McDonald's Kotara — Restaurant in Newcastle-Maitland

Dropped in on the last leg of a long journey with my elderly father looking forward to an easy, tasty meal as I usually receive from this restaurant. Unfortunately our order was missing one of the burgers. It wasn't until we were down the road that we realised, to our shock and horror, that one of the burgers was missing.

After calling the store and explaining our predicament, unable to return for our precious parmi, the lady who answered the phone took our details and put us on a complaints register, which she assured us would give us a code for a free burger. This was an adequate resolution to the issue and would not have resulted in a complaint usually. I also applaud the way our complaint was handled, my father was very agitated in the background and the calltaker was incredibly measured and professional.

The issue was how we were treated during our transaction. The person on the intercom and registers was lovely and did a great job. The team was let down by someone wearing a uniform designating her as a crew trainer who served us our food. She was leaning full upper-body out the window openly, loudly, animatedly flirting with customers in the car ahead of us. When we arrived at the window, she was incredibly rude in attitude, walking away from us as we spoke to ask for salt+pepper. Our food was then thrust at us by the crew trainer without a word. The other team member who handed us our drinks was lovely and helpful thankfully. The food itself was lovely, it's such a shame we missed out on fully enjoying it!

Two stara because this experience is unacceptable, though the rest of the team are clearly working hard and doing a...

I normally don’t visit this McDonald’s store and when I did on Tuesday (11/03/25), it reinforced why. I had been extremely busy all day that day, and didn’t get an opportunity to grab a bite to eat so I decided to just grab something small and quick on my way home. Kotara McDonald’s was the closest, and most convenient. I ordered a crispy snack wrap happy meal and I used my rewards points to get a large fries. First thing that was an issue was that it’s now been changed that you can only redeem one reward per transaction which is ridiculous alongside the increase to how many points you need for each different reward. Second thing, all of the fries were stone cold and tasted like they had been sitting out for several hours!!! They were completely inedible. On a positive note, the snack wrap was delicious. The wrap was soft, the chicken was crispy and the lettuce and sauce was the right amount. There was also a generous amount of chicken which is surprising as usually it’s just filled with lettuce and a tiny piece of chicken. I contacted McDonald’s to make a complaint and was promised a replacement meal and that they would send a code to my maccas app and I still have not received it. Do better! If you wouldn’t eat it, then don’t serve it! Simple! If you’re going to charge a premium price for something then have the decency to ensure that it’s top quality and edible and worth the cost...

After recieving my food; I asked for a bag with some straws in it please and the manager disrespectfully declined my request saying “no i will not get you a bag of straws” in a highly manipulative and negative tone, i then asked again and he said it again but his tone continually changed and began to become rude. I then told him that I will just go grab them from the dispenser then and grabbed around 10 as i wanted them for my friends who were waiting back at the house. He then followed me out to the area me and my 2 of my friends were sitting and told us to leave. I got kicked out of this McDonald’s for getting straws which I may add are free. I am still shocked and angry about this, there was no particular reason as to why I was not allowed a bag of straws let alone take straws from a dispenser. I believe one of the male managers at this store selectively chose to discriminate against me and not allow a simple request to be undertaken. I also believe that he abused his power to make himself feel better about the lack of control he seemed to be able to have over the whole restaurant and make his employees associate him with authority. In conclusion one of the male managers at this store declined my innocent request disrespectfully in a quest to establish a feeling of power and authority upon his employees...