SONIC Drive-In - Order Online Reviews

They accept Apple Pay and presumably other mobile payment, but you can’t pay with multiple gift cards or combine a gift card with Apple Pay. I don’t want to give out my card numbers. Apple Pay is infinitely more secure. I’ve read of people having their cards used across the country after giving them to Sonic’s app. They need to let you combine multiple gift cards so you can zero out the balance in their app and also let you combine gift cards with mobile payment for better security and convenience. That way you only have to enter the cards once in Apple Pay and then you can use them anywhere far more securely. It should be the standard payment option. Taco Bell and Panera do payments right in thei app. Sonic is backwards so you can’t use up a gift card without swiping it at a kiosk or giving your card number out and risking a data breach. Please fix the problems and allow us to combine at least two gift cards plus any mobile payments for the full balance without needing to deal with the kiosks or give up our card numbers. It’s just common sense to let folks use Apple Pay and multiple gift cards to pay with SONICDriveIn . Why would you make it harder for people to pay? Also when are you going to communicate with stores so the prices show up before checking out? Sonic is the only app I know that doesn’t show prices in their app menu and cart as you add items.

SONICDriveIn is pretty good although I have never been able to order items such as a orange/ strawberry cream slush, and I can not specialize some items like I can’t order a pretzel with NO SALT. Other than a few items SONICDriveIn is pretty good however the point you press order is where all the trouble begins. It often takes a longer amount of time to receive an order ahead order than it does to order in person. Also the workers have on more than one occasion cleared the order off my stall screen so that it won’t show that it timed out… then they have gotten busy and forgotten the order completely- I usually have to call and find out why it said on my screen that it was on the way yet 10 min go by and I still have received. Then either the store is out of something or they are unable to give me what I order and they tell me they can not refund the mobile orders that I have to call someone with SONICDriveIn . So instead they want to bring me something else. The service at every sonic has completely gone to crap. I order the same items every time and never get it the same way twice. Sonic used to be my favorite fast food. But man how it’s gone down hill. Now I prefer to only go if I can’t find the item somewhere else. Cause I know if I go something will be messed up, missing, or I will wait 20 minutes

Honestly I order through the sonic app every time because it’s so easy. HOWEVER I go to sonic very often with friends and we all want to order at the same time but we can’t. SONICDriveIn won’t let multiple orders go through which I just don’t get because there are multiple people in the car. So ordering through SONICDriveIn is a hassle that way because we all do it. It makes for such a long wait time. Another thing is that we should be able to put multiple cards on SONICDriveIn or be able to have multiple payment options which would once again make life with friends so much easier. On my last note we should be able to tip on SONICDriveIn . I hardly have cash anymore and I want to tip these hard working people but I can’t. Most of my sonic trips are spontaneous so I don’t plan ahead to have cash. Plus sonic pays these poor people like dirt. They run the kitchen and car hop and make half minimum wage !? Are you joking? And most people don’t tip them. A year ago I didn’t even know I was supposed to tip these people because I didn’t see sonic as a restaurant but now knowing how much they pay people is ridiculous. PAY THEM MORE. And one last thing. I get sonic a lot and there are no perks with that. With how much I spend I would love a rewards system. Not just a “deal” like a you spend this much you get this much in return type of thing. Like a loyalty program to earn points or something. Would love that. SONICDriveIn is okay but once again there are issues that I would love to be addressed.

I have used SONICDriveIn several times and it is a hit or miss. Very typical to have the payment options give errors or not allow a payment method to be added...even when it has been used previously. I have also had a fraud issue as the day after I made an app order, my card was used for another sonic app order in another state which caused me to have to get a new debit card and was inconvenient as I had to address all of my autopay account with other companies. On the incidents where I had to restart an order due to issues with the payment options, I lost my rewards because it indicated it was applied to a previous order....although that order was never placed because SONICDriveIn wouldn’t allow the payment option to be added.
Finally, it is also hit or miss when you pick up at the restaurant. I have had to sit for 15-20 minutes after arriving and checking in for an order. I reach out to the staff from the stall and they say they are “working on it”. A couple times the food has come out cold in these situations...which means obviously they weren’t working on it, there was clearly on oversight issue.
So, when it works, it okay...but I would say that is only about 40% of the time. I really like Sonic and I will continue to go, but they really need to get SONICDriveIn up to speed and the restaurant better at managing app orders.
***I very rarely have issues when I just go to the restaurant and order in person***

