Opentable is GREAT!
 

I'm an avid user of the service and built up so many points (for a while, I was only dining at 1,000 point restaurants) that I cashed in for $300 in dining cheques. I blew them all in one night at Michael Mina in downtown SF for my girlfriend's birthday. Fantastic service with great rewards! Highly recommended.

Open Table is reliable and convenient. If time you want isn't avail, you can call restaurant the old fashioned way and seek an accommodation.

I LOVE opentable. My motto is if you aren't on there, I'm probably not going to eat at your restaurant. I have had only the best experiences with them - no problems to report at all.

I find Opentable an excellent resource for securing reservations without having to call. If you however need to change your reservation by phone Opentable will mark you as a no show and if you have enough of those you will lose account privileges.

If you book through Opentable more than 12 times in a calendar year you achieve VIP status... surprised no one has mentioned that considering it is FT :)

good tip. i've only used dinnerbroker when the place i want isn't on opentable; i will continue to do so.

There are no benefits to VIP status. I'm a VIP. The website says they flag your reservation so that the restaurant may choose to offer special services (of some indeterminate form). But has anyone ever gotten anything out of being an OpenTable VIP? :confused:

Nope - never gotten ANYTHING as a VIP w/ OT for the past several years. Oh well - it's a great service!

I am moving to Dining Buzz.....

I use open table all the time, but only since it is very easy to book through them. I have no idea how many points I have, and really don't care.

The only trouble I've had is when a restaurant where we're well known just ushered us to the table and didn't bother to check their list. Open table reported us as a no-show, but a response along the lines of "we were very much there, Joe greeted us, Sally was our server, the specials were x y and, we had blah blah blah" was the last we heard of the matter.

I am a new user, but i can tell you in New York City many restaurant might be fully booked on thur, fri, sat, and if you check opentable 50% of the time you will see they have a spot . . . convenient even just for this.

I use Opentable a lot (and just noticed I am a VIP! - probably have been for a while - though cannot say I have ever noticed any different treatment). In some cities like Las Vegas, Chicago, or Orlando, I find that most of the restaurants I am interested in (as a business visitor) are on it - and often it is easier to make a reservation online vs. calling. Have earned probably $200+ in dining checks and been able to use them without issue except once (was refused - no big deal - used it a week later).

To add on to nick_marquise's comment - there have been several times where a restaurant had no reservations (either online or on the phone), so I made other plans, but checked back at opentable before leaving - only to find a reservation had opened up at choice #1. Since many of the restaurants are using opentable to maximize their seat utilization, when they get a cancelation it appears almost immediately online (some hold back or have a cutoff time, but most do not). I also use opentable a lot on my mobile phone when we are out and decide we are hungry - great quick snapshot of where we can eat within the next 15 minutes with no wait.

I don't think its so much of a tangible benefit - but since they started the VIP thing I've noticed I get table visits from the management team at random restaurants (random being places that I haven't frequented before) more frequently than normal. If nothing else, I think it flags you as someone who dines out quite frequently - so some restaurants probably use that to gauge who they might want to add to their roster of regulars?

I use it a lot and for some of the more popular places here it is easier than a phone call. I'm working on my third $10 voucher.

Re: the VIP status... I have noticed the "random table visits" too.

I have noticed since I am VIP that I am not getting nearly the amount of calls requesting me to confirm my reservation. In fact, I don't think I have had one. It could be a coincidence, or it may not be.

I think the main benefit of being an Opentable VIP would be the ability to list it as one more program in one's FT profile... :D

I also love Opentable. I have found that they're not very good at catching you when you make a booking and forget to cancel and get the points anyway. They are supposed to "ding" you and if you do it a lot, they cancel your account.

Never hurts to call...
 

Each restaurant has a lot of leeway in deciding what % of their inventory to upload at any given moment. If you have a strong preference in place/time and you don't see availability on OpenTable I find 50% of the time I can get my preference by calling.

YMMV

I have had occasional problems importing the reservation into outlook; Twice I've had reservations for 6:30pm and it sorts into my outlook as 7pm. Some kind of bug?

Otherwise, great service. I hate having to deal with anything by phone these days. Also great at the last minute to see which restaurants have availability on a given night. I used it for Boston Restaurant Week with great results.

Anybody try redeeming their opentable points earned in the US for a UK voucher.

Seems like a much better deal.

Its fantastic for Restaurant Weeks! Here in Dallas, the "choice" nights/restaurants go really early but Open Table is a great way to watch the list and "bid up". Among my friends, we usually rank our favorites and then grab what we can for a particular night and then I watch and grab "new" tables (and discard the old) as better choices become available. This year we made it to all but two of our top choices although one we got at the eleventh hour (when we had taken a night off due to a lack of good options).

Like Gleff, I have yet to experience any "special services" from being a VIP with OpenTable.

But overall I still like very much like the service and have had all my (very few) "disputes" rectified with a quick email. In looking at the lists of participating restaurants, we have ended up going to places we never knew about and finding EXCELLENT places.

At 100 points per reservation, you are effectively only accumulating $1 toward a future dining check, but, hey, a buck is buck! Regrettably, the 1000 point ($10) dines are rarely at times when we can go ... but I guess that's the point: Get people to a restaurant at times when most people aren't there, but the kitchen is open.

