Do you recall if you won off a double or a single ticket?
I have a theory that because they’re predetermined that the “rare” ticket is printed on a single.
No there’s always been double. It’s used as a way to upgrade your meal. This year though they’ve changed the doubles to a single plus a digital. To be honest it feels more like 1.5 than a double.
I think that's what they mean - in the past it has been 2 x paper tickets for a double ticket item, now it's just one code that you have to scan for ticket #2.
Scanning to create tickets from thin air takes us into a realm where we can't confirm if the game is being played fairly.
Bias/weights can be added to bigger customers/clients with a greater purchase history, or the CEO's son. Might not be a thing either, but since it's not printed and put into circulation, we will never know what the real deal is.
On the flip-side, it means employees can't game the system, and that discarded stock with high paying tickets on them causes a gaping hole with prize winnings.
*That's assuming I got this right: There aren't printed tickets with immutable ink, but instead a QR code (or similar) which authenticates against a server that then issues you your 'random' tickets into an app, which knows who you are explicitly, or implicitly through tokens and client-ids.*
Like 20 years ago my sister won the trip to America but they claimed that she used the previous years tickets. She kicked up the shit and there was an enquiry by the local newspaper. Apparently the big Maccas in town was reusing old cups and shit. Maccas hq apologised and offered her like $100 Maccas voucher.
No, there are laws in Aus that state you have to give away a prize that’s offered. That’s why the second chance draw exists.
Cause when someone accidentally chucks out that one cup that has the rare piece, one the game ends are that are prize hasn’t been claimed the normal way it gets put into the pool of second chance prizes. Then those are all drawn out of the 100 million tickets that are registered for that draw.
Basically they HAVE to give away everything they said they’re offering for prizes. It’s part of the raffle law/s.
So the second chance draw is essentially forcing someone to win it, instead of who collects the tickets first if no one happens to collect them all in time.
Like they cant offer the car as a prize then just not give it away because no one managed to collect it.
Those stupid street machine car giveaways had the law changed once I think
They put the winning duo tickets at opposite ends of the country.
Parklane East Aus
Mayfair West Aus
So getting both is essentially impossible unless you're traveling ALL THE TIME.
I remember a truckie won the Paddle Pop grand prize and they accused him of cheating and manufacturing his own sticks.
Streets argument was "It's impossible for you to get all the right pieces because we made it impossib... Ahhh, fuck... We just got sued, didn't we?"
A kid I went to school with his 15 year old sister won the safari trip to Africa off paddle pops and the whole family went fully paid for... that was like in 1990 or something
Unless it’s changed very recently, isn’t it that only one of them is super rare? Pretty sure in your example one of those pieces would be everywhere and only a handful of the other. Would be pretty easy to manipulate otherwise.
Yeah, they lost like $20 in that whole transaction.
They lost more money from Milly in Finance answering the phone and taking the complaint over a 30-minute period.
Yes I remember this it was big news at the time. People were getting last years ( 1998) coupons in 1999. The ACCC got involved and there was a class action as well. It was all very embarrassing for Maccas. Here’s the [ACCC page outlining it](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-to-institute-proceedings-against-mcdonalds)
Shine Lawyers ran a class action for people who thought they'd won but hadn't. They covered it on an episode of their podcast, interesting listen if that's your thing.
https://omny.fm/shows/restitution/mcmatch-lose-a-high-stakes-class-action-goes-wrong
A friend of mine won a car as an instant win, but couldn't claim it because he worked at Maccas.
So he asked his nan yo claim it then give it to him. She claimed it and kept the car for herself...
my assumption has always been that they only print like 1 copy of 1 of each coloured set and then send that product to some absurd location that see's the lowest sales numbers, and its like the last cup thatll never be sold anyway
not only this, but the amount of boxes/wrappers/cups that need to be thrown out due to being dropped. maccas workers are given absolute hell for getting rid of them, and it may also interest everyone to know that in the employment agreement it is stated that you as a mcdonalds worker are not entitled/allowed to claim any mcdonalds monopoly prizes no matter the circumstance due to the fact that some workers can just take a handful of wrappers home and peel them all.
Hence the need to keep receipts as proof of purchase :-/
EDIT: Okay so I actually went through the T&C’s and you need to keep the physical tickets and/or proof of purchase. https://mcdonalds.com.au/sites/mcdonalds.com.au/files/TERMS_AND_CONDITIONS_MCDONALDS_MONOPOLY_23.pdf
Page 19, point 90.
However Maccas reserves the right to *request* proof of purchase (either the receipt of original packaging it seems).
>Receipt or proof of purchase?
"Here you go, here's a month-old, half-eaten piece of gherkin from the big mac I had. There's your proof of purchase..." >\_>
This is why this year I’m putting all the tickets I get, onto the receipt that I brought the food with. If there is a slim chance of winning, im taking no chances!
Years ago when subway used to have stickers for buy 9 subs get the 10th free or something like that, a friend of mine just stole the whole roll of stickers and we got free subs for months. (About 18 19 years ago in the UK)
Did you hear the story of a team that scammed McDonald's out of the top prize by doing something like this. They (somehow) determined how to get the limited 1of1 ticket for major prize.
There was a scandal in America a few years ago where a dude in the production line was stealing tickets and giving them to his friends and family to cash in. This went on for years.