My husband and I both have SONICDriveIn on our phones. My husband struggles every time because his app never has the featured items listed. We’ve both struggled with the order not being ready when we get there even though we picked the ASAP option. We still have to wait after we check in for it to be made. Not sure they know what ASAP means. Occasionally we arrive to pick up our preordered items and they don’t even HAVE the order but we’ve been charged for them. Also, our local store charges you for add on items you ordered but are out of. This happens a lot. I do like the convenience of being able to hand my kids the phone and they pick out what they want and put it in the “bag.” I like the “thought” of our meal being ordered already and being made while I’m on the way to pick it up…..just not really seeing this feature utilized. I would also like to be able to order from my phone app and my husband go pick it up except if I have my phone at home it says out of range to be able to check into a stall #. This is most inconvenient. This is why my husband got SONICDriveIn on his phone. But like I said, he struggles more with his because it never has the new featured items listed. Needs improvement, but thanks for trying.

SONICDriveIn is ok for placing orders especially if you are like me and don’t want to wait, however, if some of your items are not available, then good luck with getting a refund for what you don’t get. I ordered a milkshake with a few other items, the milkshake machine was down, so they offered to give me something else or give me a refund. I took the refund, which I was expecting to be put back on my card. After a week and there was no refund, I reached out to the support team thru SONICDriveIn only to be told there was no record of the refund. They advised me to wait a few more days and if no refund reach out to the store manager. So today I went to the store and the manager advised me that unless the entire order was refunded, they would have given me cash, they have no way of
Refunding a partial order if you order thru SONICDriveIn , the can only refund cash at the store. I never got the cash and a refund was never put back on my card. The store manager did give me the milkshake, 23 days after the order was placed. So that issue was resolved.

A note to other users, if you don’t get your full order, because the milkshake machine is down, or they run out of something, you will get a cash refund unless they cancel the entire order, don’t expect the refund to be put back on your card, cause it’s not..

SONICDriveIn itself is fine once you’re in it. It doesn’t show prices in the basket, which is annoying, but not a problem. HOWEVER, *every single time* I open SONICDriveIn , I have been “logged out of my account for my protection”, and have to click through the OK button on every single current promo, and click the OK button on the log out notice popup itself three times, before it will even let me log in again. If they want a login screen every time you open SONICDriveIn , fine, do that, but the “you’ve been logged out” and making me spam buttons for five minutes has literally driven me to close SONICDriveIn and order from elsewhere on more than one occasion. It’s Face ID compatible, why not just put one default Face ID login screen on open, WITHOUT making me click ok on a bunch of notices for things I never asked for anyway? “For my privacy” it’s MY APP on MY PHONE, if I wanted to be logged out every time I’d use an incognito browser. It’s a fast food app, not my bank, the security measures are far more annoying than anything else. Taco Bells app logs you out every time, but it gives you a login screen when you open SONICDriveIn , not tell you that they’ve logged you out. McDonald’s app keeps you logged in regardless. Sonic, please take some UI advice from better apps.

EDIT: Don’t get your hopes up for continued use! After speaking with Sonic customer support, it is clear they are contracting with a company and have zero control over SONICDriveIn . They don’t tell Sonic why accounts are deactivated, which is what has happened to mine. The deactivated accounts cannot be re-activated and I refuse to create another email account just for this ridiculous app.

There is 1 star because at least one star is required. I’ve been using SONICDriveIn for most of the summer. There have been issues, but they were easily fixed. A few days ago I attempted to add money to my gift card to make a purchase (which is a whole different issue). It kicked me out of SONICDriveIn right as I confirmed the reload. I opened SONICDriveIn again and was asked to login. My email and password were not accepted. I attempted to reset my password several times, but I never received the email to do this. I even tried to login from a PC. When I emailed customer service, I included an outline of the steps I took. What did they do? They told me to do all those same steps as if they hadn’t read my email. Talk about not listening to your customers. What a waste of time. Many of the reviews on here are good- just wait and see. I will call them, but after reading some of the other reviews, I don’t expect to receive good or competent customer service.

