Don’t read this if you are sensitive to grossness in food, because we are talking about complaints to restaurants and companies about bugs in food and other unusual ingredients found in meals. Some cases are real but many are just customers wanting to receive money from the insurance companies, yes scams, and some are scarily creative! The most recent case to hit the news what this of NZ mum Annah Sophia Stevenson, she found a half-eaten cockroach in her Big Mac. Gross pictures of half a chewed cockroach ahead.
You can gross you out now with stories about surgical gloves inside a cola bottle, rodents in bread and plasters in pre-coocked chicken.
In 2010 a man from Ontario found “at least 50 dead ants” in his McDonald’s burrito. But what’s the end to these stories? Do insurance companies pay? Do the insects found are part of a scam? Why there’s so little information on the resolutions? Well it’s not good marketing for companies to talk about resolutions so in most cases these are kept quiet. But some famous resolutions have made it to the media and even changed things inside the companies.
First I want to explain that claims are filed with the food company’s insurance carrier. After a proper investigation the insurance company will make the customer an offer, if they are dissatisfied with settlement offer they will file a lawsuit for negligence against the company. In many cases the offers are accepted and lawsuits are never filled, offers can be anything from money to free food.
Let’s have a look at 3 successful lawsuits in which insurance companies / food companies had to pay huge amounts of money:
1. MC DONALD’S BEEF FRIES
No it’s not a new addition to their menu. In the 90s McDonald’s used to sell their french fries as a vegetarian option, but truth was they were using beef fat in them! So in 2002, the company issued an apology and paid $10 million to vegetarian and religious groups about their mislabeling! See the gap between early 90s and 2002? Yes it took a long time to settle this one down!
2. ARBY’S FLESH SANDWICH
A guy eating his sandwich found a strange piece of flesh inside, it was a sliced thumb… After an investigation it was discovered that it was the manager’s who sliced his thumb while cutting lettuce… The insurance company made an offer to the guy but he rejected it and filed a lawsuit for more than $50.000.
3. CAUTION: HOT BEVERAGE!
Those obvious labels we always see in chain coffee stores… Well, there was a time when they weren’t popular and they paid the price. Stella Liebeck sued McDonald’s after scalding herself with her coffee. Her lawsuit got her around a million dollars.
But there’s also people trying to scam insurance companies like that woman who placed a fingertip inside her Wendy’s bowl of chilli and tried to sue them. The investigation ruled that she bought the fingertip out of a man… She ended up in prison for 5 years. Another dismissed case was that of a man who was in his car when another car crashed into him, did he want the other driver’s insurance company to pay? No, he sued McDonald’s because the other man had a milkshake in the car… He said McDonald’s should have warned their customer to not eat while driving!
People planning hoaxes are sued back by companies, a risk not many think about before planning their scam, they will have to pay lawyers and spend a few years in prison.
The three successful lawsuits we mentioned were legit, but in some occasions people who are just greedy and selfish win too. There was a woman who broke her ankle on a furniture store because she fell because due to a toddler running there around wildly… She got almost 800 thousand dollars. The only way this could have been somehow fair was if she was suing the mother of the toddler. No, she couldn’t because she was the mother.
I have to admit that that customer care and how they take care of issues with such huge quantities of money is mostly an US thing. In Europe you might get a voucher or a free meal… Like that girl called Sarah Moss from London who found a dead frog inside her spinach bag and got a 10 pound voucher from Tesco.
Maybe it’s just that people in Europe don’t make such a big deal or companies couldn’t care less? Truth is many people talk about their complaints online and often mention the company never replied to them. I honestly don’t know but there have been some huge food related dramas here like Ikea restaurants ones: horse meat and fecal bacteria, remember? Sadly it wasn’t long ago.
The strangest thing I ever found in food, was a frozen baby snail inside a frozen peas bag. No, I didn’t sue anyone.
