Call Kurtis: Half-Baked Promotion

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) -- An all-you-can-eat pizza dinner buffet for $8.99 sounded like a great deal. Unfortunately for Edna Sanford, it turned out too good to be true.

Sanford, her daughter and her daughter's friend went to Mama Mia Pizza in South Sacramento for dinner, enticed by the dinner buffet deal advertised on a big yellow sign hanging outside the restaurant.  When they asked for the buffet, Sanford says they got a surprise from the man taking their order. "He just spoke right up and said 'oh, we no longer have that'.  What do you mean you no longer have it?"

Sanford reminded the worker about the big sign hanging outside. "He just kind of blew it away that the sign was even existing,"Sanford said. "It was just 'we're not doing it'."

She accused them of false advertising, but she didn't get her buffet and the sign stayed up.

A CBS 13 undercover crew put the restaurant to the test, two days in a row. On one of the visits, the employee at the register said they don't serve the buffet any longer.  Another person behind the counter said they stopped offering it because customers were abusing the offer.  He added they hadn't taken the sign down because they don't have a ladder.

During the other visit, the undercover crew got the same answer; no buffet. A different employee said the dinner buffet deal hadn't been served in a couple of months.

When we returned for answers, we got a different story.  A man identifying himself as the manager said the restaurant did serve the dinner buffet between the hours of five and eight.

"They didn't on the Monday night that we went there," Sanford said. "We were there about a quarter to eight." Sanford says the manager who told us the restaurant does serve the dinner buffet is the same man who told her they did not.

Consumer attorney Eric Ratinoff says people should use websites like Yelp, and other social media when a company doesn't honor what it promotes.  "If you can't trust them to give you what was advertised, you can't trust them to feed your family," said Ratinoff.

A few days after our visit to Mama Mia Pizza, we heard back from the restaurant's manager.  He said they were removing the sign.  We returned to find the sign was still up, but the reference to the dinner buffet deal had been removed.

Deal or no deal, Edna Sanford says she probably won't return. "The pizza was good. The breadsticks were good," Sanford said. "It's just a shame they didn't honor their offer."