I ordered lunch via SONICDriveIn . I arrived for pickup and the car hop read off the receipt all ordered items thus indicating a complete order. However, when I get home we are missing 5 items. Got back in car to retrieve the missing food items only to he told 4 of the items they have been out of for quite some time. If you were out of the item why didn’t you say so when I picked up the order? You filled the bags. Did you not notice the items were not in your store to put in my bag?
Asked for a refund only to be told they can’t do that. I have to call their customer service #. I did only to be told no you have to get your money from the store. Called the store and again was told no you have to call the customer service #. Called again and was told same thing. Go to store. Asked to speak to a supervisor only to be told they were all in a meeting call back later. Called back 2x more only to be now they were all busy. Called again the next day in the am (a Saturday) only to be told all the supervisors were again in an all day meeting and to call back after 4:30pm. No one has returned emails or phone calls to discuss refunding me my money for items purchased and not received.
Absolutely the worst in customer service recovery. I will never ever do business with Sonic again.

Employees are extremely rude when you try to ask them if they got your order from SONICDriveIn . They just shut you down as soon as you mention SONICDriveIn and try to get rid of you. They don’t want to take any responsibility or help at all. They won’t even give you a number to call they just tell you to go away. SONICDriveIn charges you even if the order doesn’t go through. SONICDriveIn also sends it to different locations even if you have it set in your phone.

Update:
After not going to Sonic for a while or using SONICDriveIn I tried it again. I think it works well if your order is under $50. My problems have only come when my order was above that amount. I ordered slushees today through SONICDriveIn and the new bursting bubbles didn’t work for the 1/2 off so I called customer service and they were extremely polite and fixed my problem easily. It would be better if I didn’t have to call customer service every time I use SONICDriveIn , but at least they fix my problems and give me refunds when they mess up. I’m adding 2 stars because the girl who helped me today easily helped me fix my problem and I didn’t have to wait an hour on the phone to get it done.

The issue I am having lately is that when I try to order at a Sonic other than the one I normally order from, the location will change back to the one I normally use. The first time I didn’t notice it had changed until I was 27 miles from the one I normally use and already at the location I had changed to. Another issue is the stall number changing after being typed in. This has happened 3 separate times and I would have to either call or press the red button to have them bring my order to the correct stall. There needs to be an option to directly contact a manager. At my normal location, one of the employees has parked more than once either completely blocking the main entrance or where people have trouble getting around the car. This has happened several times and the last time they even had the ‘open’ light turned off, but someone answered when I had to call and cancel my order because the driveway was blocked by this same car. She hung up before I could ask for a refund or manager and when I tried to call back the call wouldn’t go through. I will no longer use that location.

Sonic app is one of my absolute favorite apps to use I actually use it on the daily as I look forward to my daily sonic trips! I find it tedious that there isn’t an option for “extra” when it comes to anything down from condiments to extra adds in drinks such as the nerds candy or real fruit options. I know that before you enter the stall number in SONICDriveIn you can press the button on the drive ins and ask for extra whatever when it comes to your mobile order but it would add a lot more ease to customers if they had that option themselves in SONICDriveIn . Saves us time especially if we are placing it ahead of time for pickup! Once again SONICDriveIn I would 100% recommend to friends and family in fact I have brought many people to SONICDriveIn ! I’m talking to them everyone I have introduced to the sonic app agrees an extra or light option would be super convenient I hope you take this review into consideration as the ease of placing an order would increase tremendously! Thank you for doing what you have and making ordering from the sonic app super easy and a delight!

TL;DR SONICDriveIn just sold me a giftcard that was declined. Thats the only option it offers to pay and it doesn’t even work.

I was attempting to pay after waiting in line for an hour just to get a drink on a particularly hot day. I had recently come to the same sonic and payed 2.26 for a large slush. I had 3$ cash but this time it came up to be 3.74. No big deal. I had recently had my wallet with my bank card stolen which hadn’t posed an issue since 95% of places take apple pay so I didn’t think twice about not having it until I got to a stall and realized they only accept cash and debit OR you could use their app. I attempted to pay through SONICDriveIn . I had to buy a giftcard and pay with that. After buying a giftcard. The giftcard was declined. I reset SONICDriveIn , thinking it must take a second to hit the system. Declined again. Reset my phone. Declined again. At this point the server showed up with a small size of the drink I ordered a large of because he saw my payment wasn’t going through. I explained my situation and he let me go without paying because he could see I was doing everything right...very embarrassing and not beneficial to anyone but Sonic who sold me a 5$ giftcard I’ll apparently never be able to use. Next time. Ill just make sure to have cash.

