McDonald's — Restaurant in East Suffolk

DISCRIMINATORY STAFF & POOR SERVICE: I visited McDonald's in Kirkley Rise (Lowestoft NR33 0FD) on Thursday night (4 September, 2025), and it was quite a shocking experience, as they asked me to leave at about 2 a.m. within 15 minutes. When I said that it is advertised as “open 24 hours,” they responded that they only served drivers at night and don't have enough staff to serve visitors.

That night, I had placed two orders, fully intending to order more before an early train journey — but couldn’t even get a receipt because their machines weren’t working. So I respected their business, but they disrespected me as a paying customer and, frankly, as a human being.

This treatment was not only confusing and unjustified, but deeply distressing. It was dark, freezing cold, and no public services were operating.

I never thought I would be treated with such disregard and lack of empathy in a place I’d visited many times before as a local resident.

I am still shocked by what happened, and I sincerely hope McDonald’s reconsiders the way it operates at night. Such discriminatory treatment is beyond poor management. How do they decide which customers — and why — should be pushed out into the cold when they’ve done nothing wrong?

I urge McDonald’s senior management to investigate this incident, retrain the staff involved, and make it absolutely clear that customers cannot be discarded based on made-up internal policies and personal ambitions.

UPDATE: I complained to the customer service by email. It took them a week to investigate my case. In the end, a customer service officer apologized and gave me free vouchers. Thank...

Went through drive thru tonight at around 12:50. We placed our order, the man taking our order got it wrong to which i corrected him and he changed it. He then didnt ask if we wanted anything else and instructed us to drive round even though we still had more to order.

We then approached the second window and was told to go straight to the last window and wait. We waited for 15 minutes. Around 6 cars went through with there food and drink before we even got ours (one of which we know ordered alot more than what we did as we knew them). We carried on waiting at the third window, after 15 minutes of waiting, a manager finally brought our food to us. He did not apologise at all for the wait and just handed us the food without making any eye contact nor speaking. To which we then realised they didnt bring our drink.

I drove through again to get the drink and mentioned the long wait. Got round to the window, complained and told them if its a fast food it should be faster. He then sarcastically said “ Just to let you know Its a family restaurant now not fast food” which on google it still says its a fast food. I then asked for a refund to which he gave however still no drink was recieved and no apology was given.

Do not reccomened. The staff were abrupt and sarcastic to our complaints. Will certaintly be choosing other takeaways...

We went to the drive thru to order 3 meals. There were 3 additional cars There, one ahead of us and 2 in the other lane. We sat for 10 mons before we could even order. By this time another car had pulled up behind us and we were stuck as there is no escape lane. We finally ordered our food, it took another 5 minutes to reach the pay window. We drove to the collection window and were asked to wait in Bay 1 as our order was not ready. We waited 15 minutes for our food, other cars were coming out of the drive thru, click and collect were receiving their orders and I noticed deliveroo drivers picking up orders. We were not the only people who waited that long, the person in front of us waited in the bay by the collection window, we were in bay 1 and the person behind us in bay 2, all waiting 15 mins. It was a dreadful service. If they can't keep up with orders coming from 4 separate ways of ordering then they should stop one. We only ordered simple food. The people queuing inside appeared to be waiting a long time too, many were pacing up and down clearly getting frustrated. We won't go to this drive thru again, we will revert back to good old Pakefield. (Not that the kids have a...