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| ▲ | ssl-3 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | If that's true, then their mobile app team must be both completely separate and isolated from all communications. Because it's really bad. And it's been bad for a really long time. When all I want is to order a cheap cup of coffee, I get to stare at a throbbing box of fries while it tries to figure that out. Get to the restaurant and signal my arrival? More throbbing fries. Sometimes the fries never stop throbbing and the only way to get away from them and onto the next step is to force-close the app and start it again. When I manage to accumulate enough points to order a free sandwich? "Sorry, something went wrong!" This leaves me with no sandwich, and no points. (I guess I was going to be disappointed no matter what -- maybe they're doing me a favor by fucking it up so bad that getting the food is impossible, since reaching the melancholy destination takes fewer steps this way.) Over the years I've used multiple phones, from multiple manufacturers, with multiple carriers. It's not me; the app is consistently bad. Oh. And speaking of carriers: Back when I had metered service, I used wifi where I could. The McDonald's near where I lived had free wifi, but their network had this app firewalled. It'd work anywhere but inside of the building where it was most useful. But, yeah: The touchscreen kiosks are a bit more responsive than they initially were. It's too bad that they're gored up with finger grease and other bodily effluences, though, because they barely work with the layer of filth that covers them. | | |
| ▲ | a2128 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | I've never once been able to use the McDonald's app over several years and multiple devices. I originally wanted to check the nutritional info of the menu. Download our app, it says. This website is better in our app, it says. The order screen constantly asks me to enter my app code. Collect points in our App! Do you have our App? I give in and finally download the App. "Something's not quite right", you didn't install our app properly (Aurora Store instead of Google Play), you didn't set up your device properly (unlocked bootloader), you did something wrong to upset the App and it will not run. Oh no, we can't let you see the number of calories in your burger with an unlocked bootloader!!! This stupid app has stricter protection than any of my banking apps and I will never be able to escape constantly being asked to use it | |
| ▲ | aidenn0 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I have a half-serious theory that their mobile app is for price discrimination. The best deals are only available in the app, but the experience is so bad that you'll only use it if you really need to. | | |
| ▲ | canpan 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Here in Japan they started to forward me to the app page when ordering. So you are forced to use the app with a mobile browser. Even though the website could do it perfectly fine in the past. I do not go often, but if I do I prefer to sit, order in the page and they bring it to your seat. I dont like the Kiosk. | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Anyone is free to use the app to get the best deals. They just need to be willing to put up with its behavior. That sounds, to me, less like something discriminatory and more like something that is simply sadistic. | | |
| ▲ | californical 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Price discrimination is basically corporate speak for giving discounts to those who wouldn’t or couldn’t afford to pay full price. And it makes perfect sense in this context - if you make $200k salary you probably don’t care enough about a $0.30 discount to fiddle with an app for 5 minutes. But if you’re living on a few dollars of food budget, you probably care a lot about that 30 cents and would fight for it. So making the app bad allows them to segment the market to get an extra 30 cents out of the person who can afford it without excluding the low-budget person. | | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The wealthiest person who I know well would absolutely fiddle with an app for 5 minutes to save 30 cents on a sandwich at McDonald's. He's cheap AF. But even if he weren't that way, making the app deliberately bad to eek a few more clams out of a subset of people is perverse. Deliberately erecting barriers between the products and those who want to buy them is not how business is successfully done at this level. They aren't selling Ferraris here. "I want to stick it to these rich guys, so I'll make the app terrible!" doesn't make sense. They're neither smart enough to do that, nor dumb enough. The simplest explanation is that in a world of shitty software, this software is also just shit. :) |
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| ▲ | rstuart4133 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I gave up on the app completely when I placed an order via the app, was waved past the payment window, then the order window denied it was placed (and paid for). I showed them the phone with the order number still on it. They said it could be a screenshot. After arguing for a while, I drove away without food. I eventually got a refund after digging throw their web site for an email address, and emailed them the statement showing where it has been paid. With the back and forward while they asked for evidence, it took over an hour of my time in the end to get the refund. It wasn't the money. It was the principle. The app is by far the slowest, most unreliable way to place an order with them. Period. The next slowest (although far better) is the kiosks. They also unreliable when the printer doesn't work (which is most of the time), and you make the mistake of forgetting the receipt number. Other fast food outlets have solved this problem by getting you to enter your name. That's beyond McDonalds apparently. The fastest, and most reliable way by far is to talk to a human. The order should be the reverse. It is beyond me how they get it so badly wrong. Maybe price discrimination is the reason. Nothing else makes much sense for an organisation of the size and resources of McDonalds. | |