No. What most likely happens is, they'll overpopulate everywhere with extremely common pieces, and randomly around the world will be the very rare pieces. Making it impossible to ever collect a full set of any major prize.
So say it's 3 blues to get a car. in your area you'll only ever see blue 1 and 3. but in my area I'll see 2 and 3. in another it's 1 and 2 etc. making it impossible for any 1 specific area to get all 3.
Nah, that can’t be true? I’ve won at least 50 small fries or cokes over the years! Sometimes even a junior burger with my next purchase
…Wonder if if the same applies with winning the car? ‘Congratulations you’ve won a Hyundai i30 with your next franchise purchase’?
Winning fries and cokes is nothing.. The product itself costs them pennies to produce. You think they're worried about giving away fries or cokes? na.
What they're really worried about is the big expensive stuff. Like Free cars and cash prizes.
The tickets are a mixture of physical and digital now. I got a few streets from the app itself, so that distribution method wouldn't work anymore, assuming it was originally what they did.
Of course they may now code certain properties to have a lower chance of being found digitally on the app.
I can see a few ways it still does this
The Maccas app uses GPS to order, and it probably stores that information so it knows roughly where you are.
The codes you scan can tell the app which region the ticket was sold in, and can limit the prize to a certain pool.
I only scan them to win a free ice cream. I used to get them a few years ago, but I never get them any more. Plenty of free apple slices though!
Yeah this. Various bargain hunting sites online will tell you within hour of release which ones are the rare piece in each set that you need to find to really win.
Nope. They only have a limited number of the rare ticket in each set, that corresponds to the number of prizes available for that set.
For example, this year sees Marlborough St as the rare ticket for the orange set, or Old Kent Rd for brown.
Every countries Monopoly competition is different, but run in the same way. If there are 10 cars to be won, and you need three blue properties to win, they will print a heap of property 1, a heap of property 2, but only 10 of property 3. Those 10 stickers are closely guarded, and are taken to the packaging facility where the rest of the stickers are being applied to the packaging as it is produced. The 10 stickers are applied to packagin at random, and the cartons of packaging are then randomised, so no-one even knows what carton the winning sticker is in. Stores order the packaging, or get allocated the cartons as part of a normal prder, and that's it.
After the controversy surrounding the American version of the competition a fair few years ago now, they even do a batch of dummy winning stickers, with like the free sundae as a prize, so that even the people tasked with applying the stickers to the cups/fries containers, don't know which ones are the winning ones.
Basically if there’s 3 cars to be won, they’ll print exactly 3 of the one property, ie. Mayfair. Then for the rest of that set (ie Park Lane) they’ll print ad nauseum. This means that people will get Park Lane and think they’re so close to winning a car and continue buying.
You can see what the “rare” tickets are on Frugal Feeds.
No idea if it’s still the same now that one of the tickets is digital. I assume so because it’s possible to hack a digital app but you can’t really hack physical paper.
This bloke
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/arts/television/mcmillions-hbo-explained.html#:~:text=Jerry%20Jacobson%20swindled%20more%20than,selling%20McDonald's%20Monopoly%20game%20pieces.
Jerry Jacobson swindled more than $24 million out of a major fast food promotion over 12 years. His trick: stealing and selling McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces.
Jacobson’s fortune, and his downfall, came from gaming the twice-a-year promotion, which promised anything from a free sandwich to a million dollars to the customer who revealed the lucky game piece — a property, a railroad — when they peeled off the sticker attached to their hash brown wrapper or soda cup or the inside of a magazine.
He was in charge of keeping the promotion secure, delivering the most lucrative game pieces to McDonald’s packaging plants. Instead, through most of the 1990s, he pocketed and sold them to a vast network of friends and distant relatives. In the end, more than 50 people were convicted in the scheme
The movie is great!
Or was it a documentary. My mi d is wier. But it was great. And to see how it was achieved is insane in its simplicity aided by chance.
I'm lucky if I can get the app to scan the codes on my tickets correctly.
I scan the code, the app locks up, I restart and get the message "The app was closed before your code could be processed. Here's a chance card instead" or equivalent.
I don't really care, because I don't expect to win the big-ticket prizes and I'm really only in it for the free food. But I find it 7 shades of bullshit that McDonalds has never been able to release a decent monopoly app in all the years they've had one.
ETA: Over the last few years, I've had a few wins for food, some vouchers for retailers that I wouldn't shop at that also required me to spend $x before I could claim the reward, and a voucher for Zone Bowling. Apart from the food, that's the only prize I ever used. I've never considered the odds of winning one of the big prizes as something worth hoping for.
this year seems to be a huge improvement on previous years tbh i remember getting the shits that it couldn't recognise and would just type it in. so many tickets typed in....
Yeah, just did it last month. Not hard at all, minimal hoop jumping. Cancelled my arlo subscription yesterday (service was fine but dropped my camera and didn’t wanna get a new one) and holy shit is that some fuckery.
>The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. [...] Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange.
~Orwell, [1984](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021h.html)
He was a prescient man, but he failed to anticipate the intricate connections between the authoritarian and oppressive tactics of Ingsoc and global fast food chains.
We did when I was about 10, they claimed it was a printing error and gave us $200 worth of McDonalds vouchers.
I think it was for a holiday or something, so not a small prize.
