Though other dining options have been on the rise in recent years, America is still very
much a Fast Food Nation.
But your favorite drive-thru spot, like any world-conquering corporation, has likely bent
the rules a bit from time-to-time to rake in more moolah.
Here are a few fast food restaurants that have straight-up cheated customers.
Who tracks the tracker?
Domino's kick-started its pizza delivery tracker in 2008, and in theory, it's pretty handy.
But by 2017, a lot of people had determined that the tracker didn't match what was actually
happening on their doorstep.
According to the Wall Street Journal, customers say that not only was the tracker getting
delivery times wrong, it wasn't even getting the delivery person right.
Domino's responded to Fox News saying it was all legit, but alleged employees and angry
customers took to Reddit long before that to say that the name of the person making
your pizza was usually just the manager's name, and the app is pretty much just a fancy
30-minute timer.
A former Domino's employee wrote a HuffPo blog post claiming the tracker was sort of
legit, but the problem was that employees could easily manipulate the system.
Drivers would set up dummy accounts, for example, to make it easier for them to combine deliveries
into one trip, and employees in-store would mark deliveries as finished to make their
team's numbers look better.
The moral of the story?
Don't put too much faith in the tracker.
McMath
You hit McDonald's for lunch, order a sandwich, fries, and a drink… but wait.
There's an Extra Value Meal for that, and it's going to save you money, right?
Not necessarily.
Savvy shopper Kelly Killeen filed a lawsuit against McDonald's over the price of her breakfast
Extra Value Meal.
Her argument was that a sausage burrito meal with hash browns and coffee cost $5.08, but
separately, the items would have cost $4.97.
That's pretty misleading,
but a court of law says it isn't illegal.
"I've put together some really impressive deals, but this thing you've pulled off, it's
amazing."
The case was dismissed in April 2018, and the official ruling was that McDonald's wasn't
breaking the law with their so-called Extra Value Meals since the prices for all menu
items were clearly listed.
As Judge Elaine Bucklo ruled,
"Here, a straightforward, price-to-price comparison based on information available at the point
of purchase would unequivocally dispel any misleading inference that could be drawn."
So it's up to you to do the math, because pricing at McDonald's doesn't work like you
think it does.
Cheese cheats
In 2016, McDonald's had a ton of problems with their short-lived cheese sticks, starting
with customers complaining because they found their cheese sticks were missing something
important: the cheese.
According to NBC Chicago, so many people posted photos of empty breading shells that McDonald's
was forced to make a statement saying the cheese seemed to have melted out during cooking,
and they were sorry.
And one California customer who managed to get some cheese in his cheese sticks filed
a lawsuit claiming it wasn't the "real mozzarella" and "100 percent cheese" that was advertised,
but a cheese product made with fillers.
McDonald's issued another statement saying,
"We intend to defend ourselves vigorously against these allegations."
The company made promises to address the cheese problem after the first wave of complaints
and photos hit social media, but instead, discontinued the mozzarella sticks not long
after.
McDonald's found themselves facing another cheesy lawsuit in 2018, this time over the
Quarter Pounder.
According to the lawsuit, the only way to get a Quarter Pounder without cheese is to
order a full-priced Quarter Pounder, but ask for it without cheese — in spite of the
fact that a cheaper, cheeseless version of the burger was advertised on menus in-stores
and online.
Cheese-free Quarter Pounders at lower prices have since disappeared from store signage.
The lawsuit states:
"McDonald's is being unjustly enriched by these practices, because it receives payment
for cheese it does not deliver to its customers."
McDonald's says the pending lawsuit is "nonsense," and it opens the restaurant world up for "utter
chaos."
Something's fishy
In 2013, the Center for Science in the Public Interest took a look at Long John Silver's
Big Catch meal.
Bottom line: anyone who gets one of these meals because they're thinking fish is a healthier
option is sorely mistaken.
Loaded with 33 grams of fat and a shocking 3700 milligrams of sodium, it was ultimately
named the "Worst Restaurant Meal in America."
"Wow!"
But there was some shadiness going on here, too.
Customers weren't even getting what they paid for.
Even though it was advertised as being between 7 and 8 ounces of premium haddock, CSPI said
their samples were only 4.5 ounces of fish, and 3 ounces of deep-fried batter.
That makes it only about 60 percent fish, and sure, deep-fried batter is great, but
that's not in line with what they were advertising.
Two months after their findings were released, Long John Silver's announced they were planning
to discontinue the meal and change their frying process