My wife and I had been wanting to go to Dean's Place for months. We eat out 3-5 times a week, many times at places we have a coupon for or they have a dining or happy hour special. Dean's has been running a coupon in the Vegas paper, the RJ, for quite some time for buy an entree and get one free. Every week I would tear one out in anticipation of going.
We decided to go last Monday. Unfortunately, we could not find one of coupons immediately so my wife got on the Internet. On the newspaper's website where we get the coupons from, in a section entitled the "RJ Marketplace", was a Dean's coupon. We printed it out and zoomed over there. We normally eat at the bar and play video poker, but it was smoky in there for dining so we went to the smoke-free dining room.
I need to preface this as my wife and I are both former wait-people. We are VERY critical of servers/wait people. I also was a bartender, bar manager, restaurant manager, owner and operator of a restaurant, and a restaurant consultant.
Our server, Victoria, was exceptional. She quickly greeted us after we sat down, said she would be with us shortly. She came back, asked us if we had ever been to Dean's Place and why we had decided to come there. Jointly, my wife and I said "the coupon". I did mention I liked their radio ads and it sounded like a place we could have fun eating, drinking, and gambling at.
We ordered a fairly-priced bottle of wine. Victoria again engaged in small talk that was not your everyday "is it hot outside" sort of dribble. My wife's salad was good, had red onion, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and nice croutons in it. A cut above your average dinner salad. My soup, chicken tortilla, was possibly the best I have ever had, loaded with chicken in a fantastic tomato base.
My wife's lasagna was good, not great, but better than some more highly-priced places. I had the spaghetti carbonara, reasonably priced and it was good. A lot of chicken and bacon. Two days earlier I had the carbonara at Terra Verde at Green Valley Ranch Resort and Dean's was better.
The kicker: (sorry for the length). We gave our coupon to Victoria. She came back and said they couldn't accept it as it was not an original, it was printed out. (it is exactly the same as the original, but did come from the RJ's website).
She told us it says they only accept originals. We didn't understand why they let the RJ post their coupon online with a "Print this coupon" button.
She did the proper thing and politely said "I will get the manager". He came out and just kept reiterating that it says they don't accept printed coupons on the coupon. And he is right, it does say that in the very fine print. Which we obviously did not read (it would require my reading glasses which I rarely even now where they are at)
The manager had an opportunity to turn a bad situation into a very good situation. Instead of saying, "I will make an exception this time", we were basically treated as people who were trying to rip Dean's Place off of $13.
He had the opportunity to gain frequent customers for life. Instead, we will never set foot in that restaurant again.
I went to their website as I thought I would drop an email to them recounting our visit. Their website does not list an email address and the "contact us" form does not work. Somebody needs to give a makeover to Dean's Place overall. Yes, their phone number is listed. But I didn't want to call.
One last note. My wife left her sweater in the restaurant. As we were getting in the car, our server, Victoria, came running outside with it. It's too bad Victoria doesn't run that restaurant.