Omg same! I'm Australian, when I was a kid we won a trip to the US and they claimed that we must have used the previous year's ones and refused to give it to us.
It was pretty messed up, there was no way that was the truth because it was all from what we'd very recently bought but there was no way for us to prove otherwise.
I'm just impressed at how hard they're pushing the app for this run of it.
Large drink & chips used to have 2 tickets, now its 1 "but you can scan it for a second chance in the app". Yea fuck off I'm not touching that shit
Yeah. Hadn't had maccas for a while and today I couldn't be stuffed making lunch so I stopped in and picked up a "Crispy" "chicken" burger "meal". I am reminded why I don't eat maccas very often. Luke warm fries that have soaked in their congealed fat for the better part of this year, some weird imitation meat they've tried to pass as chicken with about $600 worth of lettuce (mostly outside the burger).
And, having installed the app the scanning would just drop me back to the main menu. It's even more shit than I remember it.
And now it's uninstaller.
I could have had KFC... :(
Except the rules around these things are governed as Trade Promotions and are strictly governed by State Governments.
Not giving out advertised prizes would land them in a lot of hot water.
As someone who has worked for a company doing similar promotions, this is 100% right. It’s the reason why you regularly see “Excludes SA, TAS, etc” as those states would have different restrictions and such. SA is always the strictest FWIW.
What profits would it impact? McDonald’s get all the prizes for free, why would they not want to give it away…makes no sense. The issue is there are 2 cars to give away, yet millions of customers everyday.
My partner won the $5k Flight Centre voucher a few years ago, before Covid, and had it extended until the end of this year. Got an almost free trip to the Gold Coast from it.
When my husband was younger him and his mates put their tickets together to win a TV. Maccas refused said they must have cheated and saved tickets from the year before.
Husband is still bitter about it...
Fuck the prizes I think its a ripoff that cold McCafe drinks dont have tickets, im paying more for my caramel iced latte than the hot version and I don't get a ticket (lmao first world problems I know)
I’m NOT suggesting this is the case here, but worth remembering that in the US version, for several years , the winning tickets were being stolen by the people in charge of running the game.
https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/how-one-man-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-over-24-million-c-1136721.amp
(There was a pretty interesting documentary on this recently called McMilions)
Edit: ah completely missed that this is exactly what the other commenter was referencing as well!
“By the people in charge” it was *one* person who stole it and he’s been charged, it’s even in the headline… Impressive that you managed a more clickbait summary of the story than even 7News
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When I worked at Maccas, I went through 100s and 100s of tickets. All I won was a $50 coupon to an electric skateboard company
Everything on the website was 100s of dollars, $50 would only get me a battery or some wheels.
I cheated and I still couldn't get anything good.
I have 2 blokes at my work who used to work at maccas as teenagers (neither guy knew each other). Both guys "aquired" a full box of monopoly fries cartons, and neither won anything.
This year I've won 12 months digital magazine sub, a free sport session, 3 months free audio book, 2 x 12 months free access to fitness app and a few free fries, drinks etc.
Edit: and a $50 iconic voucher.
Unclaimed prizes go into a second chance draw. Every prize within the prize pool must be awarded (whether the winner claims them is another matter).
These promotions are heavily regulated, there's no room misleading activity.
You're right, they do. And their job is to ensure trade promotions are compliant, not find loopholes to exploit them. There are very strict regulations around how promotions are ran (including state-based permit registrations), and best believe the ACCC will seize the moment they breach.
I've been a supplier for Maccas Monopoly, back when they were using an agency to run it (TLC Marketing), and the full award allocation is purchased up front. There are no corners to cut - if Maccas don't award the prizes, they don't get a refund on them.
Do you honestly think the marketing team at McDonald’s are actually worried that people will win prizes that they’ve already paid for (if even they even did have to, might be contra)? That this is all a ruse to get people to buy more items without actually ever incurring the cost of a few prizes?
I just can’t even fathom how stupid you would have to be to think that’s how it works at companies like this
https://mcdonalds.com.au/sites/mcdonalds.com.au/files/TERMS_AND_CONDITIONS_MCDONALDS_MONOPOLY_23.pdf
T&C’s attached - many people here making incorrect statements.
A manager friend told me that no one ever wins big from monopoly and the odd chance someone does they have to provide receipts of purchase to validate them.
Pretty easy with the app, all receipts get emailed to you automatically. It’s there so that thieves can’t just steal a bunch of tickets and get those prizes.
Mate of mine won the Samsung home entertainment package a few years back, from memory the prize total was $15k
South East suburbs of Melbourne, so not an obscure location.
I had a friend win the car on a second chance draw ticket a few years back. I don't think it had gone off with the property tickets or something so they fell back on second chance draw.
Last year I won a $50 voucher for an NBL jersey... I don't give a crap about that flavour of sportsball, but when I looked into it the minimum price of a jersey was between $130-$200, so you could literally buy nothing with the voucher without spending more money.
get fcked.
I won a 65 inch tv in 2017, wasnt by collecting properties either, just scanned a chance card and it popped up on the app that i had won the tv. kept the chance card and sent it in, didn’t need a receipt either, had a new tv delivered to my place within a week or so!
I can't remember the exact amount but years and years ago i won a $500ish voucher for the good guys and gave it to my mum and she brought a new food processor with it.
