... nothing against this particular SSD drive deal but restaurant.com is horrible.

I have used a lot of restaurant.com gift cards over the past 4-5 years - probably two or three dozen - and only had one place, one time refuse to accept it because they had stopped participating. Everywhere else it was not a problem. You gotta read the restrictions first - often they exclude alcohol, include/require an 18% tip, and some are restricted by day or time, but you know what you're getting before you buy so you really shouldn't be surprised. IME, the $25 gift certificates are the best bang for the buck - usually it's $5-$10 (with a promotion of some type) for a $25 gift card that has a minimum purchase of $35-$40. Basically you get $15-$20 off your $35-$40 meal. Works great for "nicer" places where it's reasonable to spend $20 per person - dinner and dessert. It's not going to work out at Dennys. A $100 gift card should net you a solid $150 savings on meals - given that you're going to eat out ten times in the next year.

Before you get in on this deal, you are going to want to go to restaurant.com and make sure there are places you want to eat participating in your area. I'm in Sacramento, and there are always a decent selection of places. FWIW, I tend to use restaurant.com to try places, rather than using them for places I am going to eat at anyway. I may not try that new Japanese-Mediterranean Fusion place at full price, but with $20 off my $40 meal I'll give it a go. Found a lot of cool restaurants that way!

My $0.02, YMMV

No offense to the OP - but I would factor the restaurant.com coupon in as a negative to this deal. I would almost rather just pay the $150 and have the restaurant.com coupon sent out to someone I hate...

i dont know if thats something real that exists in your area, or you came up with it, but that "japanese-mediterranean fusion" sounds about the worst combo ever possible LOL

I don't think so. I think it's $100 to spend at restaurant.com - that is, 10x $10ea "$25 off a $35 purchase." So, something *like* $250 of $413 in restaurant checks (given you buy meals that are *exactly* $35 and get railroaded into an 18% gratuity for a $41.30/meal price). You might be able to do better than that with a promotion - often times those $25 GCs are $5 or $8 with a promotion. But I don't know if you can combine those promotions with this promotion.

I made that up, but a quick google shows at least one of 'em does exist:

http://www.barcelona.de/en/hello-...urant.html

ROFL!

It's not. These restaurant.com certificates have already had their value multiplied (after buying the aforementioned $25 off $35 voucher for $10, they'll try to upsell you with one of these restaurant.com certs making it look like an even bigger discount -- but the fine print clearly shows the face value is the final discount, not the purchase price for vouchers)

I would rather get another $10-20 off from $150.

Too many restrictions now with Restaurant.com GCs. It used to be awesome back in the day, not anymore

Ah - well, that's crap. I mean, ~$40 off the drive isn't nothing, but hardly a great deal.

Appreciated.

How do you abuse the GC?

If anyone buys this and doesn't want their $100 restaurant.com gift card, I will take it. I actually use their service and enjoy using the gift cards. Never had a bad experience with them. So i'll gladly take them

Restaurant.com won't fool me

Yeah a Restaurant .com gift card is not really a gift card. I think I got 4x $25 for like $4 last Christmas. We used one of them and it was a pain in the ass. My wife didn't want me to use it because she thought it was a scam. There were way too many rules and restrictions. I hated having to order more mediocre food than I actually wanted in order to meet the minimum requirement for the gift card causing me to pay more out of pocket. I never used the other 3 gift cards. I prefer gift cards with less strings.

Good to see that someone else is in the same boat I am. I've used their service very often and have nothing but good things to say about them. For me it's the equivalent of groupon, except the certificates I buy from restaurant.com don't expire.

Those GCs are more a curse than a gift. I once gave it to someone as a gift - big mistake.

If you hate someone in a passive-aggressive way like your landlord, give them a restaurant.com GC.

Oh what the bawls. Buy a hard drive and free 100 dollars worth of food at a restaurant? This is why I come to this site :D

- sent by iPhone App Deals & Steals 3.5.8 -

A few years ago I liked restaurant.com OK, especially on vacation. But now almost no restaurants in my area take the codes and last time we used them on vacation it was expensive anyway.

Last time we went on vacation we went to Urban Spoon and picked cheap eats. Then we looked at anything over 90% rating and put a different place in the GPS each night. It was fun, we ended up at some places we would have never found because they were so off the beaten path but the food was good at each and relatively cheap.

Definitely not $100 worth of food.

i like your reply and (of course your smile :bounce: )

on topic: this gift card is pain in rear....you end up paying 1.5 times more what you would pay for a dine out.

Over the past few years we've used 20-30 (Approx 1/month) and have NEVER had one rejected.

For the uninformed on how restaurant.com works... Ignoring the GC included in this deal. You go to their website, you select one or more local eateries and pay anywhere from $2 to $10 for a $25 credit towards a bill of $35 or more. Or pay a little less for a $15 voucher towards a bill of $22.50 or more. Most times they have credits varying from $10 to $50. Some of the eateries do not include booze in the min purchase amount, and yes they often state that it defaults to a 18% tip.

The tip decision is actually up to the server. We've had different servers at the same eatery do it differently (one did 18% and the other didn't add the tip at all). We gave her 20% because she didn't go with the advertised 18%.

PS. If someone buys the disk and doesn't want their GC, I will take it without hesitation.
PPS. Their are 31 participating restaurants within 10 miles of my ZIP Code.

to all the haters -

restaurant.com isnt that bad...as long as you stick to the rules.

they are crazy rules. some have like monday - thursday only rules. 100 bucks is not worth 100 bucks. that being said, 100 bucks can buy you about 30 bucks in coupons to keep on hand for restaurants that you frequent and would like to take a small percentage off.

