If you love dining out like me, chances are that you have used OpenTable to make a reservation at a restaurant. Diners can receive 100 points for each reservation that they make and honour through OpenTable. If you accumulate 2000 points, you can redeem the points for a $26 cheque usable towards your bill at any OpenTable restaurant. Over the years, I have accumulated enough points to receive a few OpenTable Dining Cheques. Here are a few tips that I would like to share on how and where to use them.
What does the OpenTable Cheque Look Like?
After you decide to redeem your OpenTable points for a cheque through your account, you will receive a letter in the mail with the cheque. The cheque states the issue date and they expire 180 days after that date. The cheque is noted to be used at any OpenTable restaurant and the phone number which the restaurant can contact if they have any issues.
Which restaurants accept OpenTable Dining Cheques?
As noted on the cheque itself, any OpenTable restaurant should accept it. That being said, I’ve had problems getting the restaurant to process it.
In my experience, most of the servers haven’t seen an OpenTable Dining Cheque before and have no idea to how to handle it. It gets mistaken as a personal cheque all the time. The first time I tried to use the OpenTable Dining Cheque was at a small, local restaurant (which is now closed). The server didn’t know what it was and couldn’t reach the manager. In the end, it was refused. After that experience, I had better luck redeeming the cheques at larger, chain restaurants like Milestones and Earls.
In summary, here are a few tips of getting the restaurant to accept the :
- E-mail or call the restaurant ahead about using the OpenTable Dining Cheque. If you email them, you could even send them a photo of it. Ask for a note to be made in your reservation.
- Go to larger, chain restaurants. So far, this has worked for me as there is usually management on site to help the servers process it.
- Keep the letter attached to the cheque. In the photo above, you can see that there is a letter portion to the cheque. Hand over the entire letter with the cheque to the server so that he or she has more context.
- Visit a restaurant during business hours. There is a phone number on the cheque which the restaurant can contact. If you visit the restaurant inthe daytime, they could contact OpenTable during business hours to address any problems.
What do I do if OpenTable Dining Cheque Expired?
As mentioned earlier, the cheques expire after 180 days. In the photo above, you can see that I have a cheque from 2015. I recently contacted OpenTable through their Facebook chat and asked them above my old cheque. The person said that they could reissue the cheque if I mail the old one back to them. See a screenshot of the conversation below.
Hopefully this post has been helpful the next time you use an OpenTable Dining Cheque. Let me know i f you have any other tips to share!