| ▲ | basch 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | their app has some very strange flow to it, i cant tell if it feels designed by committee or if there are just so many strange use cases that its somehow the least bad given some arbitrary constraints i cant begin to understand. even selecting my restaurant is a constant battle. the closest restaurant to my house as the bird flies is not the closest restaurant. even the closest by miles driven involves much more complication than the one i always want to pick. it constantly battles me that i have selected a suboptimal choice. maybe learn that when i am at home, i want to default to my preferred choice, every time, unless i say otherwise. | | |
| ▲ | plaguuuuuu 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm only 50/50 but I swear they have only one app for the entire globe. Can you imagine how complex that must be vs just making like 100 different apps in each country. But eCoNoMiEs oF sCaLe If you're balking at makin 100 different apps, then for reference, I am pretty sure my local mcdonalds - just the one restaurant turns over >10 mill a year, so you get a sense of how much they'd want to invest in, idk, the ordering front-end of every maccas in Australia | | |
| ▲ | aloisklink 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | At least in Japan on iOS, they have their own app, and it’s great. You can find a seat first, then order directly from your seat, for delivery to your seat (helpful since some McDonald’s in Japan are really busy, and are very vertical, so you might need to climb up some two/three floors to find a seat!). You can even order McDelivery and they’ll deliver McDonald’s to your house on McDonald’s branded mopeds. It’s also been pretty fast, even on a slow internet connection. The only two problems I’ve had with it are: - Although the menu and the rest of the app is translated to English, sometimes coupons are only in Japanese, and not translated to English (I’m guessing these might be store-specific) (although it’s easy enough to translate that using your phone’s translator)
- I’ve had Apple Pay occasionally be down and fail to work, which forced me to redo my whole order, then realize that Apple Pay is still down, then do my entire order again with a different payment method. Although it’s only happened twice a few months ago, so it could be something that they’ve already fixed (or I’m quite unlucky). Edit: Forgot to add, but no issues like what basch seems to experience with their country’s McDonald’s app. The Japanese one always gives me a sorted list/map view of my closest McDonald’s to pick from, with any favourites marked at the too. | | |
| ▲ | ssl-3 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's how it was in the US, too. Sit down anywhere, fire up the app[1], order whatever, enter the table number and they bring it over. That part of the service was consistent and worked well. The consistency all changed with the covid shuffle. Now, it depends on the location and their mood at the time. Sometimes, they bring the food out on a tray. Sometimes, they just dismissively put it on the counter at the front in a paper bag and walk away from it without a word. Sometimes they fill the drink for you; sometimes there's a rack of cups and an implied expectation that you just figure it out yourself; sometimes they bring over an empty cup; sometimes you have to beg them for that empty cup. It sucks. Same with the kiosk. They have these neat table tents with numbers; they're actually BLE beacons that work with tracking hardware inside the ceiling. They help the employees to get a good idea of where you're sitting before they even leave the kitchen. But sometimes there are no table tents to be had (even in an empty restaurant), and sometimes when they do exist nobody gives a damn about them. As systems, these things work fine. I've seen them work. But I've observed the implementation of them in recent years to have been an unmitigated mess, and this mess is clearly the result of a geographically-diverse problem with bad local-level management. Buying a cheeseburger and a Coke at McDonald's -- which built an empire around simplicity and efficiency -- should never be an adventure or a guessing game. It should be the most straight-forward process on Earth and completely devoid of surprises. But it isn't. [1]: Well, within the app's limitations. I did rant about that in another comment, above. |
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| ▲ | xgkickt 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I have been in the situation of standing outside an after-hours pick-up only window at a McDonald’s in the UK, able to talk to the staff, but unable to order because they only accepted app orders and I only had access to the Canadian app. |
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| ▲ | ssl-3 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I tried to log into it just now to see which McDonald's it would select for me at home and whether it would be callous about changes. But when I touched the icon to open the app, a big M appeared on a bright red screen and then it died and returned to the home screen less than half a second later. (Good work, fellahs! Good work!) |
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| ▲ | jd3 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The US app is still laggy (even on the iPhone 17 Pro) and constantly logs you out. My theory is that they set the login timeout to a low number to make it harder to accrue points. |
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| ▲ | jerlam 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I remember the exact opposite of the McDonalds touch screen ordering systems. When they first came out, everything was snappy because it wasn't loading recommendations or additional tracking. There were a lot fewer customization options. Now, you click on something, and you wait a while, and then it asks you what you want to change and if you want to add these other suggested items. When you want to check out, it lags and then pops up another dialog asking if you want to add more items to your order. | |
| ▲ | altairprime 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | McDonald’s in the U.S. is targeting market segments that either have low-price cellular data plans or are operating cellular devices in cars where coverage is often worse (especially for travelers!), which requires minimum server latency since you have to turn around those data packets instantly in order to queue them into their customer’s lowest-priority on-the-pole cellular pipe. Thus why they continue to provide a series choices that have such a high round-trip cost of user interaction: everyone wants to customize, no one wants to suffer a complicated UI, so simple serial dialogs served at minimum server resources per request it is. I would hazard a guess that the process fervor they design into their kitchen operations means that internet ordering is shown within the same metrics dashboard as store ops. | |