100 gc to restaurant.com is better then nothing. you can still break the gc up and buy lots of smaller ones.

got a free one for referring someone to my insurance agent. i laughed a bit, then picked out 3 different smaller coupons to places i go to a few times. when i dine out, it will save me a FEW bucks. key word, a FEW. if i didnt like saving a FEW bucks here and there...

I WOULDNT BE ON THIS SITE! ah haha

The only issue I have with restaurant.com is they call them certificates when they're really coupons...

I'll take someone's $100 "certificate" if they don't want it. In fact, I'll trade a $2 amazon GC for it!

Was able to use a Restaurant.com once here. Wait a pain. BH withOUT the game is the better deal if want this SSD

So - my take on all of this is that SSD vendors are getting as crafty as Used Car Salesmen. That's a little scary IMO. When will they start using SEX to sell these things? Anyone seen Kate Upton lately? If she does to an SSD what she does to hamburgers, then I'd have to buy another one.

The Samsung 840 250gb was on the front page from Adorama and Buy.com for $140 like a day or two ago.

Just going to chime in and agree with the others about Restaurant.com, which is pretty terrible IMO. The last city I lived in had a decent restaurant that I used these coupons at fairly often, but now that I live near Denver I have yet to find a restaurant worth going to that works with Restaurant.com. It's a nice idea, and if you know you have a good place nearby that takes these, then perhaps it is worth it. As a means of finding new restaurants and saving money, I think it is a waste. Some places will try to hit you with 18% gratuity for counter service, or impose restrictions on what you can order, just because of the coupon.

Overall, not a bad deal if you want a SSD. /agree with pretty much everyone else on the value of the GC, but a nice value-add for a SSD you're going to be buying anyway.

OMG I've been there! Meal was decent, though a bit uninspired... Pass on the green tea / weird soup dessert.

Oh, and they def didn't take my Resturant.com GC

Please remove the "$100 restaurant.com" gift card from this deal. This is a disgrace to this community. Restaurant.com is well know to be BS. That "$100 gift card" is worthless.

I alerted Mods about this "deal".

It must be my area but these GCs are good around here. I have a good selection of good restaurants to choose from and yes I have to spend 35 to use a 25GC but not a big deal to me.

All you naysayers are idiots... or you just have really crappy deals in your area. Example: decent local restaurant in my area http://www.restaurant.com/osulliv...pid=153043

I can easily normally spend $75 on a dinner for 3 including drinks. $50 certificates are $20 each. I effectively end up getting $30 off of the meal ($50-20=30), paying $45+tax+tips as opposed to $75+tax+tips (75-30=45). This $100 certificate is worth 5 of these coupons (100/20 = 5). My value of these coupons, if I just use them at this restaurant over the course of the next year or so is 5*30=$150 ... the cost of the hard drive.

Yes, I think this as well. And people getting upset about not having good restaurant.com deals available locally are probably the same people that whine about B&M deals or deals that require a specific credit card or whatever. Conditions don't make it a bad deal - they make it a bad deal for you. Get over yourself. (And that goes double for "alerting the mods" guy back there - big TD for you!)

So, sometime this morning the price went up to $176.99

If you spent $100 at restaurant.com, you would indeed get 5 of those coupons.

However, the $100 "GC" in this deal is only two of them. Value to you is the $40 you would have to spend to get those coupons otherwise, not the $100 saved over menu price, or the $250 you get from your assumptions and then doing the math correctly.

Yes I have used them. BTW I've never purchased a single restaurant.com voucher, because I got hundreds of $10 ones for free when they were given them away during X-mas a couple years ago. They never expire and they always come up with some new places. But you just need to know what they are about, and not fool yourself into thinking it's a $10 giftcard when you walk into a restaurant.

Perhaps it's just me and where I dine, but I've been able to find some good small mom and pop joints and spend about $5 for a $15 meal using these vouchers (which I got for free).

If anybody gets this deal and doesn't plan on using the $100 restaurant.com certificate, I am willing to pay $10 each for them.

You would be right except that you cannot use the $100 restaurant.com gift card to then go buy 5 $50 certs. The $100 gift card IS the cert, so you can use the $100 gift card you get here for TWO $50 certs only.

Looks like you're correct... I'd say that's quite misleading.

It is. My parents gave me one that they got from something thinking it was worth $100 towards buying certificates as well.

Now... all of you saying that it's completely worthless are definitely not in DFW. There are tons of places to use restaurant.com that are very good. Wife and I just went to a good Thai place in Victory Park tonight before the Stars game. $25 off of our bill that we were going to spend over the $37.50 required anyway, and we still got great happy hour drinks too (alcohol allowed). If anyone complains about having to tip 18%, you should revisit your tipping etiquette! I didn't even realize it was a restaurant.com place until I saw the sign on the door when we walked in. Logged on to their app on my phone, used my $100 cert, showed at check out and got $25 off with no problem. There are plenty of good places to go in big cities, and some are BYOB or include alcohol in the certificate value. I understand why some of you in smaller towns would think this is a crock of @#$% though :).

If anyone gets this and doesn't want the $100 restaurant.com certificate, feel free to send the cert to me!

I don't mind tipping the 18%. Problem I ran into was that the server knew beforehand that I had this GC (I told him prior to ordering), he knew he was getting the 18% and gave us crappy service. He even had the balls to print receipt with a space to write "additional tip"

So why did you still use the coupon? Save the coupon and tip accordingly :omg:

Because the savings on the meal outweigh the tip, thought about discounting the tip but he's working to earn his living so I let it pass. Didn't want to make a scene either.

My suggestion, give them the GC along w/ your payment AFTER you finish your meal :D

Well it shows up now for $176.99 so its a moot point. But I have purchased a few coupons from restaurant.com during the 90% off sales, never really had an issue. I guess we were lucky and found our local italian joint accepting them :D