paradocs

I think JDiver is referring to the AA elite dine 3 times a month for the 500 bonus.

paradocs

JDiver: Very astute observation and one that we should all be aware of. I'll admit that I work the Idine program for all it's worth! The kids say "let's eat out". I say "pick an Idine" and then I work on maximizing whatever promos are out there.

I needed your reminder to log in!!! I had gotten lazy in the last few months and whenever I wanted to review a list of restaurants I would just go to www.aa.idine and take a look. This morning (before reading your post) it showed 67 restaurants in SAT. This evening I logged in and there were 71! And one of them is one of our favorites (Los Barrios). I thought they had dropped out months ago and haven't been back. (There are just too many great Idine Mexican restaurants here that it's pointless to go without the miles.)

Then I logged in at Delta Idine. There are 69 restaurants (and no Los Barrios). Continental showed 66 (no Los Barrios). United showed 68 (includes Los Barrios). What discrepancies! From this day forward I will always log in! And as I have said before: I think Idine should make the restaurants consistent across the airlines. They are asking way too much of us to have to check so many websites, log in, etc. Thanks for bringing it back to our attention!

obscure2k

paradocs You are so missed on Dl. How about looking at the Community thread and consider joining us in VCE.

scubadiver

There are three good-to-great resturants within a stones throw of the Shakespeare theater in DC: Jaleo, Cafe Atlantico, and Andale. Me and me bride have season tickets. However iDine has broadened my reach to Ten Penh and Signatures.

iDine makes Les Halles our choice when the venue is the National Theater. There is no place within walking distance of National Cathedral (Cathedral Choral Society), but the friends with whom we attend are also iDine, so we end up at Galilelo or such.

At least for these upscale joints, iDine has brought in my business.

Off the subject: I stick to upscale in DC. Remember the city health inspectors work for the same city government that have left the roads and schools in a state that would embarrass a bannana state dictator.

L Dude 7

The 30% figure was interesting. Does anybody know how I-Dine works in the backend? Does I-dine work as the credit card processor and just skim 30% off the top of the i-dine checks? Does a restaurant know who used i-dine?

Their site doesn't say much about business side of things.

gsilliman

As part of the contract, you give I-dine access to all of your restaurant's card transactions. They have an electronic data interchange with all processors, and they "see" the transaction after they go to Visa, MC, etc. Once a week, you get a report from them listing the previous week's transactions. It is very interesting data but they fax it, so it is not easy to sort/sift. They list: partial card numbers (enough to identify the transaction), date, charge amount, I-dine's calculated take, cardholder's billing city and zipcode. Each charge is one line on the report. At bottom, they total up their take, and they usually take the $$ from your bank account by auto debit about 4 days later.

bigdog58

Does not sound like a bad deal if you generate new business. The first question I have is: 1. If you already have regular customers will IDine take credit and take their share of business they did not generate? And 2. If the percentage take is up to 30%..... That would make it pretty hard to make money..... most rest/bars do not have margins to handle that fee.

Just my 2 cents.

Bigdog58

VPescado

1. Absolutely. This is a big reason for disappointment for restaurants that sign up.

2. If you think that's bad, it get's worse. It is my understanding (based on previous threads) that a lot of restaurants get involved with idine via their loan program where idine gets 50% of the take (25% for the points, and 25% for loan repayment). That's gotta sting.

gsilliman

actually, the take can range as high as 80%, if the restaurant is paying back an Idine loan.

PapiTheWriter

This is interesting. I notice that many of the new places that show up are "NEW" period. They usually do not stay on the program that long. I did some math after my last few dines and at 30% I cannot see how they can make too much profit. I assume the 30% comes off the top, they still have to pay out the tip and tax collected, so that does not leave much left over.

I do dine at 3 times to get the 500 miles even if it is just at one of the quick take outs. I have also been burned where the place drops from the program and I do not realize it until I wonder where is my award. Now I call every time before I go out!

PEACE!

Points Scrounger

Papi:

What do you mean you "call" beforehand?

My experience has been that RewardsNetwork has a slight amount of flexibility if the dropout was within a few days of the visit. Don't count on it, but my advice is to ask if it is less than a week.

I find the selection here has dwindled to such an extent that I have only had a couple of visits per month this autumn - my main joint is definitely once-per-month, so another one of those promos with 6 or 8 visits in 10 weeks would really leave me scrambling to be creative.

As for those $25 minimums, I might do three visits, but I wouldn't go out of my way to fulfill a second set for an aditional 500 miles as I did last time. Somehow, those tabs ended up at $50 and above more often than not.

jessej

i have an idine account with each of my ff accounts
account is firstname_lastname_airline
i simply move all 3 of my credit cards to the program that i need to collect the miles in
i was up to about 20k miles in my aa account
but will open a proiority club/idine account and accumulate the points there