Most fast food customers don't have any illusions about what they're getting, but there have still been times that they got a bad deal from a restaurant. Sure, we all know that the food in the commercials is going to look a lot better than what gets served up to us at the counter or the drive-thru window, but when the cheese sticks don't actually have cheese in them, you've been cheated.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00Though other dining options have been on the rise in recent years, America is still very
00:05much a fast food nation.
00:06But your favorite drive-thru spot, like Any World Conquering Corporation, has likely bent
00:11the rules a bit from time to time to rake in more moolah.
00:14Here are a few fast food restaurants that have straight-up cheated customers.
00:18Who tracks the tracker?
00:21Domino's kickstarted its pizza delivery tracker in 2008, and in theory, it's pretty handy.
00:25But by 2017, a lot of people had determined that the tracker didn't match what was actually
00:29happening on their doorstep.
00:31According to the Wall Street Journal, customers say that not only was the tracker getting
00:35delivery times wrong, it wasn't even getting the delivery person right.
00:39Domino's responded to Fox News saying it was all legit, but alleged employees and angry
00:43customers took to Reddit long before that to say that the name of the person making
00:47your pizza was usually just the manager's name, and the app is pretty much just a fancy
00:5130-minute timer.
00:52A former Domino's employee wrote a HuffPo blog post claiming the tracker was sort of
00:57legit, but the problem was that employees could easily manipulate the system.
01:01Drivers would set up dummy accounts, for example, to make it easier for them to combine deliveries
01:05into one trip, and employees in-store would mark deliveries as finished to make their
01:08team's numbers look better.
01:10The moral of the story?
01:11Don't put too much faith in the tracker.
01:14McMath
01:15You hit McDonald's for lunch, order a sandwich, fries, and a drink, but wait, there's an extra
01:20value meal for that, and it's going to save you money, right?
01:23Not necessarily.
01:24Savvy shopper Kelly Killeen filed a lawsuit against McDonald's over the price of her breakfast
01:28extra value meal.
01:30Her argument was that a sausage burrito meal with hash browns and coffee cost $5.08, but
01:35separately the items would have cost $4.97.
01:38That's pretty misleading, but a court of law says it isn't illegal.
01:41I've put together some really impressive deals, but this thing you've pulled off, it's amazing."
01:47The case was dismissed in April 2018, and the official ruling was that McDonald's wasn't
01:51breaking the law with their so-called extra value meals, since the price for all menu
01:55items were clearly listed.
01:56As Judge Elaine Bucklow ruled, here, a straightforward price-to-price comparison based on information
02:01available at the point of purchase would unequivocally dispel any misleading inference that could
02:05be drawn.
02:06So, it's up to you to do the math, because pricing at McDonald's doesn't work like you
02:10think it does.
02:12Cheese cheats
02:13In 2016, McDonald's had a ton of problems with their short-lived cheese sticks, starting
02:17with customers complaining because they found their cheese sticks were missing something
02:21important, the cheese.
02:23According to NBC Chicago, so many people posted photos of empty breading shells that McDonald's
02:27was forced to make a statement saying the cheese seemed to have melted out during cooking,
02:31and they were sorry.
02:32And one California customer who managed to get some cheese in his cheese sticks filed
02:36a lawsuit claiming it wasn't the real mozzarella and 100% cheese that was advertised, but a
02:41cheese product made with fillers.
02:43McDonald's issued another statement saying,
02:45"...we intend to defend ourselves vigorously against these allegations."
02:48The company made promises to address the cheese problem after the first wave of complaints
02:52and photos hit social media, but instead discontinued the mozzarella sticks not long after.
02:57McDonald's found themselves facing another cheesy lawsuit in 2018, this time over the
03:01Quarter Pounder.
03:02According to the lawsuit, the only way to get a Quarter Pounder without cheese is to
03:06order a full-priced Quarter Pounder, but ask for it without cheese, in spite of the fact
03:10that a cheaper, cheeseless version of the burger was advertised on menus in stores
03:14and online.
03:15Cheese-free Quarter Pounders at lower prices have since disappeared from store signage.
03:20The lawsuit states,
03:21"...McDonald's is being unjustly enriched by these practices because it receives payment
03:25for cheese it does not deliver to its customers."
03:27McDonald's says the pending lawsuit is nonsense, and it opens the restaurant world up for utter
03:31chaos.
03:32Something's fishy
03:35In 2013, the Center for Science in the Public Interest took a look at Long John Silver's
03:39Big Catch Meal.
03:40Bottom line?
03:41Anyone who gets one of these meals because they're thinking fish is a healthier option
03:44is sorely mistaken.
03:46Loaded with 33 grams of fat and a shocking 3,700 milligrams of sodium, it was ultimately
03:51named the worst restaurant meal in America.
03:54Wow!
03:55But there was some shadiness going on here, too.
03:58Customers weren't even getting what they paid for.
04:00Even though it was advertised as being between 7 and 8 ounces of premium haddock, CSPI said
04:04their samples were only 4.5 ounces of fish and 3 ounces of deep-fried batter.
04:09That makes it only about 60 percent fish, and sure, deep-fried batter is great, but
04:13that's not in line with what they were advertising.
04:16Two months after their findings were released, Long John Silver's announced they were planning
04:19to discontinue the meal and change their frying process.