Nagios servicedependency wildcard not expanding

to reach customer-es-prd-dobb1, the packets must traverse a (client based) vpn via the host "cust-client-vpn". The intermediary host has a check named "customer-prod-vpn" which monitors the health of the particular connection.

The goal is to make the hosts services in the customers network all depend on a specific service on the intermediary machine. I however get

Error: Could not expand dependent services specified in service dependency (config file '/usr/local/nagios/etc/conf.d/servicedependency/customer.cfg', starting on line 1)
Error processing object config files!

If I replace the wildcard with, for example, "cpu usage" (an existing check) it works.

Here's the related dependency block:

define servicedependency {
    dependent_host_name             customer-es-prd-dobb1
    dependent_service_description   *
    host_name                       cust-client-vpn
    service_description             customer-prod-vpn
    execution_failure_criteria      w,u,c
    notification_failure_criteria   w,u,c
}

The intermediary host config:

define host {
    host_name                       cust-client-vpn
    alias                           cust-client-vpn
    address                         ip_addr_was_here
    use                             nrpe-server,host-pnp
    hostgroups                      debian-servers, monit-servers
    _NRPESSL    -n
    contacts        operations
}

the intermediary host check which it all depends on

define service {
    use                             generic-service,srv-pnp
    host_name                       cust-client-vpn
    service_description             customer-prod-vpn
    check_command                   check_nrpe_1arg!check_customer_vpn_prod
    check_interval                  10
    max_check_attempts              1
}

And finally the status for "customer-prod-vpn" check in nagios:

customer-prod-vpn  OK   05-20-2013 16:21:15  0d 14h 50m 42s 1/1 OK - UP 

Any nagios ninjas out there to point out what the problem is?