McDonald's — Restaurant in Austin

Two major problems. First, if you want to place online orders or use the app deals at all, just don't go to this store unless you're okay with being told your order is actually invalid after you've been charged and have driven there. More on this later.

Second, they don't do anything to stop people from cutting in the drive thru. It's a double lane set up, where everyone enters at the same point, and then eventually splits into a primary and side lane. People will just skip the early part of the line and happily insert themselves into the side lane. They will probably tell you they didn't understand it, but they know what they're doing. I have seen even four people do this in sequence in the same visit. The store should perhaps place a cone or two to prevent entry into the side lane except from the intended route. It's not hard, and many other stores do exactly this.

So, back to the online orders. This is the most frustrating part. I've tried to understand and tolerate it, but today it just wore my patience too thin.

For over a dozen of my visits to this store over the last year, the app allowed me to place an online order, but when I went to pick it up, something went wrong: Their "system is down" and they can't see any orders (it's almost as if this happens every night) Their hours are listed wrong in the app, and so it lets you order items that they no longer serve at the current time of day. You're supposed to just figure out on your own what the real hours are. It is a 24 hour store and it is listed as such, but they do not sell every item at every time of day -- it's still important to list the individual meal period times correctly, and they've neglected to do this. I still don't even know what the actual times are.

These things happen frustratingly often if you happen to show up at certain times of day. This sometimes happened for multiple visits in a row.

Again, the app happily lets you place the order and lock your money away. Yes, it'll be refunded eventually, but it can take a week and since you can't cancel the order, you are blocked from placing an order at another store until it automatically cancels it for you. It'll mislead you into driving all the way to the store and trick you into waiting in line for however long, only to leave you frustrated to discover yet again that you've wasted 20 minutes and gas for nothing at all.

Please, if you can, fix the meal time hours so that people cannot place orders that you won't accept.

Please handle whatever is making you unable to view orders on almost a daily basis. If it's something outside of your individual store's control, then I understand if you can't do much about it, but please understand that it's still incredibly frustrating to repeatedly have this occur. Again, if it were once, twice, or even five times, I'd want to just accept it, but it happens so often that it just feels very unfair. I feel like it should not be the customer's burden to drive to your store and figure out if you actually accepted the order they already have been charged for, but instead the burden for your store/company to figure out.

I want to just tolerate it, but I have a limit. This is just too frustrating.

The food's always been...

I’ve been to this location many times, and for the most part it’s the standard McDonald’s experience that everyone expects. But there is apparently a slight problem at this one in how they train their managers.

I had submitted a mobile order here on a Saturday night. The order showed paid in the app, so I went through the drive thru, giving them the order code at the speaker, and was told to pull ahead to the window. There were about 12-15 cars in line, but this wasn’t a problem, I waited patiently until I got to the window. Once there though, I was told they couldn’t find my order. I double-checked that it said paid, and that I had selected the right store, both of which were true.

They continued to look for the order, and eventually the manager came over and told me the order wasn’t showing up in their system. I showed her my phone, and she told me to close and reopen the app. I did so, and she then told me I’d have to cancel the order and resubmit it. I started to do this, and she told me I had to pull back around to the end of the drive thru line to wait a second time. I asked her to wait 10 seconds while I completed the reorder, and she then said she was refusing my service and slammed the window.

There are several positive ways she could have handled this:

Look at my phone screen to confirm it was paid for, and then tell the kitchen to make it. Have me cancel and reorder, and wait the 10 seconds it would take for it to go through. Take the order from me (without using the app) at the window.

Any of these would have been good options, and would have meant good customer service. But none of these are what she chose. She chose to risk a customer complaint and a bad review, all over an order that totalled $5.49. This is why there’s a single star under the Service category.

When will business start to train their managers and employees the importance of good customer service? Granted good service doesn’t get acknowledged often, but the bad stuff (like this) tends to get spread far and wide (as this will if I can manage it).

One simple choice of being a positive person rather than being a negative person could have prevented this review. And I know reviews of McDonald’s probably won’t have much impact on their business, but one thing is certain: This one at least...

First off I love coming to this McDonalds since it’s so close to home but the past two experiences have made sure that I won’t be back for long while (hoping they’ve made changes by then). Last week I went and the gentleman asked me to pull forward and my order would be ready soon, and I did, not wanting to argue or question why. After waiting 10 minutes my experience sours even more when the car behind me is honking for me to get out of the way since he already got his order. After he leaves I reversed back to the window and told the gentleman I was “upset and that I know what you’re doing” (implying I know there must be a bonus for yall to have low ticket times) “and it’s not right”, he said “we do it all the time” laughing, I said “I’m sorry I’m just saying”. Tonight I went and the person taking my order was angry at the person before me so she wasn’t happy that I wanted to order another item (total of 3 individual items) then come to the window to see it must be a manager, and getting to the other window for the gentleman to ask me again to move forward. This time I asked “why? How long will it be”? And he looked over at the kitchen and said “about 3 minutes”, so I said “alright then I’ll wait right here”, which clearly infuriated him and he reminds me there’s people behind me but I remind him my order isn’t ready and he looked ready to fight. It was ready in 2 minutes, and I said “see, wasn’t that hard huh, thank you!” Just to get home and feel the need to inspect my order and sick to my stomach after a bite of both big Mac’s, I’m sure they spit in my food, so threw those away. Paid for...