14 DAY TRIAL // A fault in the self-service system at a McDonald’s unit in Australia allowed customers to get meals with a 50% discount.
The glitch could be exploited straight from the menu, and it would have probably taken McDonald’s some time to find out about it if someone had not posted a video on Facebook revealing the steps to get the price cut.
Four simple steps lead to the discount
Max Jalal shared the clip on Wednesday showing how he could get a family value Dinner Box that normally costs $19.95 / €17.50 for just $9.95 / €8.80 by doing nothing but using the options available on the machine.
To keep employees unware of the trickery, Jalal recommends going with the option to pay at the machine instead of at the counter.
The price cut is achieved in several steps, by going back and forth a few times to a specific option (“L AND P”) present in the drinks menu. The option is easy to spot because it shows no image of a product or price.
After repeating this step four times, Jalal’s bill was half the original value. It does not look like the glitch could be abused further than this.
As expected, the Facebook post went viral
Self-service systems have been available in other parts of the world for years, but it is unclear if this procedure has the same effect on them, too.
McDonald’s Australia has fixed the issue and the machine at the respective location should now work as intended. It is likely that this was an isolated case.
The video post on Facebook from Jalal gained a lot of attention, recording thousands of comments and 26,000 likes. The number of views at the moment of writing is over 1.25 million and it has been shared almost 16,000 times.
Some of those who commented said that McDonald’s became aware of the glitch within an hour from the video going viral and made the correction.