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McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

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Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#61

Post by ThePowerOfFuet »

technofiend wrote: post #51
101404 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder why systems like this so rarely do even basic plausibility checks before data is updated.

It saves so many headaches. I used to support a system with an automated fallback. If today's feed wasn't in by cutoff then the previous day's feed was used. Unfortunately we'd sometimes get partial or corrupted feeds. Partial feeds triggered investigation and possibly a manual rerun and corrupted ones often halted the system. Because we only used monthly numbers for reporting, delaying and rerunning any other day wa…

>I got in a boatload of trouble for other reasons but that's another story.

You cannot just drop that line and walk away. Storytime?

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#62

Post by progval »

bwilliams18 wrote: post #45
saghm wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, their employees had to do all the work to make that food without the franchise getting revenue for it, but the employees were presumably still paid

But the people were already there, it only happened over the course of a single day; it's not like they paid the people more because they were busier or making more orders.

They can only handle so many orders in a given hour. If too many people took advantage of this, then queues probably got longer, discouraging potential customers.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#64

Post by agumonkey »

yoz-y wrote: post #53
Karto wrote: post #36

It might be a stunt, but stuff like that happens. Many years ago I used to work for a large European company that ran a booking system for several hundreds of airlines. The system was used as a back-end by more than one famous online booking site. Currency rates were updated automatically. Once, on a new year's eve, at midnight, a glitch slipped into the Canadian dollar conversion rate, setting 1 CAD to 0 EUR. All of…

Amadeus? I remember at some point the French computer retailer had an issue when running a "buy 2 get 1 free" offer on blu-rays. One could remove the two bought items from the cart and the free one would remain. Repeat ad-libidum. Last year Amazon ran an offer where all photographic gear cost $94. All of it, even lenses which retailed for over 13k. https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/07/19/amazon-prime-... If th…

Similarly long ago, a french amazon like site offered (alapage?) a 5e rebate for new customers, one coupon per person, and a person being identified by its delivery (fullname, address) pair. Except that they used string equality as comparison which means every typo combination got you a new account.

Suddenly anything I never could find a figure nor an article in the news but considering how fast this spread around, it was an expensive mistake.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#66

Post by frosted-flakes »

macpete wrote: post #44

Even for free I will not eat that processed garbage

I have friends like you. They decry McDonald's food as super bad for you—and then turn around and eat at the fancy burger place where a single burger and fries sets you back $20. Even though it's literally the same food: beef patty, white bun, ketchup, processed cheese, onions, and lettuce. And they get the pop and greasy fries too.

What's bad about McDonald's is not that the food is unhealthy (it is, but no more than most restaurants), but that the food is so cheap that so many people regularly eat it instead of proper home-cooked meals. Also, it's easy to get way too much food and sugary pop.

I eat at McDonald's a few times a month, but I don't view it as an unhealthy habit. My typical meal is two sandwiches, either McDoubles or Junior Chickens. That's less than 800 calories in total (I usually drink water). I rarely go for the combo meals or the big sandwiches.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#67

Post by 1123581321 »

cruzah wrote: post #13

Here in Australia, the app has placed several phantom orders which I have paid for but did not actually order. Have tried to contact McDonalds but they did not respond. It was only 4 or 5 coffees so I deleted the app. Should've chased it harder but didn't have the time.

In the US, there are a couple of locations where, at certain times of the day, the app will process your payment but the location will not receive the order. Later, the payment either reverses or doesn’t actually bill.

I assume it’s related to an equipment problem at these locations, since they’re also often cash-only after 2am, and possibly an address location since both insist they have a different address than what’s reported in the app.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#68

Post by MisterBastahrd »

Karto wrote: post #36

It might be a stunt, but stuff like that happens. Many years ago I used to work for a large European company that ran a booking system for several hundreds of airlines. The system was used as a back-end by more than one famous online booking site. Currency rates were updated automatically. Once, on a new year's eve, at midnight, a glitch slipped into the Canadian dollar conversion rate, setting 1 CAD to 0 EUR. All of…

A cigar retailer I used to frequent had a buy 1, get 1 free special on a variety of cigar 5 packs on their site. One day, a cigar I loved was no longer part of this deal, so out of interest, I found the id of the product and placed it in the request. It worked!

That was a problem. So I emailed them to let them know that it was an issue, and received a phone response. I was told "oh, that's not a big deal." I responded by telling them to place a $500 box of cigars in the field.

NOW it was a big deal.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#69

Post by stevenjohns »

cruzah wrote: post #13

Here in Australia, the app has placed several phantom orders which I have paid for but did not actually order. Have tried to contact McDonalds but they did not respond. It was only 4 or 5 coffees so I deleted the app. Should've chased it harder but didn't have the time.

Just give them a call, they credit you immediately. I had the same thing happen at Sydney International Airport a few months ago - I placed one order but it went through five times. It didn't show up on the app and didn't show up on their registers, but I was definitely billed for it.

A two-minute phone call and they refunded it all.

Re: McDonald's app bug let people order for free in France

#70

Post by technofiend »

ThePowerOfFuet wrote: post #61
technofiend wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It saves so many headaches. I used to support a system with an automated fallback. If today's feed wasn't in by cutoff then the previous day's feed was used. Unfortunately we'd sometimes get partial or corrupted feeds. Partial feeds triggered investigation and possibly a manual rerun and corrupted ones often halted the system. Because we only used monthly numbers for reporting, delaying and rerunning any other day wa…

>I got in a boatload of trouble for other reasons but that's another story. You cannot just drop that line and walk away. Storytime?

This predated DevOps: we were using the Carnegie Mellon Capability and Maturity Model (CMM) which split roles into Plan, Build, Operate and Control with me in the Operate tier. I proposed the change, got Build to schedule and release it but I didn't get buy in from the architect of the system. He was toweringly, incandescently angry that I had dared touch his design. To the point where I think he tried to get me fired over it. Fortunately cooler heads prevailed because really I was right and it was all just an ego thing on his part. I took a page from my boss who was masterful at dealing with these kinds of things. We buried the architect in all things operational to the point where he eventually asked us to stop and grudgingly allowed we knew what we were doing. I don't know if he believed it or just wanted the emails to stop.
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