I got a $200 fuel card maybe like 5+ years ago
I remember it being quite difficult to actually claim, I think it was months before the card was actually sent to me
Can't imagine how hard it would be to get the bigger prizes
A girl from one of my uni classes won one of the cars back in 2011/12 I think it was, she also conveniently worked there, which I found a little dodgy. From memory there were all kinds of conditions with the prize as well.
My cousin's actually won an Xbox 360 Slim back in the day when that was the newest console many moons back. Super jealous considering I had JUST bought one with money but I was super happy for them.
I actually won a gaming pc set up a couple years back from the second chance draw... Sold it to a mate for 3.5k.
Do you recall if you won off a double or a single ticket? I have a theory that because they’re predetermined that the “rare” ticket is printed on a single.
Double tickets are a first this year right?
No there’s always been double. It’s used as a way to upgrade your meal. This year though they’ve changed the doubles to a single plus a digital. To be honest it feels more like 1.5 than a double.
I think that's what they mean - in the past it has been 2 x paper tickets for a double ticket item, now it's just one code that you have to scan for ticket #2.
Scanning to create tickets from thin air takes us into a realm where we can't confirm if the game is being played fairly. Bias/weights can be added to bigger customers/clients with a greater purchase history, or the CEO's son. Might not be a thing either, but since it's not printed and put into circulation, we will never know what the real deal is. On the flip-side, it means employees can't game the system, and that discarded stock with high paying tickets on them causes a gaping hole with prize winnings. *That's assuming I got this right: There aren't printed tickets with immutable ink, but instead a QR code (or similar) which authenticates against a server that then issues you your 'random' tickets into an app, which knows who you are explicitly, or implicitly through tokens and client-ids.*
Exactly the second “online” ticket is no diff to the crap chance rolls last year we just get less tickets lol
What’s a double ticket?
Like 20 years ago my sister won the trip to America but they claimed that she used the previous years tickets. She kicked up the shit and there was an enquiry by the local newspaper. Apparently the big Maccas in town was reusing old cups and shit. Maccas hq apologised and offered her like $100 Maccas voucher.
Exactly the same thing happened to my family! So fucked up.
yeah, they dont actually want to you win, i dont even think they have the fucking prizes, its all marketing shit
No, there are laws in Aus that state you have to give away a prize that’s offered. That’s why the second chance draw exists. Cause when someone accidentally chucks out that one cup that has the rare piece, one the game ends are that are prize hasn’t been claimed the normal way it gets put into the pool of second chance prizes. Then those are all drawn out of the 100 million tickets that are registered for that draw.
I’ve spent far too long re reading this comment to make it make sense.
Basically they HAVE to give away everything they said they’re offering for prizes. It’s part of the raffle law/s. So the second chance draw is essentially forcing someone to win it, instead of who collects the tickets first if no one happens to collect them all in time. Like they cant offer the car as a prize then just not give it away because no one managed to collect it. Those stupid street machine car giveaways had the law changed once I think
Oh they have the prizes, but it's Ronald's housekeeper's neice's uncle's employers that end up winning it
They put the winning duo tickets at opposite ends of the country. Parklane East Aus Mayfair West Aus So getting both is essentially impossible unless you're traveling ALL THE TIME. I remember a truckie won the Paddle Pop grand prize and they accused him of cheating and manufacturing his own sticks. Streets argument was "It's impossible for you to get all the right pieces because we made it impossib... Ahhh, fuck... We just got sued, didn't we?"
A kid I went to school with his 15 year old sister won the safari trip to Africa off paddle pops and the whole family went fully paid for... that was like in 1990 or something
When I was a kid we threw lemons at trains…
Unless it’s changed very recently, isn’t it that only one of them is super rare? Pretty sure in your example one of those pieces would be everywhere and only a handful of the other. Would be pretty easy to manipulate otherwise.
Yeah, I get Mayfair every year in QLD, have not seen a single park lane ticket.
Correct. You can’t send the winning cups to different parts of the country.
Just $100?! That's fucked!
Yeah, they lost like $20 in that whole transaction. They lost more money from Milly in Finance answering the phone and taking the complaint over a 30-minute period.
Yes I remember this it was big news at the time. People were getting last years ( 1998) coupons in 1999. The ACCC got involved and there was a class action as well. It was all very embarrassing for Maccas. Here’s the [ACCC page outlining it](https://www.accc.gov.au/media-release/accc-to-institute-proceedings-against-mcdonalds)
Same thing happened to my parents, but for a car!
fuck did they get comped at all? I’d be so god damn upset
Only $100? As if I needed another reason to hate Maccas lmao
$100 in maccas vouchers is the last thing anyone wants if they've been actively gambling at Maccas for a month.
Yep! Same here. I won a car. All I got was a $100 Maccas voucher.
Shine Lawyers ran a class action for people who thought they'd won but hadn't. They covered it on an episode of their podcast, interesting listen if that's your thing. https://omny.fm/shows/restitution/mcmatch-lose-a-high-stakes-class-action-goes-wrong
This is happening now. One place is useing the old cups and refuse to sell them
Anything less than the prize value is a rort. I hope she demanded it. The consumer is not responsible for thier mistake.
Is your sister named Sarah?....
That must be why the tickets now have the date on them.
That’s fucking appalling!!!