I normally would say that I love the convenience behind SONICDriveIn since I tend to take awhile to figure out what I want to eat, but lately that doesn’t even matter. Over a month ago I started having an issue with app where it wouldn’t let me go to the checkout screen after selecting my order. The message, “Somethings Not Right. There was an error trying to create your order. Please try again.”, appears when I try to check out. And when I click ‘ok’ it sends me on a loop where I can’t get out unless I act quick and hit a back arrow. I’ve reached out to support with details, and was replied to with an email asking for more information. I gave them all the info I could along with a screenshot of the error message. It’s been a couple weeks now since I replied, and still haven’t received any word on how to fix this. I then sent them a new support message stating this situation and the fact that I am not being helped, but I’m sure that since I sent that out days ago, I shouldn’t expect any help at all. I don’t like giving negative feedback about something that usual works fine for me but this is ridiculous to have not only the problems I’m having, but to have all these other problems that other users clearly have. Does anyone in that company want to make this better? Guess not.

I went to log in to SONICDriveIn today and was told my account had been deactivated. I then called the customer support number in SONICDriveIn and they could give me no explanation as to why I could not access my account, no information as to what amount of money was left on my virtual gift card when my account was deactivated, and also no information as to when I would be refunded the remaining amount of money that was on my card when my account got deactivated.
What kind of customer support are you supposed to be when you have no remedy for this apparently wide-spread issue except to create a new account and hope for you money back?! What’s even the point of SONICDriveIn at all if something this simple can’t be easily fixed by calling the customer service number you provide to us?!
Needless to say, I have already deleted SONICDriveIn . It’s extremely frustrating as I loved the deals and ability to order ahead, but my account getting deactivated for no reason at all and customer service having no way to get it back up is beyond annoying. SONICDriveIn was basically the only reason I was going to Sonic restaurants so often lately, and now I won’t go nearly as much.
I suggest Sonic fix this issue quick, or I’m sure more customers will be just as frustrated as I am right now.

I love that certain deals are only through SONICDriveIn thus encouraging use of it. You get half priced drinks always when ordering through SONICDriveIn . Meaning it’s happy hour any time. I mean that enough is a steal if a deal. What more could you ask for? In this day and age everyone has at least one or two apps on their phone that aren’t productive and they really don’t need…. I encourage you… even if you are out of storage, replace the non productive with the Sonic app because it won’t disappoint. Lastly, when you pull in to Sonic to pick up all you have to do is check in by putting the stall number (located in the bottom left hand corner of the screen above the red button you have to press to order) into SONICDriveIn and your name immediately pops up on the screen letting you know where Sonic is in regards to your order. (Received, paid, in the kitchen and on the way if I remember correctly or something along those lines)

I loved the idea of ordering on SONICDriveIn and being able to pull in, pay, and have your order brought out. A little over a month ago there was a glitch with SONICDriveIn . I ordered before I arrived and during the order I had to reload because my balance was low. As I pulled into Sonic to select witch bay I was in it reloaded again! My total was $4.10, the first reload was $10 but they only took $4.01 off; then it reloaded for another $10 taking the remaining .09 of the total. So me know technology, I thought, it would either add the extra $10 to the sonic app or it wouldn’t post from my debit card. After 5 days the second reload for $10 posted but the balance did not reflect that in the sonic app. I sent a message through SONICDriveIn support team. They instructed me to contact the location for my refund. The located advised they had no knowledge of this type of technology and to call home office. I have called, emailed, called, emailed, called, called, called, called and called! Only for them to email me that my issue can not be resolved. I only wanted them to add the freakin $10 to SONICDriveIn since I’m doing business with them anyway and I understand how technology can fail
Us. I have receipts, bank statements and screenshots of transactions to support my complaint!! This is not acceptable!

