The Manager
McDonalds Drive-thru
Westerhope

Dear Sir,

Yesterday night (14th August 1999) we visited your Drive-thru McDonalds at around 10.30pm for a quick late meal. Our order (number 804) was taken courteously and swiftly and we proceeded to the collection booth.

When we arrived, we were given our drinks and the person who served us disappeared to get the food. In her absence, we noticed that neither of the two cups were full and one, in particular, was well below its 0.5litre mark. When the assistant returned, she said that one of our burgers (a McXL) would be delayed by two seconds; she quickly changed her mind and said it would be two minutes. She asked us to go and wait in the car park.

Since the drinks were not full, I pointed this out and asked the assistant if she would fill them and bring them over with the food. She took the drinks from me and muttered something about the marker line. She established that one was near enough for her and the other definitely below the line; she topped this one up a little. She was not in the least bit polite about this. Indeed, considering the value to McDonalds of diet-coke, she could have afforded to be a lot more gracious and refill both cups without question.

Our wait in the parking area, which was supposed to be two minutes, lasted much nearer fifteen. Eventually, someone arrived with the food and gave it to us, without any apology whatsoever. Now completely eager to go home and eat without further delay, we left without examining our bags any further than to check everything was present.

After eating our burger meals, which we had expected to be beautifully assembled, since they had taken so long to arrive, and which we found to be thrown together haphazardly, we moved on to the donuts that we had bought as a dessert. I noticed that the donuts were not in their usual plastic boxes and so examined the box more thoroughly than I would normally do. I found a label on both boxes which said that the donuts were prepared at "10.00" and should be used by "22.00". I assume that this means that they were made that morning and should, by McDonalds' own quality control measures, not be sold to the public after 10pm. Our order was placed well after 10pm and yet we received these donuts, I was not impressed.

And so, having chosen McDonalds as a place to find fast food of a consistent quality with a reasonable level of service, we found that the quality was questionable, the service largely poor and the speed anything but fast. Perhaps this is acceptable under your style of management, perhaps not; either way, I would like to hear what comments you have to make about our experience and what measures you propose to avoid other patrons suffering as we did.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours faithfully,

Mr Ashley Frieze