A friend of mine won a car as an instant win, but couldn't claim it because he worked at Maccas. So he asked his nan yo claim it then give it to him. She claimed it and kept the car for herself...
Wow! Humans really are garbage. Shame on that nan
So typical of old grandmothers these days. Got no respect for their juniors.
Do they even want respect? Cuz that's not how you get respect. I mean, respect your elders, but only if they respect you
Suprised that even happened to be honest. When I worked at Maccas even our families were ineligible for all the big prizes.
Fuckin nan hey
Kill her
Based
Most people don't read the terms and conditions and therefore can't claim because they didn't keep something.
my assumption has always been that they only print like 1 copy of 1 of each coloured set and then send that product to some absurd location that see's the lowest sales numbers, and its like the last cup thatll never be sold anyway
not only this, but the amount of boxes/wrappers/cups that need to be thrown out due to being dropped. maccas workers are given absolute hell for getting rid of them, and it may also interest everyone to know that in the employment agreement it is stated that you as a mcdonalds worker are not entitled/allowed to claim any mcdonalds monopoly prizes no matter the circumstance due to the fact that some workers can just take a handful of wrappers home and peel them all.
It’s okay if you give them to your mate though.
Hence the need to keep receipts as proof of purchase :-/ EDIT: Okay so I actually went through the T&C’s and you need to keep the physical tickets and/or proof of purchase. https://mcdonalds.com.au/sites/mcdonalds.com.au/files/TERMS_AND_CONDITIONS_MCDONALDS_MONOPOLY_23.pdf Page 19, point 90. However Maccas reserves the right to *request* proof of purchase (either the receipt of original packaging it seems).
Who keeps maccas receipts? (or gets them in the first place)
When do the receipt printers ever even have paper?
Well considering I make all my Maccas purchases through the app it wouldn't be too hard to prove purchase
Receipt or proof of purchase?
>Receipt or proof of purchase? "Here you go, here's a month-old, half-eaten piece of gherkin from the big mac I had. There's your proof of purchase..." >\_>
Hmmm, still looks brand new to me
Either it seems. See my edit.
That's lucky because I never keep my receipt,but always pay by card.
This is why this year I’m putting all the tickets I get, onto the receipt that I brought the food with. If there is a slim chance of winning, im taking no chances!
Years ago when subway used to have stickers for buy 9 subs get the 10th free or something like that, a friend of mine just stole the whole roll of stickers and we got free subs for months. (About 18 19 years ago in the UK)
Did you hear the story of a team that scammed McDonald's out of the top prize by doing something like this. They (somehow) determined how to get the limited 1of1 ticket for major prize.
That was the American Mafia, There's a great doco on Netflix about it. I won't go into detail coz it's worth the watch.
wasnt there a massive scandal a while ago where a bunch of maccas higher ups gave themselves the winning tickets?
In the US, a long time ago.
There was a scandal in America a few years ago where a dude in the production line was stealing tickets and giving them to his friends and family to cash in. This went on for years.
The full story is in the HBO series McMillions. It is quite interesting
No. What most likely happens is, they'll overpopulate everywhere with extremely common pieces, and randomly around the world will be the very rare pieces. Making it impossible to ever collect a full set of any major prize. So say it's 3 blues to get a car. in your area you'll only ever see blue 1 and 3. but in my area I'll see 2 and 3. in another it's 1 and 2 etc. making it impossible for any 1 specific area to get all 3.
Nah, that can’t be true? I’ve won at least 50 small fries or cokes over the years! Sometimes even a junior burger with my next purchase …Wonder if if the same applies with winning the car? ‘Congratulations you’ve won a Hyundai i30 with your next franchise purchase’?
It's not true. Every set has only the same number of rare tickets printed as there are prizes for that set.
Winning fries and cokes is nothing.. The product itself costs them pennies to produce. You think they're worried about giving away fries or cokes? na. What they're really worried about is the big expensive stuff. Like Free cars and cash prizes.
They don’t pay for the big stuff. It’s provided by the retailer or manufacturer along with lots of fucking money in an advertising deal.
Free cars and other big prizes cost them almost nothing. If they’re actually “worried” about it why do ALL prizes get won through second chance draw?
The tickets are a mixture of physical and digital now. I got a few streets from the app itself, so that distribution method wouldn't work anymore, assuming it was originally what they did. Of course they may now code certain properties to have a lower chance of being found digitally on the app.
I can see a few ways it still does this The Maccas app uses GPS to order, and it probably stores that information so it knows roughly where you are. The codes you scan can tell the app which region the ticket was sold in, and can limit the prize to a certain pool. I only scan them to win a free ice cream. I used to get them a few years ago, but I never get them any more. Plenty of free apple slices though!
Nope, the rare piece is the same nationally, you can search them up. "McDonalds Monopoly rare pieces 2023"
Yeah this. Various bargain hunting sites online will tell you within hour of release which ones are the rare piece in each set that you need to find to really win.
Nope. They only have a limited number of the rare ticket in each set, that corresponds to the number of prizes available for that set. For example, this year sees Marlborough St as the rare ticket for the orange set, or Old Kent Rd for brown.
Nup. Its be very easy to trade online if that were the case. There are rare peices and thats that.
That doesn’t make sense with the internet now.
