12 Common Customer Complaints About McDonald's

As one of the biggest fast food chains in both the United States and the world, and arguably the one that takes up the most cultural space, McDonald's has served a lot of customers over the years — and we mean a lot. Around 63 million people visit or order McDonald's online every single day across the globe, and amidst all of those customers, there are bound to be a few who aren't fully satisfied. At that scale, it's inevitable — but what's interesting is that, for all its limitless resources and customer feedback, McDonald's still seems to fall short in key areas when it comes to diner experience. If you thought its customers would be shy about voicing their complaints, you'd be mistaken.

Some common customer complaints about McDonald's will be familiar to a lot of people who have eaten there over the years. Declining food quality, a strict cutoff for breakfast, and a perceived loss of charm are amongst the most frequent gripes. Other complaints have popped up more recently, from unmixed McFlurries and self-service kiosks being a relatively new source of stress for its patrons. We've already discussed the customer habits that McDonald's employees can't stand; now, let's flip the script and look at what McDonald's does that annoys its customers.

A mixed McFlurry — it's now a thing of the past. Until a few years ago, McDonald's employees would stir your McFlurry and its mix-ins together before handing it to you, leaving you to do nothing more than dig in. Then, everything changed. In 2023, McDonald's announced it would be giving its McFlurry spindles a makeover to improve sustainability and reduce single-use plastic waste. This was (and is), in theory, a good thing — but the problem for customers was this spindle was also used to stir McFlurries before serving them.

McDonald's promised McFlurries would still go through a mixing process, but cut to a few years later, and it seems like that's been phased out. Throughout 2025, we started to see an uptick in complaints that McFlurries were no longer being mixed, with toppings dumped on top instead. Now, customers are left to stir in the toppings themselves. For the most part, this isn't a huge inconvenience — but it reflects a culture where you're being given less for the same price. Either way, it doesn't look like McDonald's is going to revert to mixing them any time soon.

Some say that a lot of fast food chains have seriously dipped in quality lately, and McDonald's is no stranger to these accusations. In fact, it's probably fielded more criticism about the taste, appearance, and freshness of its food than any other brand out there. Part of that is to do with its massive market footprint — but a lot of it is because a huge number of customers feel things have taken a turn for the worse, and almost all of the chain's core menu items have been called out for losing their spark over the years.

Some have noticed things have gotten particularly bad recently, and especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, customers say McDonald's sandwiches are dry, mealy, and laughably small; its fries have no spark to them whatsoever; and some menu items – especially its chicken ones – have rubbery, unappealing textures. When you combine that with a feeling everything's gotten more expensive, customers now have a sense they're paying more for less. That's enough to leave a bad taste in anyone's mouth.

Ah, the McDonald's apple pie. So consistently disappointing. Well, according to customers, anyway. The apple pie at McDonald's was once a thing of beauty: A fried rectangle of pastry and apple filling, which was crunchy, sweet, hot, and comforting. That was before McDonald's changed it in the early 1990s in a bid to offer a healthier version, turning the fried apple pie into a baked one — and upsetting a lot of people in the process. Since then, the original fried apple pie has been held up as a symbol of nostalgia, with customers missing it and bemoaning the substandard nature of the passionless baked version.

Imagine these customers' happiness, then, when McDonald's announced it was bringing back its fried apple pie in honor of the 250th birthday of the United States. It should have been a cause for celebration, right? Well, it wasn't. Shortly after McDonald's dropped the fried apple pie in summer 2026, diners flocked to the internet to complain about it. One person on Reddit said it tastes like a "rancid hostess pie," while others said it wasn't as sweet or robust as the original version. Looks like McDonald's is damned if it does and damned if it doesn't when it comes to its pie.

Until recently, McDonald's was offering some pretty decent deals through its app. As with other reward schemes, you could build up points to redeem on items, while also taking advantage of discount deals when buying food (like fries in any size for $1 with the purchase of another menu item). In the first few months of 2026, though, things shifted. McDonald's announced you'd need more points for certain rewards, thereby putting freebies further out of reach — and needless to say, people were not happy in the slightest.

Now, barely a day goes by without a once-happy McDonald's customer complaining that its deals have gone downhill, and some have even said it's no longer worth having the app to begin with. Not only have the deals gotten worse, but they've also become less frequent; offers that you could redeem once a day are now only available once a week. When you combine this with perceived price hikes, it's no wonder people are lukewarm on this restaurant these days.

One thing McDonald's could always rely on was its prices. Yes, it may not offer top-of-the-line, gourmet fast food, but that isn't what it's going for. Instead, it's quick and (most importantly) affordable. That doesn't feel like the case anymore for a lot of customers, though. People now increasingly complain McDonald's has become way more expensive, to the point where they'd rather scope out other fast food options than head to one of its restaurants.

This is all despite McDonald's saying, back in 2024, it would focus more on affordability following lower sales across its stores and an increasing awareness that its prices may have moved out of the reach of some customers. This is also despite the customer perception that the chain is bigger and more successful than ever, leading some to question why they're paying double what they used to for the same burger. Ultimately, some people have decided it's just not worth dining at McDonald's anymore – and we don't know if we can blame them.

Just because something's been around for a while doesn't mean people don't complain about it. In the case of McDonald's breakfast menu, that "something" is its cut-off time. McDonald's has long had a strict cut-off time for the breakfast menu (typically 10:30 a.m., although in some places, it serves its McMuffins and hash browns until the slightly later time of 11:00 a.m.). There's very little wiggle room on this: If you arrive at your local McDonald's even a minute or two after the cut-off, you'll have to make do with its lunch menu instead.

