It sounds the proverbial deal too good to be true—a $20 spend at Red Robin gets you something called a Bottomless Burger Pass, good for 31 meals at the fast-casual burger chain, should you commit to a daily visit.
However, when a customer tried it, the $20 purchase was instead for the full value of the pass: $682.
The video describing the debacle came from creator Selflyss (@selflyss_ih). She describes herself as “just a girl sharing cat videos” on TikTok. Since posting it on Thursday, it’s gotten more than 230,000 views as of Friday. And a similar video declaring, “Sounds good! Gonna buy up one of these right now!” got more than 80,000 views.
“So I got into the Red Robin thing for the burger pass,” a voiceover says with a screenshot of the offer on a computer screen. Then, when the price is revealed to be $682 instead of $20, it says, “What the hell is that? Isn’t it supposed to be 20 bucks?”
Tagging Red Robin in the caption, the creator said, “How are you going to advertise a $20 pass when it actually cost almost $700!?!! Just wasted over a half hour of my life just to make it easier to feed myself next month, just for y’all to be lying! I’m pretty sure there’s laws against this.”
What happened exactly?
According to USA Today, “Burger lovers are out of luck as Red Robin has sold out of its recently announced Bottomless Burger Passes, which were extremely difficult to purchase due to the chain’s website crashing as it encountered heavy traffic.”
The passes went on sale Thursday and then quickly sold out, according to the article. A corporate spokesperson offered a mea culpa that may or may not satisfy Selflyss.
“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,” Red Robin said in a statement to USA TODAY. “We’re sorry that this happened to our loyal guests. All passes have been sold. We are still gathering information on total traffic to the site.”
Red Robin is still offering free burgers for a year for the winner of a sweepstakes it’s offering on its site. It requires joining Red Robin Royalty during the month of May, which is National Burger Month and hence the Bottomless Burger Pass promotion, plus “dining in and signing in,” with the site charging those customers to “Visit your local Red Robin, sign in to your Red Robin Royalty account, and purchase a burger and beverage!
The Red Robin site proclaims that the “bottomless” in “Bottomless Burger Pass” is at the essence of what drives the chain’s approach to food.
“At Red Robin, Bottomless is so much more than the value of endless sides and free refills. Bottomless is a spirit, our way of sharing what we value most with you. Our generosity, creativity, hospitality and perhaps most of all, our bottomless desire to create an environment and experience that speaks to your heart,” it read.
Viewers call out Red Robin
Selflyss’ story fed into some skepticism and perhaps some tall tales from commenters.
“They probably had one pass at $20 for the entire nation,” surmised one.
Another claimed, “Customer service told me there was LITERALLY 100. That’s all for the whole USA. 100.”
“I bought up 15,000 using bots, so it wasn’t a scam,” another asserted, perhaps not credibly. “Unfortunately they aren’t transferable so I can’t resell them.”
“That’s ridiculous,” said another. “We loaded for 45 minutes and got one error message after another. Shame on Red Robin – SCAMMERS!”
@selflyss_ih @Red Robin Burgers how are you going to advertise a $20 pass when it actually cost almost $700!?!! Just wasted over a half hour of my life just to make it easier to feed myself next month, just for y’all to be lying! I’m pretty sure there’s laws against this.. #redrobinburgers #burgerpass #scam #viral ♬ Welp, Didn’t Expect That – Yu-Peng Chen & HOYO-MiX
The Daily Dot has reached out to the creator via TikTok comment and to Red Robin via email.
Internet culture is chaotic—but we’ll break it down for you in one daily email. Sign up for the Daily Dot’s web_crawlr newsletter here. You’ll get the best (and worst) of the internet straight into your inbox.