For the most part, I like SONICDriveIn but don’t necessarily love it. I don’t see that’s it’s been any faster from start to finish when I arrive at Sonic. I do like the 1/2 drinks without having to pay attention to “Happy Hour”. To be honest, I would rarely go to Sonic for a drink when I can easily go into QT (Quick Trip) and get a drink for $1.09. I have started using Sonic again because of the 1/2 drinks. If this changes, I probably will once again quit going.
Twice now, I have pulled up, selected “I’m here”, entered my stall number, recurved my confirmation that my order was being prepared, and 10 min later, I still didn’t have my drink (1 order), and drink & fried cheese for the other. When I alerted them, they said the notification that I was here didn’t come through. This happened at 2 different locations.
On a third order,A message came across the screen that said something along the lines of “oops, something went wrong. Please press the red button”. When I did, they said that everything was fine and the order would be right out.

Usually I’m pretty happy with SONICDriveIn . But lately I’ve been having difficulty getting it to let me order at the Sonic of my choice. I live at one end of town and my job is at the other end and we have a Sonic at both, so I would try to order at the further away one and it would sometimes refuse to let me saying it’s too far. It’s only a 20 minute drive at most! And I get off work at 10:00 pm a lot of times and it will say can’t take my order for a drink because they close at 11:00 pm? When I’m just two blocks away? What’s up with that? Does it really take them more than an hour to pour a coke? So then I’m stuck paying full price!!! Plus one more thing, a lot of times I would like to pick it up in the drive thru but SONICDriveIn doesn’t give me that option to say that’s where Im at and if the window person is new, then they don’t know what to do. Sure hope these two things could be fixed. Thank you.

Overall I like SONICDriveIn for its ability to order ahead and the 1/2 price drink and slush offer is really great. However, SONICDriveIn is very limited when it comes to order customizations for even simple things. Like, why can’t I order a cream slush through SONICDriveIn ? There’s no drink option for cream slush, and there’s no option to add ice cream to a regular slush. I order cream slush frequently but since I can’t order through SONICDriveIn , I can’t order ahead when I want a cream slush. Lol

For someone who can’t eat bread, it’s weird that I can remove the bread from some burgers, but for others the option is locked and I can’t remove the bun. The option to remove the bun from the hot dog is also locked. These things should be unlocked for the customer to customize their order, especially if it’s something they can easily do when requested at the window. I also think it would be helpful to add an “order comments” section for special order requests that SONICDriveIn isn’t built to accommodate, like if a food item should be excluded from the order but the option is oddly locked for some reason. 🤔

I really appreciate SONICDriveIn. I’m all about that efficiency, and SONICDriveIn makes it happen. I can order from my couch and it’s ready when I get there. No lines, no waiting. It is easy to use. I like that I can quickly select a previous order to reorder; I often get the same food/drinks, so this speeds things up even more.
I would like to be able to set my favorite location as the default location. I was driving home with my kids and passed a Sonic in my neighboring town. I decided ice cream sounded great. I had my son place the order in SONICDriveIn and continued on to my own local Sonic. It turned out the order was placed for the location of the Sonic I had driven past. Oops! He didn’t even think to look at the location, and I assumed it would be defaulted to my local one. Instead, SONICDriveIn selected the nearest location at the time the order was placed. Several times I also have almost ordered for the wrong location because I forget to check it! I like to order well ahead, like when I’m about to leave work and drive 40 minutes - I set the pickup time and then I don’t have to mess with SONICDriveIn while driving, or have to add more time to my drive home by sitting in a drive-thru line.

SONICDriveIn offers a lot of great deals like half off all drinks all day BUT only if you order through SONICDriveIn . That’s not a big problem but it is when you’re forced to “load” money by buying Sonic gift cards in dominations of $10, $20, etc. So if you have a small order you’re forced to spend a minimum of $10. Sure, you’ll have what’s left over for the next transaction but when that time comes and you’re short a few cents? You’ll have to load another $10.

Ordering through SONICDriveIn itself is slow as it suffers from sluggish performance especially on the payment screens, particularly when you submit payments. This from an iPhone X and fast WiFi. When you use SONICDriveIn near the restaurant I’ve had the order screen completely disappear and without any order history screen or receipt I had to hope that the staff seen my order and wouldn’t ask me for me proof of purchase. Very annoying and discouraging.