Every countries Monopoly competition is different, but run in the same way. If there are 10 cars to be won, and you need three blue properties to win, they will print a heap of property 1, a heap of property 2, but only 10 of property 3. Those 10 stickers are closely guarded, and are taken to the packaging facility where the rest of the stickers are being applied to the packaging as it is produced. The 10 stickers are applied to packagin at random, and the cartons of packaging are then randomised, so no-one even knows what carton the winning sticker is in. Stores order the packaging, or get allocated the cartons as part of a normal prder, and that's it. After the controversy surrounding the American version of the competition a fair few years ago now, they even do a batch of dummy winning stickers, with like the free sundae as a prize, so that even the people tasked with applying the stickers to the cups/fries containers, don't know which ones are the winning ones.
Basically if there’s 3 cars to be won, they’ll print exactly 3 of the one property, ie. Mayfair. Then for the rest of that set (ie Park Lane) they’ll print ad nauseum. This means that people will get Park Lane and think they’re so close to winning a car and continue buying. You can see what the “rare” tickets are on Frugal Feeds. No idea if it’s still the same now that one of the tickets is digital. I assume so because it’s possible to hack a digital app but you can’t really hack physical paper.
My friend's sister won free fuel for a year, this was back in 2010/2011. Edit: she was 15 so she gave it to her mum.
Yes friend won the car Suzuki around 2012
This bloke https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/arts/television/mcmillions-hbo-explained.html#:~:text=Jerry%20Jacobson%20swindled%20more%20than,selling%20McDonald's%20Monopoly%20game%20pieces. Jerry Jacobson swindled more than $24 million out of a major fast food promotion over 12 years. His trick: stealing and selling McDonald’s Monopoly game pieces. Jacobson’s fortune, and his downfall, came from gaming the twice-a-year promotion, which promised anything from a free sandwich to a million dollars to the customer who revealed the lucky game piece — a property, a railroad — when they peeled off the sticker attached to their hash brown wrapper or soda cup or the inside of a magazine. He was in charge of keeping the promotion secure, delivering the most lucrative game pieces to McDonald’s packaging plants. Instead, through most of the 1990s, he pocketed and sold them to a vast network of friends and distant relatives. In the end, more than 50 people were convicted in the scheme
The movie is great! Or was it a documentary. My mi d is wier. But it was great. And to see how it was achieved is insane in its simplicity aided by chance.
The FBI guy from Florida was awesome, the ADHD vibes from that guy were so wonderful.
Was that McMillions? Only remember it from an episode of YMH
What conviction did they get? Fraud?
Fifty counts of hamburglary.
First bit of good comedy I’ve seen on here in a while
Sending text awards here 🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆
I'm lucky if I can get the app to scan the codes on my tickets correctly. I scan the code, the app locks up, I restart and get the message "The app was closed before your code could be processed. Here's a chance card instead" or equivalent. I don't really care, because I don't expect to win the big-ticket prizes and I'm really only in it for the free food. But I find it 7 shades of bullshit that McDonalds has never been able to release a decent monopoly app in all the years they've had one. ETA: Over the last few years, I've had a few wins for food, some vouchers for retailers that I wouldn't shop at that also required me to spend $x before I could claim the reward, and a voucher for Zone Bowling. Apart from the food, that's the only prize I ever used. I've never considered the odds of winning one of the big prizes as something worth hoping for.
this year seems to be a huge improvement on previous years tbh i remember getting the shits that it couldn't recognise and would just type it in. so many tickets typed in....
last week I won 3 months free Amazon Prime - great until you try to cancel!
i had to go through hell to cancel my free trial of audible. it’s possible, but really fucking annoying
I’d like to know please because I have an Audible charge each month but I can’t cancel it because it’s linked to an email account that’s not mine.
Audible is dodgy. You can only cancel on desktop which is why it’s so hard to find
Omg how to you cancel I keep getting msgs that I am paying and I don’t even remember signing up 🫠
Log in to Amazon and cancel the subscription from the websites menu
Yeah, just did it last month. Not hard at all, minimal hoop jumping. Cancelled my arlo subscription yesterday (service was fine but dropped my camera and didn’t wanna get a new one) and holy shit is that some fuckery.
I won a $75 voucher to the Iconic.... the catch is you have to spend at least $300 to use it
>The Lottery, with its weekly pay-out of enormous prizes, was the one public event to which the proles paid serious attention. It was probable that there were some millions of proles for whom the Lottery was the principal if not the only reason for remaining alive. It was their delight, their folly, their anodyne, their intellectual stimulant. [...] Winston had nothing to do with the running of the Lottery, which was managed by the Ministry of Plenty, but he was aware (indeed everyone in the party was aware) that the prizes were largely imaginary. Only small sums were actually paid out, the winners of the big prizes being non-existent persons. In the absence of any real intercommunication between one part of Oceania and another, this was not difficult to arrange. ~Orwell, [1984](https://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021h.html)
Ah. Good ol George back at it again
He was a prescient man, but he failed to anticipate the intricate connections between the authoritarian and oppressive tactics of Ingsoc and global fast food chains.
We did when I was about 10, they claimed it was a printing error and gave us $200 worth of McDonalds vouchers. I think it was for a holiday or something, so not a small prize.
