Though other dining options have been on the
rise in recent years, America is still very much a Fast Food Nation. But your favorite drive-thru spot, like any
world-conquering corporation, has likely bent the rules a bit from time-to-time to rake
in more moolah. Here are a few fast food restaurants that
have straight-up cheated customers. Who tracks the tracker? Domino's kick-started its pizza delivery tracker
in 2008, and in theory, it's pretty handy. But by 2017, a lot of people had determined
that the tracker didn't match what was actually happening on their doorstep. According to the Wall Street Journal, customers
say that not only was the tracker getting delivery times wrong, it wasn't even getting
the delivery person right. Domino's responded to Fox News saying it was
all legit, but alleged employees and angry customers took to Reddit long before that
to say that the name of the person making your pizza was usually just the manager's
name, and the app is pretty much just a fancy 30-minute timer. A former Domino's employee wrote a HuffPo
blog post claiming the tracker was sort of legit, but the problem was that employees
could easily manipulate the system. Drivers would set up dummy accounts, for example,
to make it easier for them to combine deliveries into one trip, and employees in-store would
mark deliveries as finished to make their team's numbers look better. The moral of the story? Don't put too much faith in the tracker. McMath You hit McDonald's for lunch, order a sandwich,
fries, and a drink… but wait. There's an Extra Value Meal for that, and
it's going to save you money, right? Not necessarily. Savvy shopper Kelly Killeen filed a lawsuit
against McDonald's over the price of her breakfast Extra Value Meal. Her argument was that a sausage burrito meal
with hash browns and coffee cost $5.08, but separately, the items would have cost $4.97. That's pretty misleading, but a court of law says it isn't illegal. "I've put together some really impressive
deals, but this thing you've pulled off, it's amazing." The case was dismissed in April 2018, and
the official ruling was that McDonald's wasn't breaking the law with their so-called Extra
Value Meals since the prices for all menu items were clearly listed. As Judge Elaine Bucklo ruled, "Here, a straightforward, price-to-price comparison
based on information available at the point of purchase would unequivocally dispel any
misleading inference that could be drawn." So it's up to you to do the math, because
pricing at McDonald's doesn't work like you think it does. Cheese cheats In 2016, McDonald's had a ton of problems
with their short-lived cheese sticks, starting with customers complaining because they found
their cheese sticks were missing something important: the cheese. According to NBC Chicago, so many people posted
photos of empty breading shells that McDonald's was forced to make a statement saying the
cheese seemed to have melted out during cooking, and they were sorry. And one California customer who managed to
get some cheese in his cheese sticks filed a lawsuit claiming it wasn't the "real mozzarella"
and "100 percent cheese" that was advertised, but a cheese product made with fillers. McDonald's issued another statement saying, "We intend to defend ourselves vigorously
against these allegations." The company made promises to address the cheese
problem after the first wave of complaints and photos hit social media, but instead,
discontinued the mozzarella sticks not long after. McDonald's found themselves facing another
cheesy lawsuit in 2018, this time over the Quarter Pounder. According to the lawsuit, the only way to
get a Quarter Pounder without cheese is to order a full-priced Quarter Pounder, but ask
for it without cheese — in spite of the fact that a cheaper, cheeseless version of
the burger was advertised on menus in-stores and online. Cheese-free Quarter Pounders at lower prices
have since disappeared from store signage. The lawsuit states: "McDonald's is being unjustly enriched by
these practices, because it receives payment for cheese it does not deliver to its customers." McDonald's says the pending lawsuit is "nonsense,"
and it opens the restaurant world up for "utter chaos." Something's fishy In 2013, the Center for Science in the Public
Interest took a look at Long John Silver's Big Catch meal. Bottom line: anyone who gets one of these
meals because they're thinking fish is a healthier option is sorely mistaken. Loaded with 33 grams of fat and a shocking
3700 milligrams of sodium, it was ultimately named the "Worst Restaurant Meal in America." "Wow!" But there was some shadiness going on here,
too. Customers weren't even getting what they paid
for. Even though it was advertised as being between
7 and 8 ounces of premium haddock, CSPI said their samples were only 4.5 ounces of fish,
and 3 ounces of deep-fried batter. That makes it only about 60 percent fish,
and sure, deep-fried batter is great, but that's not in line with what they were advertising. Two months after their findings were released,
Long John Silver's announced they were planning to discontinue the meal and change their frying
process
