How To Get Free McDonald’s Hamburgers – If You Should Want Such Things

This seemed to hold true last week in Australia at least – it was possible to gain free hamburgers from McDonald’s. Quite why anyone would want to do so is unknown but given the billions they sell each year obviously some do. The thing being that they’ve, Maccy D’s, managed to slightly screw up the software on their “order it as you like it” bit. The discount given for taking the patty out of a burger is greater than the cost of the burger. This, with a bit of cleverness, means that entirely free burgers are possible.

Gizmodo explains:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] The trick involves exploiting a bug in McDonald’s self-ordering system that makes $1 hamburgers drop down to -$0.10. Those who have successfully tried this are doing it by adding the hamburger to an order and then customising it to remove the meat patty. This subsequently drops the price down. [/perfectpullquote]

By doing that you get free bread and pickle of course. But it’s possible to go further:

[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] By ordering 10 patty-less $1 burgers, customers can score a regular $1 hamburger for a grand total of $0. Removing the meat from the 10 burgers discounts each meal by $1.10 – providing the customers with a surplus that covers the cost of the additional regular burger. [/perfectpullquote]

This all originally turned up on Reddit:

If you go to Maccas and order a hamburger with nothing in it you gain 10c from r/australia

Or:

A couple of friends and I found out a way to get free food from Maccas, probably don’t have long before they patch it so go nuts from r/australia

What would be interesting to find out is whether this is just a glitch in the Australian software at those ordering kiosks or something more general? Our suspicion is that it’s specific to the particular price points in Oz dollars but if anyone’s thinking of trying a Maccy D’s they want to have a play with the kiosk and let us know? In other places that is?

And, obviously, just play with the software to see what happens, don’t try scamming to get a freebie. That wouldn’t be nice.