A recent Reddit post has sparked concern that Burger King is testing out dynamic pricing—and the company’s denial has done nothing to assuage upset customers.
Last week, u/Simply827 posted a picture of their order screen at a Burger King kiosk to the r/MildlyInfuriating subreddit. The screen showed that the price of their order had changed while they were in the middle of placing it, going up $0.29 with no explanation beyond fine print at the bottom warning: “Pricing can change for a variety of reasons.”
“I’m at a Burger King on the NJ Turnpike and it appears they have some sort of dynamic pricing in place,” the Redditor wrote.
Rising prices of fast-food have already been a point of contention in recent years, as commenters on a TikTok video from software engineer @nldoty calling attention to the Reddit post were quick to point out.
“The fact that $33 is just the norm now for fast food is unreal!” wrote one viewer. “Where are we?!!”
“Fast food is so expensive now! I remember getting a whole meal for $5,” another agreed.
And this isn’t the first time the idea of adding dynamic pricing—or pricing that varies throughout the day depending on factors such as demand—into the mix has drawn outrage.
Wendy’s received backlash back in February after CEO Kirk Tanner made comments about the fast food chain testing out “dynamic pricing” next year. The uproar caused the company to put out a statement claiming that they don’t intend to raise prices when demand is high, but rather lower prices when demand is low.
Most people didn’t fall for the careful wording, speculating that it would simply result in Wendy’s raising prices overall to be able to technically fulfill that claim.
The price of my Burger King meal got more expensive as I was checking out.
byu/Simply827 inmildlyinfuriating
Is Burger King’s alleged ‘surge-pricing’ a bug?
Similarly, folks aren’t falling for Burger King’s response to the viral Reddit post, after a spokesperson told The Sun that the screen was merely a “technical error.”
“I can confirm there are absolutely no plans for dynamic pricing at BK, and that no BK U.S. locations are using or testing dynamic or surge pricing,” they said. “What happened at the New Jersey location was the result of a technical error, and we are working with our software vendor to identify the cause and ensure it doesn’t happen again.”
@nldoty was among those who called the company’s statement out as ludicrous.
“As a software engineer of ten years, this isn’t a bug. Somebody went to the trouble of implementing this on their system,” he claims in his TikTok video. “The appearance of that isn’t a bug. The appearance of that right this second is a bug. You don’t put in a feature request, put it past the project manager, have the development team work on it, test it out, put it through [quality assurance], and then push it to production unless you ultimately plan to push that feature at some point.”
@nldoty #greenscreen #burgerking @Burger King #surge #surgepricing ♬ original sound – nldoty
He urges anyone paying attention to stay aware of the developments and to take a stand against dynamic pricing should Burger King or any other fast food restaurants go ahead and take the plunge. Though a $0.29 price increase may not seem like a huge deal on the surface, he lays out exactly how things like this spiral out of control.
“Collectively as a group, we need to say ‘no’ to this kind of behavior,” he says. “Because this is how they push this stuff on us. We all just basically agree to it, and then it becomes part of our daily lives. And we’re all worse off for it. And the only ones that are benefiting from this are the multi-millionaires that own and control companies of this size.”
The Daily Dot has reached out to Burger King via email and @nldoty via TikTok comment.
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