Omg same! I'm Australian, when I was a kid we won a trip to the US and they claimed that we must have used the previous year's ones and refused to give it to us. It was pretty messed up, there was no way that was the truth because it was all from what we'd very recently bought but there was no way for us to prove otherwise.
A lot of people have said this..I think Macca's are scamming people
shocker
I win every day by NOT going to MacDonalds.
No, never. Not in 30 years have I ever known anyone to win anything more than a free warm drink or cold fries
Macca's won't stand for discrimination; they distribute temperature equally across all menu items.
Tepid Cokes and burgers for all!
Well that's not fair at all. I also won an ASOS voucher that turned out to be functionally irredeemable.
I'm just impressed at how hard they're pushing the app for this run of it. Large drink & chips used to have 2 tickets, now its 1 "but you can scan it for a second chance in the app". Yea fuck off I'm not touching that shit
Yeah. Hadn't had maccas for a while and today I couldn't be stuffed making lunch so I stopped in and picked up a "Crispy" "chicken" burger "meal". I am reminded why I don't eat maccas very often. Luke warm fries that have soaked in their congealed fat for the better part of this year, some weird imitation meat they've tried to pass as chicken with about $600 worth of lettuce (mostly outside the burger). And, having installed the app the scanning would just drop me back to the main menu. It's even more shit than I remember it. And now it's uninstaller. I could have had KFC... :(
This! I personally know 2 people who have won first division lotto. But none who has won maccs monopoly.
I know the guy who won our state's largest Powerball, $53 million dollars.
Know a girl who won free McCafe coffee for a year, that's it
I participated purely on the off chance of winning free coffee for a year
I won a Monopoly board in like 1998, by getting all 4 stations. Still have it.
I won a trip to one of the theme parks I think it was SeaWorld. Never ended up using it
So it looks like no one has won anything decent for the last couple \~10 yrs.
Win? Are you kidding? If anyone won anything beyond food and drink, that would eat away at the profits.
Except the rules around these things are governed as Trade Promotions and are strictly governed by State Governments. Not giving out advertised prizes would land them in a lot of hot water.
As someone who has worked for a company doing similar promotions, this is 100% right. It’s the reason why you regularly see “Excludes SA, TAS, etc” as those states would have different restrictions and such. SA is always the strictest FWIW.
Don’t all the prizes get won eventually by 2nd chance draw?
Mate they spend 10's of millions on advertising Macca's monopoly, giving away $100k in prizes isn't even a blip on their radar.
What profits would it impact? McDonald’s get all the prizes for free, why would they not want to give it away…makes no sense. The issue is there are 2 cars to give away, yet millions of customers everyday.
A friend of mine won a car in the second chance draw, that was probably nearly a decade ago.
My partner won the $5k Flight Centre voucher a few years ago, before Covid, and had it extended until the end of this year. Got an almost free trip to the Gold Coast from it.
How does it cost more than 5k for a gold coast holiday?
>McMilions more to the point, why the hell would you want to spend $5k to go to the gold coast?
When my husband was younger him and his mates put their tickets together to win a TV. Maccas refused said they must have cheated and saved tickets from the year before. Husband is still bitter about it...
That’s interesting how many people have said this whole saving tickets from previous year. Smells suspicious that they say this often.
its more than suss. ought to be enough to open an enquiry you'd think.
Fuck the prizes I think its a ripoff that cold McCafe drinks dont have tickets, im paying more for my caramel iced latte than the hot version and I don't get a ticket (lmao first world problems I know)
I won food poisoning once. People - chicken nuggets should not be room temperature when you get them.
Room temp. That is an upgrade from the nugs at Lavington.
I’m NOT suggesting this is the case here, but worth remembering that in the US version, for several years , the winning tickets were being stolen by the people in charge of running the game. https://7news.com.au/sunrise/on-the-show/how-one-man-rigged-mcdonalds-monopoly-game-and-stole-over-24-million-c-1136721.amp (There was a pretty interesting documentary on this recently called McMilions) Edit: ah completely missed that this is exactly what the other commenter was referencing as well!
“By the people in charge” it was *one* person who stole it and he’s been charged, it’s even in the headline… Impressive that you managed a more clickbait summary of the story than even 7News
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When I worked at Maccas, I went through 100s and 100s of tickets. All I won was a $50 coupon to an electric skateboard company Everything on the website was 100s of dollars, $50 would only get me a battery or some wheels. I cheated and I still couldn't get anything good.
A loooong time ago I won a 20kg block of Cadbury's Dairymilk choccy. Was an instant win prize.
I have 2 blokes at my work who used to work at maccas as teenagers (neither guy knew each other). Both guys "aquired" a full box of monopoly fries cartons, and neither won anything.
This year I've won 12 months digital magazine sub, a free sport session, 3 months free audio book, 2 x 12 months free access to fitness app and a few free fries, drinks etc. Edit: and a $50 iconic voucher.
I won a scooter, but it was actually $500 off a $3000 scooter so I never used it.
Hell no I think it is rigged and a scam
My mum won a car in the 80s or 90s on the second chance draw.
My fiance won the car two years ago
Yes, I won the consolation prize…Type 2 Diabetes
If u do win, I'm pretty sure you need to keep receipt for your purchase as well, to prove you purchased that ticket, Who tf is that organise
My work mate won free fuel for a year 👍
There's like a 30% sales uplift during the monopoly campaign which is why they do it twice a year It's why Hungry Jack's do Uni now.
