Ruby Tuesday review: gift card fraud

On Sunday, Dec. 27, at approximately 6 pm, my husband and I, along with another couple went to eat at the Ruby Tuesday located in Prince Frederick, MD. At this time, we had gift cards to use which I had just checked the balance on. Each card had $15. The meal was served by Antonia. During the meal, I requested a burger to be medium well. This burger came out burnt. I told Antonia, who immediately took it back to have another done. After waiting a long period of time, another burger was brought out--again with the burnt taste. At this time, Antonia admitted that a lot of the burgers came out burnt. I asked to have the burger removed from the bill and to go ahead and bring the check. When the check arrived, it was not separate as requested at the start. We said it was ok, and gave the gift cards to go towards the bill. Antonia brought one of the gift cards back to us, saying it had $0 balance. I told her I had just checked it before leaving home and it had $15 on it. Again, she took it and brought it back with the card receipt showing $0 balance. We paid the remainder of the bill with a personal credit card and left feeling very frustrated. Once out of the store, I contacted the gift card balance center. I was told my gift card had a balance of $15 and was swiped at the Ruby Tuesday at 7:31 pm for that amount. We immediately returned to the restaurant, requesting to see a manager. The manager, Wendy, came out. When we told her what had taken place, she appeared very flustered and said she had never had to deal with this type of situation before. She asked for a few minutes to look into the situation. A while later, Wendy came back with $15 cash. She claimed to have a gut feeling about the situation, but couldn't do anything about it until the close of business. She also admitted she had a lot of issues with personnel but was unable to get them resolved due to lack of support from corporate office. She apologized for the problem and told us to come back and she'd personally take care of us. Overall, I feel the manager was unprofessional about the entire situation as she did not really know what to do or how to compensate for our experience with bad food and a theft of gift card. The waitress saw us return and never came back to acknowledge us or ask why we had returned. My gift card number: [protected] which had a balance of $15 and then was $0 at the restaurant. The manager kept the receipt to show the balance of the gift card, so I have nothing to share except the gift card number.