Man accuses Northampton McDonald’s of ‘negligence’ after serving cheeseburgers to family with dairy allergies

A man has accused a Northampton McDonald’s restaurant of negligence after his family were served food they were allergic to and then refused a full refund.

Mr Ben Jones, aged 31, from Kingsley visited the fast food restaurant situated in Kettering Road with his partner and children on Saturday, June 11.

Mr Jones claims that, despite specifying that his family suffers with dairy allergies when ordering, they were served burgers containing cheese in boxes labelled with ‘no cheese’.

After immediately returning the food to complain, Mr Jones said that staff initially told them they could have a full refund but only provided a £5 voucher, despite his order totalling £27.06.

Mr Jones said: “We were in complete shock, to be honest, at the way they handled the situation and the fact we were passed from pillar to post and nobody seemed to care they could have just killed someone.”

The disgruntled customer said that, despite contacting McDonald’s, staff refused to give names or provide a full refund for the food they could not eat. The food had to be thrown away.

The 31-year-old man reached out to the Chronicle & Echo to raise awareness of the serious consequences of mislabelling food to those who suffer with allergies. He branded McDonald’s response to the problem a “McFail” and described their attitude as “flippant.”

Mr Jones added: “Imagine if this was peanuts and they all found it a joke and somebody went into anaphylactic shock.

“Nobody seems to care about the level of negligence at this restaurant.”

This newspaper reached out to McDonald’s for comment and asked what the fast food chain plans to do to ensure this does not happen again.

A spokesperson for McDonald’s said: “We’d like to apologise to this customer for the mistake made, we are disappointed that on this occasion we have fallen short of the high standards that we set ourselves.

“McDonald’s takes the wellbeing of our customers seriously and we would like to reassure that we have a number of measures in place to avoid inaccurate orders. Our customer services team have been in continued contact with the customer to offer our apologies and find a resolution.”