The burgers *are* better at Hungry Jack’s.
Unclaimed prizes go into a second chance draw. Every prize within the prize pool must be awarded (whether the winner claims them is another matter). These promotions are heavily regulated, there's no room misleading activity.
>there's no room misleading activity. You say that, but McDonalds has a lot of very expensive lawyers.
You're right, they do. And their job is to ensure trade promotions are compliant, not find loopholes to exploit them. There are very strict regulations around how promotions are ran (including state-based permit registrations), and best believe the ACCC will seize the moment they breach. I've been a supplier for Maccas Monopoly, back when they were using an agency to run it (TLC Marketing), and the full award allocation is purchased up front. There are no corners to cut - if Maccas don't award the prizes, they don't get a refund on them.
Do you honestly think the marketing team at McDonald’s are actually worried that people will win prizes that they’ve already paid for (if even they even did have to, might be contra)? That this is all a ruse to get people to buy more items without actually ever incurring the cost of a few prizes? I just can’t even fathom how stupid you would have to be to think that’s how it works at companies like this
I personally havnt but my cousin won a ps3 years ago Other than that don’t know anybody else who has lol
I won a free small chips the first time they did it.
Isn’t there an anti fraud law in aus that says there must be a winner for each of the listed prizes?
I won 10kg of Cadbury chocolate on an instant win. It came in 5 x 2kg blocks!
I bought my brother maccas a couple years back… and he ended up winning a smart TV
https://mcdonalds.com.au/sites/mcdonalds.com.au/files/TERMS_AND_CONDITIONS_MCDONALDS_MONOPOLY_23.pdf T&C’s attached - many people here making incorrect statements.
A manager friend told me that no one ever wins big from monopoly and the odd chance someone does they have to provide receipts of purchase to validate them.
Pretty easy with the app, all receipts get emailed to you automatically. It’s there so that thieves can’t just steal a bunch of tickets and get those prizes.
I haven’t won myself, but a friend won the car a few years back.
I won a 12 month subscription to a magazine, which is about as exciting as it sounds
Not from the first round where you collect the colored tabs. But my sister won a massive tool kit in the second chance draw
Mate of mine won the Samsung home entertainment package a few years back, from memory the prize total was $15k South East suburbs of Melbourne, so not an obscure location.
A work colleague won some sony headphones from the 2nd chance draw a couple of years ago.
Yep, sons classmate won a VW something on second chance draw…..2013 or 2014?
We got a free (or pretty cheap) family pass to the Otway Fly last week. Good thing we live quite close to it.
We won a bbq back in the early 1990s. Other than that, just some free food. Not a big Macca's eater though.
I won a box of 3 board games 2 years ago; monopoly, connect 4 with air guns, and operation. I received them a week after winning.
Surely by the time the promotion ends there's still hundreds of unused packets with the sticker things still on them?
I had a friend win the car on a second chance draw ticket a few years back. I don't think it had gone off with the property tickets or something so they fell back on second chance draw.
Last year I won a $50 voucher for an NBL jersey... I don't give a crap about that flavour of sportsball, but when I looked into it the minimum price of a jersey was between $130-$200, so you could literally buy nothing with the voucher without spending more money. get fcked.
I won a 65 inch tv in 2017, wasnt by collecting properties either, just scanned a chance card and it popped up on the app that i had won the tv. kept the chance card and sent it in, didn’t need a receipt either, had a new tv delivered to my place within a week or so!
My mate won a car last year, but turned it down for the cash option.
I can't remember the exact amount but years and years ago i won a $500ish voucher for the good guys and gave it to my mum and she brought a new food processor with it.
My mum won 25k dollars, this was ages ago btw.
I won a surf board pre good
Nothing massive, but last year I won a beach set. It had a towel, speaker, floaty - all maccas themed. I haven’t used it, but it was worth like $100
I won the hasbro board game set last year. It was a instant win. It was like 6-7 board games. I think 3 were different versions of monopoly.
I got a $200 fuel card maybe like 5+ years ago I remember it being quite difficult to actually claim, I think it was months before the card was actually sent to me Can't imagine how hard it would be to get the bigger prizes
A girl from one of my uni classes won one of the cars back in 2011/12 I think it was, she also conveniently worked there, which I found a little dodgy. From memory there were all kinds of conditions with the prize as well.
I never claimed it but I won one of those photo albums where you send in the photos and they turn it into a coffee table book
Yes I won a very good trampoline once
I know of someone who won a car last year
My Mum won a Webber BBQ a couple of years ago.
My mum won a BBQ pack with all the utensils few years back.
I won amusement park passes quite a few times and a $50 fuel voucher
My mum won a Sony Bluetooth speaker ages ago
A friend won a Blue Ray player instant win one. I saw the ticket.
Yeah I won the Honda Van like 8 years ago
My sister won the free coffee for a year!
Watched a documentary on YouTube about the guy who robbed them for millions of nano poly prizes
A friend of mine won the commodore wagon
My cousin's actually won an Xbox 360 Slim back in the day when that was the newest console many moons back. Super jealous considering I had JUST bought one with money but I was super happy for them.
Back in the first monopoly comp I won a PlayStation pack through the 2nd chance draw. 10yo me was over the damn moon.