Bottom line: Join OpenTable. Doesn't cost anything, and can be very convenient.

I would agree -- calling often finds more tables then are available on OpenTable, particularly if booking for a large group.

I use opentable all the time. It's great in big cities like Chicago where they have a pretty extensive restaurant list. I usually mention to the host or hostess when checking in that I made the reservation on opentable and on the few occasions where I've missed a credit, it's quickly resolved. Have never had any problem redeeming for gift certificates - at this point, I've probably used $400 - $500 worth over the course of a couple of years. Much of this has come from taking advantage of the 1,000 reservations (usually off hours) which will instantly earn you $10 of certificates.

This happens a lot. I'd say about 1/3 of restaurants (at least) put only a limited number of tables on Open Table. Unfortunately, the website doesn't tell you when a restaurant is genuinely sold out or just holding back tables (probably because they'd prefer you choose an available restaurant).

Used open table a few times. It's handy for me, as i book tables in america from here in england. Never had a problem with the system, never redeemed anything from the points i earned

Yada

As a VIP, I've gotten the worst table in a restaurant (Ruth's Chris in Bethesda) and one of the best (Indique Heights in Chevy Chase).

Some tips-
If you want a table for 6 but they will only accept for parties of 4 or less, make the reeservation online and then call to change. It almost always works.
If you want 7:30 and they only show 7:00 or 8:00 online, make the online reservation and call to change, again should almost always work.
When I call to change an online reservation, the change is then reflected on the website for most restaurants but not all.

I have also used it but have also yet to redeem anything.

I recently used it for a local restaurant I was not familiar with. Even though I was dining alone that night, I thought it might be prudent to use it in case this was a brand new restaurant and was thus packed. OpenTable couldn't find any tables for 1 at the restaurant, but as soon as I changed the number of people to 2, there was plenty of availability. A few other restaurants also appeared with availability when I changed # of diners to 2, so there may be some bias against single diners. As others have mentioned, if one particular request doesn't get you the time you want, it may be worth a few minutes to try changing some of the specifics of the request to see if the result is any better.

When I made the reservation (for 2), in the comments, I noted that there would only be one person. As it turned out, it was a small restaurant and I was the only diner there for most of my meal. The manager mentioned that they were very happy with their relationship with OpenTable. And I did mention that the restaurant appeared to be full when I tried making a reservation for 1, so I hope he worked to change that.

Almost all restaurants on OpenTable don't allow reservations for one person...they will show zero availability instead of saying, "this restaurant does not take online reservations for less than 2 diners".

Digging up a pretty old thread here but have a question regarding the dining certificates. Have a couple on the way of varying amounts (have never used them before) and read somewhere that they are essentially like using a travelers check at the restaurant and the restaurant even processes them as such. That being said, if the bill is just slightly under (i.e. $96 bill) can I use a $100 certificate or does it have to be equal to or over the amount of the certificate? Can the certificate be used to cover tax and gratuity as well?

As of date of this post, from OpenTable FAQ:

Question
If I don't use the full amount of the Dining Cheque, do I lose the remaining value or do you issue me a new Dining Cheque?
Answer
The restaurant should give you change if the bill is less than the Cheque amount.

Question
Can I use my Dining Rewards Cheque toward the tip?
Answer
Dining Cheques are just like cash and can be used to cover the tip.


"Search" is your friend...

Lavandou in Cleveland Park gives me a free glass of champagne when i dine there due to my OpenTable VIP status.

Same seems to be true for parties of three. When I have 3 diners I just reserve a table for 4 and space magically opens up. I've never had an issue when I showed up with 3 instead of 4.

The restaurant is told to handle the OpenTable check basically as they handle a traveller's cheque. No problem using it to apply for any portion of the bill, in my experience.

We have a number of 1,000 points restaurants in the Sacramento (California) area - several of them actually very good restaurants, like Bidwell Street Bistro in Folsom and Paul Martin's American Bistro in Roseville. And a few OpenTable restos around here are also part of the Rewards Network program, nothing like double dipping and using a newspaper, online or Entertainment coupon in combination!

I enjoy getting my fifty dollar OpenTabel checks and love spending them. ^

I used Opentable.com back in May for Gibson's in Chicago and it worked out fine and I got the time I wanted.

When I wanted a reservation last Sunday and went on Opentable but they showed nothing available after 4 PM. Tried it again a day later and then the website informed me it wasn't working and to try later. I ended up calling Gibson's and getting a reservation for 5 PM like I'd wanted. I think I'll stick to calling places if I can.

Opentable usually works fine for me. I like the $20 dining cheque you get in their reward program.

Many restaurants don't allow Opentable to reserve all their tables, so if the site shows no availability it's worth a phone call.

I recently read a magazine article (can't remember where) talking about Opentable from the restaurant's perspective: apparently many restaurants don't like it because it's expensive and difficult to cancel the service once it's started.

Yeah I've read a few articles about it. Especially for low margin restaurants the fees that OpenTable charges make it a poor option. GroupOn has a similar wave of destruction, a few small businesses have gone bankrupt trying to join in but I'm not sure if this was due to their own naivety or more to do with GroupOn

:( I haven't received anything either. A glass of champagne would be nice! :)

The same scenario has happened to me with several Open Table restaurants. I will check there first sometimes. If they don't have availability, I will call and usually have decent success.