Red Robin’s deal drop dropped the ball.
On Thursday, April 17, the chain launched its $20 Bottomless Burger Pass, which would give cardholders a burger with a bottomless side every day for the month of May to celebrate National Burger Month.
The black and gold passes went on sale at 9 a.m. MT and sold out almost immediately after — and fans on social media were flipping out.
Many burger lovers weren’t even able to get to the Red Robin website since it kept crashing due to an overload of traffic.
“I spent literally an hour refreshing for the burger pass, what incredible incompetence,” one person posted to Reddit. “What a joke. I finally get the Cashstar page to load after 50 minutes of CONSTANT refreshing (after setting an alarm to be up for this), enter my address, and BOOM it’s all sold out.”
“Publicity stunt. Does anybody actually know a real person who acquired a pass?” a skeptical customer questioned.
“Yup, I was refreshing for an hour. Bad gateway whole time. So dumb,” another said.
“I only woke up this early to try and score a free month burger pass at Red Robin only for the site to not load,” someone sleepily complained.
“It was literally easier to get tickets to Taylor Swift than it is to get a Red Robin burger pass,” someone quipped.
Multiple people in the Reddit thread commented that they got as far as getting the pass into their carts — but they were being charged nearly $700 for the $20 pass.
“I was finally able to purchase one for $682 after three previous failed attempts,” one shared. “They charged my card and I got a confirmation number, then later in the day they refunded the amount with a message, ‘Sorry, there was limited supply and all redemption codes have been used.’”
“I made it that far twice but the total was $682 and I was so confused,” another wrote.
“I got it in my cart, but it’s charging me $682. It has to be a marketing stunt,” a user noted.
But Red Robin didn’t anticipate just how many people would want to get their hands on the burger pass.
“We did everything we could to anticipate interest in the Bottomless Burger Pass, including working with our web and gift card partners to prepare for the influx of traffic, but due to overwhelming excitement in the pass, our website and supporting systems crashed,” a Red Robin representative said in a statement to TODAY.com.
“We’re sorry that this happened to our loyal guests.”
The chain said that all the passes have now been sold, but Red Robin Royalty members can still win free burgers for a year through its “Red Robin Royalty Sweepstakes.”
Throughout the month of May, members will have a chance to be one of 12 lucky people to get the burgers and other prizes by purchasing both a burger and a beverage while logged into their account.
Members will automatically be entered to win, and new members who sign up for the royalty program during the month of May will also be entered.
