iFixit wants Congress to let it hack McDonald’s ice cream machines::McDonald’s ice cream machines are notorious for breaking all the time, so iFixit wants to help people repair them without the help of the manufacturer.
Let me introduce you to lobbying, and also hiring some lawyers to argue in the company’s favor.
A company like iFixit you mean? Both sides can play that game. I’ll grant you that McDonalds probably have more money to burn on bribes but still.
If I remember correctly I saw a video explaining this. Same goes with the device. Apparently the company that makes the machines and McDonalds have some sort of agreement where McDonald’s gets the machine at a huge discount but they have to use that company for repairs and only them. Win win for both. Company also added script to stop the device from working. Something like that.
Either way im at the point where I completely forget that McDonald’s has ice cream.
Here’s the video: https://piped.video/SrDEtSlqJC4?si=F9x-GPjuXEaSk7zO
Company also added script to stop the device from working. Something like that.
I don’t think it’s quite that devious. That kind of “feature” would probably be racketeering and ripe for lawsuit. I think it’s more that the machines are temperamental as fuck and the methods to fix the machines are kept under a very tight lid.
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This guy went on a deep dive to uncover the scam that is McDonald’s and their ice cream machines. https://youtu.be/SrDEtSlqJC4?si=F9x-GPjuXEaSk7zO
Worth the watch
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TLDR: Mcdonalds and an ice cream machine company are up to some scummy shit to fuck over franchises and customers for more profits.
TLDW: Mcdonalds and the company that makes almost all fast food ice cream machines, Taylor, have had a long time partnership.
Through this partnership, Mcdonalds franchises are only allowed to buy a singular type of Taylor machine. All of Taylor’s machines that other chains use work just fine, but the ones Mcdonalds is forced to use through the partnership are basically designed to be shitty. They break all the time, and when it breaks down, the error code doesn’t even tell the employees what’s wrong, even if it’s something simple the employee could fix themselves. It forces the Mcdonalds franchises to get a repair technician from Taylor making them pay assloads of money on repair costs, and these repairs of Mcdonalds’ machines account for a massive amount of Taylor’s revenue.
Mcdonalds corporate is hurt none in this process, only the franchises, so Mcdonalds Corporate and Taylor stay buddy buddy. Some other company made a third party addition for the Taylor machines that puts out proper error codes that allow employees to fix minor issues on the fly, Mcdonalds has banned their franchises from using these for “safety issues”.
I would still suggest watching the video in your spare time though, it’s a really fascinating case study of how companies collude to fuck over customers and even their own lesser partners.
Edit: Grammar, Formatting
I used to work for Taylors competition Electrofreeze as a refrigeration repair tech. if Taylor is anything like Electrofreeze it was (going back 7 years) $265 just for me to walk into the door. If you forgot to flip a switch and that’s all I had to do, $265 please.
I imagine they make a lot of money off of that. Plus marking up parts… $600 compressor we would sell for $2000.
I really enjoyed fixing things for people, I just hated having to hit them over the head with the service charge when they didn’t really need service :/
This is the best summary I could come up with:
But now we may have some glimmer of Shamrock Shake-flavored hope: not only has iFixit performed a teardown of McDonald’s machines, but it’s also petitioning the government to let it create the parts required for people to fix them.
As shown in a video posted to YouTube, iFixit purchased the same ice cream machine model used by McDonald’s and spent hours trying to get it up and running.
The machine spit out numerous error codes that iFixit says “are nonsensical, counterintuitive, and seemingly random, even if you spent hours reading the manual.”
Despite consisting of “easily replaceable parts,” such as three printed circuit boards, a motor and belt, and a heat exchanger, the ice cream machine can only be fixed by its manufacturer — Taylor — due to an agreement it has with McDonald’s.
While a company called Kytch attempted to remedy this by creating a product to read ice cream machine error codes, iFixit says McDonald’s “sent a letter to all of the franchise owners” instructing them not to use the device.
“We’d love to be able to make a device like Kytch that can read error codes on the ice cream machine we have, but we can’t because of copyright law,” Elizabeth Chamberlain, iFixit’s director of sustainability, says in the video.
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Is this a US only thing? I’ve travelled all over europe and americas and I always try to go to each country’s Mcdonalds to see if they have anything different. NEVER have I encountered a broken ice cream machine.