Save yourself the trouble and hassle and just order in person rather than use this greedy and slow app. You’ll pay a little bit more without the savings but it’s worth it if you can avoid headaches cause by using SONICDriveIn.

Downloaded SONICDriveIn , first use everything went well. Second time I had a problem and had to call, before they would help me they needed to know all info (name, number, address, how many times I visit sonic, how much I spend) when all I wanted to know was how to order a root beer float. The simple answer was that not all items are on SONICDriveIn . Took almost 20 min to get to that. Third time I used SONICDriveIn , it sent my order to the wrong sonic. Called again, the guy said he’d send a coupon for a drink and to just reorder. That would have been fine except SONICDriveIn wouldn’t let me view or cancel the order. And the coupon was for a free drink with purchase. The only thing I wanted to purchase was a drink, so the coupon was useless. I called back, had to give all information again and she kept asking for the order number which I could not give because I couldn’t view the order. Her idea was to go home, call back, and then come back; I live outside town so not happening. SONICDriveIn still would not let me view or cancel the order. She had me delete and redownload SONICDriveIn . She was horrible. An hour after I called, no refund and still no drink. Not worth it. My advise.... just don’t.

I used to love SONICDriveIn HOWEVER I recently got several sonic gift cards for Christmas and decided I would just load them on to my app to make my life easier .... but then came to realize that you cannot combine your gift card balances! The Sonic app only allows you to check out with one gift card at a time. So for example my meal today cost $7.50 and I have two $5 sonic gift cards, however instead of being able to pay $10 in gift cards and have $3.50 left over, I can only pay with one gift card or the other and have to “reload” the gift card in order to cover my balance. This is extremely frustrating and makes it so that I will probably never be able to fully empty my cards without reloading. Just another way for them to make more money. Even Starbucks has a way on their app to transfer a balance from one gift card to another so that you can use the full balance of multiple gift cards combined! Sonic should definitely do that! If I would have known this was going to happen I would never have loaded my gift cards on to my app. So very frustrating.

I don’t normally write reviews for things but I feel like it’s my duty to inform the public when there is potential danger in something. Be VERY careful with SONICDriveIn. I got SONICDriveIn about 2 months ago because my aunt wanted to send me a gift card on it for my birthday. Since then, I’ve used it to make orders and get rewards because it is pretty convenient. However, today I got an email of a receipt saying I spent $82 on an order in Las Angelas.....I live in Alabama. Not only was it super easy for me to be hacked, but the size of the order and the location were not questioned by SONICDriveIn. From this info you can pretty well determine that there is nothing in SONICDriveIn to prevent fraud. I have since deleted my debit card from SONICDriveIn , but I shouldn’t have to do that out of fear of the terrible security Sonic has. And when I called customer service, they simply told me to change my password and contact my bank. That’s it. Not even an apology. I’m usually not the type of person to send food back because it’s not right, or to ask for the manager when I’m slightly inconvenienced, but this is no slight inconvenience. This is a problem that needs to be taken care of.

Get with the program people. No one carries around cash? Not even needed for toll roads anymore. You have have the ability to use state of the art technology & you “could” update your software. I was told that y’all had problems over 10 years ago. Wow! That’s a long time ago. A lot has happened since then. Please allow your employees to get tips by credit card through either SONICDriveIn or on location. Pizza is usually paid for in advance. And customers have the option to add on a tip upon delivery of food. So seriously, y’all have no excuse & your employees may stick around longer & be happier for it. And y’all are not even having to pay them more money, the customers will be glad to do it. It’s a win win win. And there will be smiles all around. You’ll see... Don't be a Scrooge when you don’t even have to be. The more you give, the more you will receive.

Doesn’t have any info about how it works. Guess you have to be in the know which I wasn’t. Didn’t see any way to place an order or to pay with phone. Only thing I saw to do was buy their card hoping I could then place an order. Don’t see any point in letting them know where I am (slot drive thru or window) if I’m ordering when I’m already there. Maybe they have different mobile methods available at different locations??? I ended up giving them my credit card info to buy their stinky card with a minimum amount them was unable to purchase anything without going to the store first to ask because mid afternoon on a week day my local store never answered the phone. I’m sure I won’t be able to get a refund and I’m just plain frustrated. Maybe this is how they make money — channeling folks into buying useless cards????? Well I’ll go there and spend the full balance and NEVER GO BACK. NEVER EVER EVER NEVER. Which is too bad since I’m new to my area, the location is great, and the menu sounded delicious. No previous experience with Sonic and now I want nothing to do with them.

