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Comment by dEnigma | Hacker News Reader

McDonald's Austria had a feedback promotion, where you got a QR code with your bill, that led you to a very short survey about your experience, at the end of which you received a voucher code for a free Coke. When I got my Coke I noticed that the (0€) bill again had a feedback QR code. Of course I had to try and see whether I could get another free Coke that way. Sure enough it worked, but I never abused it, because after two free Cokes I pretty much got everything I wanted out of it, and it had the added inconvenience of the survey. (Plus I think you had to get the coke at the same restaurant and I was afraid someone would notice.)

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I am not an active patron, but it impresses me how creative some people are at discovering these tricks. It appears that McD doesn't seem to mind, rather they leave the door slightly ajar for some tomfoolery, making the user believe they have outsmarted them; usually they are just open-secrets eg. surveys on receipts for codes, can be a random number.

https://www.lifehacker.co.uk/2014/08/29/get-much-free-mcdona...

If I owned a McD franchise and had someone willing to do this repeatedly for free Coke I'd probably allow it indefinitely to create a creature of habit who I know at some point is going to want more than a Coke...

I used to work in retail software services and this was known colloquially as, perpetrating a scam.

Many times, the teams figure out many of the ways that scams can be perpetrated. Probably the coke instance was probably considered and OKed. But you're right, people do come up with some really cleaver techniques, which, when discovered, get added to the pre-rollout test cases.

Coke pretty much costs nothing compared to the rest of the operating costs. This is why many McDs have the price of all the fountain drink sizes the same. I'm guessing only a minority of people would come in for the free drink and leave without eating something. It's the same as the monopoly game pieces they give out. Many just have things like a free hashbrown, or fries, or a drink, small things. People aren't going to both waiting in line just for something small like that so either McDs doesn't lose anything when those people don't come back or they make a real sale when they come back and buy a burger with their free fries.

the more coke McD serves, the more money for marketing it gets from Coca Cola. Thus enabling this scheme might be beneficial for McD too

Also brings in a customer who might buy another item or two, only costing McD a few pennies for a soda.

In bulk cost, it comes out to something like 2.3c per large code.

biggest cost is probably the cup, straw and labour around servicing customers and cleaning the restaurant, collecting garbage, etc. The biggest cost in the coke is likely transportation to the restaurant

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