McDonald's | App Report, Store and Ranking Data

I’ve experienced multiple problems with this app, far too frequently for the amount of time I’ve been using it. For example, today it randomly signed me out and took approximately a dozen looping/stuck, time-consuming sign-in attempts to finally get back. Another frustration is the feature of having to “check in”, which usually works but sometimes does not. And when it does not, that order stays stuck in your app history, regardless of whether you actually picked it up. But FAR worse have been SEVERAL times when you place an order, the charge goes through, you receive a confirmation e-mail as well as a phone notification … but then when you get to the restaurant they do not have a record of the order and/or the order having been paid :( Which means that you have no choice but to pay for it if you want to get your order at that moment. And thus you get double-charged. And then you have to go through the frustration of trying to fix that, which takes a LONG, LONG time. To make matters worse, very often the restaurants themselves are not cooperative or even all-out combative. Their tendency is to throw their hands up and throw the blame back at the app developers. It is clearly a system that is not working. These frustrating aspects are not present in other fast food apps. Granted, when the above features do work, it’s great and things work smoothly. But when they don’t work, which is way too often, it’s annoying and frankly unbelievable for a giant like McDonald’s. Thank you for your time and attention.

So, the latest app update broke ordering completely. It will not clear the first (and last) order placed, insisting it is still “open”. This would be a forgiveable oopsie but this isn’t the first time their $2 dev team has screwed this up. To be fair, the app is pretty and has a decent ui. But I am absolutely convinced nobody—box even the outsourced dev team—does one iota of quality control. These problems have been present for YEARS and still they cannot deliver an ordering app that allows you to… you know… ORDER. I’ve been double charged, mis-charged, had my order disappear, had my order reappear after picking it up, and now this nonsense with the forever order that never goes away. Staff at the restaurant blames the mobile system, the mobile support offers nothing but platitudes and then silence. And beyond dumb order flow problems, it still after YEARS insists a simple sausage biscuit meal is “unavailable” but it is. And it also insists there is no such thing as a sausage egg and cheese biscuit. But there is. Avoid the app unless you want to be their QA team as well as learning about chargebacks with your card company, as well as getting to know the shift manager at whatever unfortunate location you inflict this dumpster fire of an app upon. The dev team does not care, they do not care your time or money, and I no longer care about McDonald’s.

1) App stops working at 7 PM way before store closes and on some mornings starts working an hour after the store opens 2) why do we need to see menus of stuff your not selling at breakfast or at lunch? 3) why do you let me put things in my shopping bag that are not available? 4) why does my shopping bag from last order stay open till next order? I have to manually take everything out the bag like changing items from breakfast to lunch, plus if there is expired discount in bag; it also has to be manually deleted. 5) how come I can not use my points on things I like to purchase? 6) why can I not use points on more than one item in a given order? 7) too many non-personal codes. How come you can’t use my name on app order and my car type. Your marketing department needs to focus on what the individual customer likes to buy not the deals that make biggest profit or create most revenue. You really want customer to come back more often. You go to your chicken competitor that’s not open on Sunday, they know my name, what kind of car I drive, and know what I like to order and as I’m ordering on their app, they suggest 1 or more items I can use my points on. And then first think I think of about your billion $ companies app is how much frustration it going to give me and your employee to process my order.

I used this app ONCE - paid for a latte - got to the location where they said they had no lattes, and could not refund me either because “the app has nothing to do with us” (though they HAD received my order, somehow… hmmm). Took 20 minutes of searching to figure out how and where to contact anyone (in the location they were unable to provide me with a number), and once I finally called, was told someone would be in touch with me. Then got an email saying they were so sorry and thanking me for bringing this to their attention, we will improve our processes moving forward… NOT A WORD about refunding me the money I paid. I have since called 3 more times, and each time have been told someone would follow up with me again, but nothing. The last time (a couple weeks ago), the agent said she would “escalate” the ticket, but I heard nothing since then (again), so I called back today only to find out that the last person did NOT in fact escalate it, so I have zero reason to believe the person who told me again today she would do the same. As far as I’m concerned at this point, McDonald’s has stolen $5 from me. And all this effort due to an app that is supposed to be saving you time!! CONSUMER BEWARE - STAY FAR, FAR AWAY FROM THIS APP! Thieves and clowns, these folks.

The last two times I’ve used this app, where I thought they’d be a convenience, has failed me. First I ordered and paid with my card linked through the app. When I arrived at the window he said my card was declined. I left with no meal and to my avail when logged into my bank transactions(100miles away), was charged for the meal I was denied. Two weeks later, the next time I used it, same thing. Used the $2 of $10 or more discount and my total was $12.30. Deducted from my bank account. Check before I even made it to the window. The cashier tells me “it says you need to still pay with card”. I showed her my phone that it was deducted already. And they basically made me pay the difference of what the discount was. $2.18. Not again. McDonald’s isn’t getting free money from me anymore. The biggest downfall with this app. There’s no where obvious to get with customer support. It’s deep in the weeds of the Help/contact us path. And when you’re in a drive thru line and need assistance there’s no time for that. This app just isn’t worth it for me.

The current version of this app forces you to allow them to always see your location in order to use deals, even if you put in a restaurant location for an order first. This is ridiculous, I don’t want your app tracking me. Also, every time I try to use the app I have to login, and it always wants me to send an email to login without a password, which is more trouble than it would be to just put a password in. I recommend never storing any of your payment information in the app. I contacted them a couple years ago because I had problems with someone somehow accessing my bank card information I had stored in the app and making purchases on my card. I contacted them and reported it to them and no one ever even bother to contact me back. This app is more trouble than it’s worth

So I used this app a ton and loved the savings since the costs are crazy right now. Problem is that there was an update and now mostly all the deals are for pickup only!! Can’t use in store or the drive through, totally pointless now as I refuse and will never use the pickup option as most stores give you cold food and I hate being that person that isn’t even at the store location placing orders for the already stressed cooks to have to worry about… This app is completely useless now and it was the only reason I even get McDonalds because the astronomical prices… I miss the days of the one dollar cheeseburger and sad to say the time where McDonalds was an actual cheap option are gone. Greedy corporations are the worst.

UPDATED: received a rather short and somewhat snotty email from the developer telling me to delete and redownload. As if I wasn’t smart enough to know to do this already. So I redownloaded the app again and it still sticks on the same screen. I am still over it and enjoying my free items I got from Wendy’s for joining their app! This is ridiculous! The app wouldn’t go beyond the final activate French Fry screen. Just kept saying that Safari could not find the web page. I’m so over it. I have a brand new iPhone 13 running the latest iOS of 15.5. Deleting app and getting Wendy’s app instead as suggested in a prior review!