Short version is SONICDriveIn works great but doesn’t do anything useful.

Three days ago I order on SONICDriveIn , as I always do before I head to work, so that I would be able to just pull in get my order and go to work. As always I completed my order at home, set my pick up time to 15 minutes after the order was placed and headed to Sonics. SONICDriveIn told me my order was completed, deducted the money from my card, but never placed my order. When I arrived at my pick up location they told me that there had been recent complaints about SONICDriveIn that day and that they weren’t able to pull up my order. I called the contact number to see how to go about my order being placed and if it could be pushed through and the associate on the phone just told me there was nothing they could do and that the location I was at was responsible for my refund then asked was that all I called for and dismissed me. I relayed the message to the store manager and she called herself to get things fixed. I received my refund yesterday but I still had to reorder and repay for my food after a thirty minute wait and no real help from your support line.

First of all, the reward redemption process on SONICDriveIn is terrible. You can’t even redeem the rewards because by the time you try to, by tapping “redeem” it has disappeared. Try telling the employees you have a reward that isn’t visible anymore...most of the employees don’t know how to use SONICDriveIn anyway and make it seem like it’s an inconvenience that you want to pay with SONICDriveIn . Their lack of knowledge on SONICDriveIn / payment system isn’t fair to customers who have loaded money on to SONICDriveIn . I was told that I had to use my card because the girl didn’t *think* their store used SONICDriveIn ...I asked her to find out for me, she did, and she was wrong, so someone else helped me out. So I would have essentially paid $40 for $20 worth of food since I loaded money on SONICDriveIn. Also, I have been told that if I had say $3 left of SONICDriveIn and I wanted to pay the difference with my card to zero out and never use SONICDriveIn again I can’t do that. So I cannot ever have a zero balance. I keeps prompting you to add more to cover your purchase and then some. I don’t want money on SONICDriveIn ! I want to zero out and be done with sonic!! Blah.

I thought I would download SONICDriveIn because I keep seeing signs at my sonic to order ahead. And I thought this would be awesome because it seems they never can hear me at my sonic. And I always end up having to scream my order at them.
But after doing this, it asked me I’m up for a road trip, because no stores within 50miles from me will do a Mobile pay. So I’m kinda confused on that part. Also from what I see, you’re forced to buy a virtual card. So unless I want to drive Over 50miles to use it, I won’t be doing that. Also, what if my totally is $5.33 and i have to buy $10 cars? I’d rather not have a balance in some app that could potentially lose information. This is just stupid.
I thought it would work like McDonald’s works. Order your food. Go to the restaurant, and check in and it uses your debit/credit card to purchase. Easy peasy. This was way more complicated than it needed to be. Also, stores: don’t advertise to download SONICDriveIn if you don’t even allow it at your location lol. What a waste of 10min of my life lol.

So a lot of places have swapped over to doing these apps instead of manpowering cashiers and the like... but, Sonic does not appear to have cut any jobs. You can still order in person. So they’ve taken some of the weight off the cashiers which is surprising since they also offer their 1/2 priced drinks whenever you order thru SONICDriveIn no matter what time of day it is.

The only thing I’d point out is that their flavor shots seem to transmit wrong at times to the location and the guy or gal comes out and says, “Diet Cherry” instead of regular.

The food is still fast food. It’s a few steps better than McDonalds or Burger King, but ultimately it’s still fast food. Mistakes do still happen with your orders to where you have to have the food itself corrected... ordering with any modifications to standard menu in a high volume production line though at some point people are going to go on autopilot and make that 500th burger as-is without paying attention to what you actually ordered. But you get what you pay for.

I digress. Ultimately SONICDriveIn has a couple little hang ups with ordering, but the discounts are on point and require no fees. Just the usual marketing sign up with your email address. You can order ahead and check in, food is brought out to you promptly upon arrival. I like SONICDriveIn.