| ▲ | jtbayly 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I refuse to go to McDonalds anymore because they refuse to acknowledge you, won’t take your order, force you to use those stupid terminals. | | |
| ▲ | ranger_danger 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I actively seek out such establishments because I'm an introvert and I don't want to talk to people. Japan is a paradise in this way... an extremely large number of restaurants do not require interacting with a human to place your order. | | |
| ▲ | fracus 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm the same, although I understand OP's sentiment to a degree. I also like no interaction with someone who is potentially or visibly sick and contagious. That is why I never stand in the service line at the grocery store. It's always self serve only. | |
| ▲ | axus 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | As a customer of McDonalds in both countries: the counter is much better in Japan, especially now. I was always proud of the American stores having lots of nice napkins, sauces, etc for self-service but we lost that years ago. |
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| ▲ | jml7c5 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Why do you want them to take your order if you have access to a terminal? | | |
| ▲ | SoftTalker 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Because it's 10x faster. In can say "big mac meal" and be done while the kiosk ordering machine is still loading the first screen. | | |
| ▲ | conductr 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It’s pure efficiency. I always customize my orders and it’s too many taps on a usually laggy system. I’m also usually ordering for 3, all customized. I can tell a cashier the entire order in less than 20s. And somehow their UI allows them to enter it just as quickly. It’s not a muscle memory thing either, it’s literally the interface and hardware they use runs fast and is perhaps designed with efficiency. The kiosk app is designed for dummies and takes forever to use. I’ve tried it at several places and it’s always my take away. When I use it I literally watch 5+ people place human cashier orders before I can place my order. I’m not against talking to people for transactions. I’m against being forced to use inefficient machines. | | |
| ▲ | Barbing 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The cash register doesn't try quite as hard to upsell you as the kiosk. But yes, the cash register should be able to support the data entry skills of teenagers growing up with TikTok. |
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| ▲ | zarzavat 35 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Just wait until you have to make a complicated order in a country where people don't speak English very well, you will be very thankful for the kiosks. Even the US has two languages. | |
| ▲ | lotsofpulp 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I prefer the machine because the order is correct 100% of the time. When I used to have someone take the order, I had to double check the receipt to make sure the order was correct. |
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| ▲ | 7bit 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | In the one sentence he wrote, he clearly told you. |
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| ▲ | postepowanieadm 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I'm not sure - their kiosks in Poland are horrible, nagging you to order more. Event hardware is broken, as your recipe with order number tends to get stuck in the machine. What makes me wonder what our Fiscus thinks about it. | |
| ▲ | rapind 11 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Except they make you tap 2-3 times more than it takes to make your selections. That's business guys though, not the devs. Do you want to add one of [x]?... No. How about now, add one of [x]?... No. Do you want to round up your total to [n]?... No. Do you want to eat in, even though we'll still put it in a takeaway bag so this option is really just the equivalent of a close door button on an elevator in that it does nothing except placate you?... Yes. | | |
| ▲ | sowbug 10 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I'm sure these two behaviors depend on each other. Instantaneous response allows the company to spend more of your attention answering questions rather than staring at a spinner. If you've ever watched TV with someone who gets distracted and sets down the remote after each button press while Netflix's UI slowly loads, you know that three or four UI interactions can turn into a several-minute ordeal. | |
| ▲ | b112 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I have been in elevators in which it does do something. I've timed the difference. This foul rumour must die. | | |
| ▲ | DrewADesign 9 hours ago | parent [-] | | They effectively don’t do anything in most elevators in the US during normal operation. The ADA requires elevator doors remain open at least 3-seconds. Usually, people-moving elevators are most efficient when doors close as quickly as possible, so they start closing exactly at 3 seconds. I’ve used elevators with less common use cases — huge ones in hospitals, freight elevators, hotel service elevators — that might be configured to stay open longer than the 3 second minimum, assuming people will push the door close button as soon as they’re ready. |
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| ▲ | 1attice 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | It's choice exhaustion, a common dark pattern. You get worn down and that makes you more likely to spend more than you need | | |
| ▲ | toast0 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, but there's a risk that people won't come back because it's exhausting. I ordered from the wrong location once, and it's fine, they don't work the order until you arrive, and they refund it at the end of the day, but they lost a sale because I was so frustrated that I just drove home without picking up food like I was expecting to. And the way prices are now, you need to order in the app if you want a chance at value, so if I don't have time to poke at the app, I won't go. | | |