This is something a lot of customers really don't like – not just because of the lack of flexibility, but because it didn't always used to be this way. Between 2015 and 2020, McDonald's served breakfast all day, so customers were given the flexibility to take a later start to their day while still getting their grub. Now, though, their options are limited, and they miss the way things used to be. For some, it feels like McDonald's is being unnecessarily strict around items that really aren't much trouble to make in the first place.

Leave it to new technology to cause frustration. At McDonald's, that new technology has come in the form of its kiosks. McDonald's started rolling out self-service kiosks in its stores in 2018, and nearly a decade later, they've become the standard way to order. Now, instead of speaking to someone at the counter, you have to tap away at a screen.

This has annoyed customers ever since the earliest days of these kiosks being in place at McDonald's, and the negative sentiment towards them hasn't gone away. The main problem people have with these kiosks is that, while they aim to streamline the ordering process, they actually make things more complicated. Customers find their interface clunky and difficult to navigate, and when they have problems, they find McDonald's employees are less than forthcoming about trying to help. People also resent being upsold while they order, making the process longer and more irritating overall. They might be fine for some people, but by and large, customers don't have many nice things to say about them.

If you regularly order a Filet-O-Fish, you should really know the deal with this one — but even if you do, you may not like it. The Filet-O-Fish has always been served with a half-slice of cheese instead of a full one. The reasoning behind it, which has been in place for decades, is that a full slice of cheese might overwhelm the flavor of the fish, and a half-slice boosts the taste of the sandwich without becoming the main event.

That isn't a good enough reason for a lot of customers, though, many of whom complain about the tiny slice of cheese that comes on the sandwich and would prefer a full slice of cheese instead. Some people feel this doesn't quite square up price-wise, and they're paying over the odds for less — especially if they choose to double-up on the cheese, paying the same amount for the extra as they would on sandwiches with full slices. Additionally, the half-slice of cheese can also cause assembly issues, ending up off-center and sometimes smeared on the side of the box. The Filet-O-Fish may be fresher than you'd think and an underrated choice at McDonald's, but the cheese needs some work.

For a lot of people, the fries at McDonald's are the best part of the meal — or they used to be, at least. That's before the restaurant started serving up fries that are consistently cold, according to customers. McDonald's diners have increasingly felt its fries are losing their magic and are instead dished up like they've been sitting out for hours or are otherwise soggy and limp. It's gotten to the point that some customers are more surprised when they're actually hot and fresh – which is, of course, how they should be.

So, why is this the case? Some customers reason the recent downturn in fry quality might be down to the potatoes themselves, and have accused the chain of using vegetables with a lower moisture content. Others feel its employees just don't care about the fries being as good as they can be, and the fact they often get thrown into the bag haphazardly and are therefore not insulated by anything doesn't help. You can improve your McDonald's fries by asking for salt on the side, which then prompts the staf to cook them fresh — but bear in mind that if there's a long queue, this might not be received well.

McDonald's is an astonishingly successful business that takes in more money per day than most of us will ever see in a lifetime. So, why can't it get its app right? The McDonald's app first came out in 2015, so the company has had more than a decade to optimize it and make it user-friendly — and yet, customers complain almost constantly about it and its operational ability. The app, they say, is buggy, slow and clunky, and poorly formatted, with text running off the screen, making it difficult to actually read what it's trying to tell you. What's more, it often suffers from outages, preventing customers from ordering through it and contradicting the ease and speed it's meant to create.

There's also its ad-heavy nature, which customers loathe. People speak of having to navigate through multiple pop-ups and videos before they can get to the ordering screen, and then it navigates you to a different section entirely. It even struggles on the most expensive, high-powered phones out there. C'mon, McDonald's — throw a bit more cash into your app development budget.

The paradoxical nature of drive-thrus can be summed up in one sentence: Everyone uses them to speed things up, but because every customer's doing the same thing, they make things slower. Nowhere is that more apparent than at McDonald's. The speed of its drive-thrus is a constant source of frustration for customers, some of whom are unable to understand why it hasn't been able to get a handle on moving people through at a quicker pace. Some people report waiting in the drive-thru line for 15 minutes or more, and others have ended up abandoning their orders entirely and going elsewhere.

The longer waits might be understandable if McDonald's was making its food to order, or if it was putting together items that required a lot of attention, care, and time — but it isn't. The chain prides itself on its speed and ultra-efficient assembly line process, so it can be slightly baffling for diners when they have to sit in their cars for so long. Some have even accused McDonald's of getting too comfortable with extended waiting times. If it's not careful, it might lose its reputation for dishing up rapid food.

Few things conjure up a sense of nostalgia like the fast food restaurants of the past. There was once a time when McDonald's and the like didn't feel like the mega-corporations that they are today. Yes, they were franchises and profit-focused businesses, but they also retained a sense of warmth and charm. That's something customers seriously miss when it comes to Mickey D's. The restaurant used to have character; its marketing was colorful and vibrant, with a human touch, and add-ons for kids (like the McDonaldland Fun Times magazine and Playplaces) made it feel like the kind of place you could wile away the hours in.

Now, though, McDonald's is austere and somewhat depressing – and customers feel it. "Their new industrial greige motifs (inside and out) and forcing app/kiosk use are dystopian as hell," said one comment on Reddit. The commenter also reasoned the sense of unfriendliness was part of a ploy to push people towards ordering delivery or through the drive-thru. The restaurant recently announced its McDonald's > NEXT plan, and with it, a renewed focus on interiors that provide a sense of playfulness — but can it really recapture what it once was?