Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
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Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#2I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better.
Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg: used car dealers used to do this with an "amazing deal car", which often never existed. People would come down and get enticed to a diff model at a high price.
edit: The "whoops it's unplugged" was a joke about absurd root causes, but also intended to imply equivalently poor attempts to keep the machine working. That is I do not think they literally did not plug it in, but I do think they are not trying very hard to keep the machine up and running. Other threads point out that the real root may actually be that the original creator of the machines made a complex/crap machine and the cost of technicians makes it unprofitable to bother
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#3I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
I don’t understand your opening sentence. Why would they keep it unplugged?
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#4I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
I don’t understand your opening sentence. Why would they keep it unplugged?
The gist I'm getting is that McDonald's doesn't want to be in the ice cream/soft serve business. But it also doesn't want more competition than it already has.
So every McDonald's has an ice cream machine as a more sort of "break glass in case of emergency" situation. Or in this case "in case of DQ". But if there is no DQ in the area, why operate the machine? Just have it be "broken". It's not like people have an option they didn't have before.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#5I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
I read the article and DQ wasn't mentioned. What are you getting at?
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#6I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
DQ is Dairy Queen. For anyone else that is confused.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#7I hope this case compels evidence into public light around any shady business practices that were taking place.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#8Don't light your grill in someone else's lawn and expect your party keep on forever.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#9I cant think of anything more definitionally anti-competitive than keeping mcflurry machines available so you can crush any DQ that pops up in your vicinity by fixing it ("oh whoops... it was unplugged!"), and then also crushing a business that aims to solve your problem to help serve customers better. Let's get the FTC on this, afaik it's illegal to advertise a product you have no intention of actually serving. eg:…
I don’t understand your opening sentence. Why would they keep it unplugged?
Parent post appears to be alleging that McDonalds - or their franchisees - only serve ice cream purely to starve competitors out of the fast food market, and then disconnects or damages those machines in order to get out of having to actually sell that ice cream.
Personally, I don't think that holds water. Everyone involved in this drama wants ice cream in the stores. It's not like McDonalds corporate has some Jobsian disgust towards putting ice cream and a burger in the same meal or anything. The far easier explanation is that McDonalds paid Taylor for a custom machine that's extremely temperamental, not that they secretly want to ban their own product because it's ice cream.
Re: Ice cream machine hackers sue McDonald's
#10This great (mini) YouTube documentary gives some background what lead up to the lawsuit. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrDEtSlqJC4)