| ▲ | Dylan16807 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | Wait, seriously? They make you show up before they start and the orders can't travel between locations? I've only used the app a couple times so I only knew the first half of that. | | |
| ▲ | toast0 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | I mean... I could have asked, and they might have been able to transfer, but there's no user accessible way to make it happen, and you can't (or couldn't) make a new order while one was pending. But I was coming back from kid's hockey practice and tired and now mad at mcdonalds, so I wasn't going to wait in line to ask. I have ordered to the wrong Starbucks, where they do start your order when you place it, and they were able to see the order and remake it at the one I actually showed up at, but Starbucks is always super nice whenever anything goes wrong, even if when it's my fault, which it usually is. Not being able to start a new order is also great when you had a successful order that the app didn't notice and then you have to clear app data days later when you want to order again... but I think McDonalds may have added a button to just order anyway in the past not too long. |
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| ▲ | DrewADesign 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Annoying, for sure, but at least it’s not an unpredictable 800 keystroke, zero agency, chatbot interaction. |
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| ▲ | lmpdev 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I repaired some of ~10 years ago (Australia) Just low end uncustomised NUCs overheating behind the screen No idea if that’s still the case | |
| ▲ | jimmydorry 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Yet the Maccas app in Australia is atrocious for me. Takes >30secs to load the huge ad that pops-up before you can get to the menu. Close the ad and the menu takes another eternity, then inside each sub menu, you wait another eternity for the pictures to all load. Meanwhile, all of this content could just be downloaded in the background and cached for future loads... And the app continues to get worse each update. The checkout process used to be quick and responsive. They've since made it require additional clicks and take much longer. | | |
| ▲ | Barbing 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Is there anyone who uses the app and orders premium options and uses coupons that don't represent much of a discount... yet, the app STILL takes a long time to load? Causing delays for unprofitable customers. Any business is going to do it if they can. /tinfoil (Their margins shouldn't be this bad.) | | |
| ▲ | jimmydorry an hour ago | parent [-] | | I don't want to touch their greasy in-store touch screens that thousands of other people touch. And those "deals" are way cheaper per user than large marketing campaigns, and probably more effective too. I wonder how slow you can make an app before a significant number of people will just order elsewhere? Give it a few more years of downgrades to the app, and I'll have reached it. |
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| ▲ | 7bit 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | I stopped using those because I'm faster ordering at the cashier. The delay was awfully long with 3-5 seconds. It's now improved but 2-3 seconds is still ridiculous. I wouldn't say they've learning anything. That's probably just a side effect of something they aren't even aware about. Germany btw | |
| ▲ | ranger_danger 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | My experience with them to this day is still abysmal... often have to touch 2 or 3 times to get it to register and there is still a noticeable delay, as if I'm (probably so) interacting with a slow/bloated webpage. The mobile app is even worse for me with added latency and surprising(ly delayed) large content changes that affect what you're trying to click on. | | |
| ▲ | qsi 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Here in Singapore the terminals work well! The latency has definitely gone down. Ironically the Japanese McDonald's website loads faster than the Singapore one... so they've got some work to do. | |
| ▲ | fracus 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They probably never wash them so there is this insulating layer of grease and grime on the screen that inhibits touch detection. |
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| ▲ | brcmthrowaway 11 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Bet someone here worked on them | | |
| ▲ | 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | janderson215 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Probably. Similarly, Walmart has a great eng org for a company of its size. | | |
| ▲ | kj4211cash 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | As someone who works there, as a Data Scientist, I can't scroll past this without expressing my disagreement. I've never seen a worse eng org. Coming from Uber, it was and is shocking how dysfunctional Walmart tech is. Maybe my standards are too high. | |
| ▲ | ButlerianJihad 10 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | When I temporarily lost access to my phone, I contacted Walmart dot Com Support. They solemnly informed me that they had no means of overriding MFA for my account or helping me to recover it without the phone. Support told me that I was better off abandoning the account and creating a new one. While I did recover my phone, I decided that it was best to simply stop doing business with Walmart, and I haven’t missed them one bit! | |
| ▲ | vips7L 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Didn’t they start that from acquiring jet.com? | | |
| ▲ | janderson215 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | IIRC, they revamped Walmart.com around the time of the Jet.com acquisition, so that probably had something to do with it. |
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| ▲ | dd8601fn 10 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Really? Walmart does some spectacularly stupid, costly, and obnoxiously customer hostile stuff. | | |
| ▲ | geerlingguy 10 hours ago | parent [-] | | But they do it with much uptime, and very low latency! | | |
| ▲ | janderson215 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | I know this is tongue-in-cheek, but yes, all I was saying is their eng org. I'm not speaking on their Customer Service or business practices. |
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