Nando's: Too good to be true

Did you received a forwarded email recently about getting a free meal at Nando's just by showing them the downloaded voucher in your mobile phone? I did. I received the forwarded email yesterday. And I went to Nando's tonight for that free dinner. It turns ugly...

After work, Daniel, my sister and me each downloaded the voucher to get our free dinner. By the way, it's not free. We were charged RM3.50 for each download, but RM3.50 in exchange for a Nando's 1/4 chicken with rice worth RM10.80 is worth it, rite?

So we went into the restaurant, sit down and were about to order. We ask if the voucher in our handphone were usable.

Waiter: One table only allow to use one voucher
Me: Ok, fine. What if we billed separately?
Waiter: Cannot, one table only allowed one voucher
Me: Ok, then the 3 of us don't mind sitting in 3 separate tables. But why do you want us to sit separately? We'll only take up your space

This make the waiter speechless, so he called another waiter to deal with us

Second waiter: No, you cannot sit in separate table, we have other customers
Me: I can just walk out and walk back in as an individual customer, can't I? I don't know the 2 of them *glancing over to Daniel and my sis
Second waiter: Cannot, we already see the 3 of you come together. Or you can go out, and come back after 15mins

Ask me to come back after 15mins? What is the logic? So the 'ME' after 15 mins is different from the 'ME' now?

WTF?!! What do you mean by "we have other customers"? So I'm not a customer la? Although I'm not a direct paying customer, I'm still a customer who dine in but paying in a different kind of way. If you cannot afford to let people come in and eat for free (not really free anyway!) then don't become a merchant of this kind of voucher...

I was so frustrated by the way they treat me. After awhile, I calmed down and I think back what really happened. Ok, so I admit maybe there's some mistake on our part. We didn't read the sign posted outside the restaurant before we step in. But it wasn't right for them to refuse our suggestion to sit in different table. Obviously, this is just another kind of marketing scam. SCAM! SCAM!! SCAM!!!

Lesson learned. "Pheng yeh mou hou yeh" or literally translated to "cheap stuff no good stuff"! Never ever believe in this kind of things anymore!! I feel sorry for myself. When I first read the email, my conscious told me that this kind of things wouldn't be true. Not in this realistic world anyway. There must be something bad coming out of it. My thought was when we sms to that number (to download the voucher), maybe they will take our number and sell it off to some advertising agency. That advertising agency will then spam us with various ad, just like how email spam started. But I did not listen to my conscious, the greed in me took over the thoughts and I let myself fall into the scam. I felt stupid to get myself into this.

NOTE: This Nando's service is part of the mobile voucher provided by www.mystyle.com.my. There are still many other vouchers available for download, which I think might just end up like the Nando's case.