94 People Share Loopholes That They Exploited For Years Before Someone Found Out

Loopholes—like holes in Swiss cheese, they’re everywhere, and they’re giving some people real-life cheat codes that border on stealing. But you need to be very perceptive and to have the cunning of a Slytherin to notice and use them to your advantage.

Redditor SterlingBoardman asked their fellow internet users to share what loopholes they’d exploited for years before someone found out. Some of these are devilishly delightful and we’re not sure if we should be angry or impressed. Check them out, dear Pandas, and give the ones that impressed you an upvote. Let us know what loopholes you’ve exploited in life in the comments and what you think about people who use them in real life.

However, just because something is technically allowed doesn’t mean that it’s done in the Spirit of the Law. [Add holy chanting sounds.] While loopholes can help some people live a better life, others can use them for less than admirable purposes. And, in some ways, using loopholes is a lot like cheating. Besides, somebody ends up getting the short end of the stick in most cases. Whether it’s a small mom and pop store or a mega-million multinational corp.

#1

Used to work at starbucks like 7 years ago and they used to print these receipts where if you filled out a survey it would give you a 6 digit code which you could then exchange for a free drink.

However when you gave in the receipt with the code we would just toss it in the garbage and then give the free drink. So over a shift I would just keep all the survey receipts when people didn't want them, write random numbers on them, then keep a wallet full of free coffee. Since I already got tons of free drinks, I would give them to homeless people and explain it was good for a free coffee. Probably gave away like 100 free drinks.

Image credits: lanni957

#2

When I was a kid there was a pay phone down the street that if you put your quarter in made a call but no one answered it would give you back two quarters. Went there all the time and called home when I knew no one was there to answer.

Image credits: btpn-425

#3

I used to live in an apartment across the road from a casino whilst at University. They released an app where if you "check-in" you get points that go towards free food and drinks.

Because I was close enough to the casino I could just check-in without going to the casino itself.

Every Saturday I used to get a free burger, fries and drink and watch sport in the sports bar.

They eventually scrapped the app; it was awesome considering I was a broke Uni student.

Image credits: IBeMadToo

SterlingBoardman’s thread got 64.7k upvotes and several hundred awards on Reddit. This just proves that the question they shared on the Ask Reddit subreddit was unique, out-of-the-box, and got our noggins jogging. It really made us think long and hard about using and abusing loopholes and whether it's right or wrong.

Personally, I’m a big believer in the Spirit of Justice. Not all rules, laws, and regulations are just and good. Similarly, not all things that are just and good have been written down and packaged in a neat and tidy stack of papers.

That’s why we use our common sense and why we have cultural customs and conventions (known as mores) to help guide our morality and how we behave in society. In other words, life is never as easy as following the rules as written. You can’t shut off your brain and your sense of what’s right. That’s why some legal loopholes can make us feel guilty inside—we know we’re doing something wrong by ‘gaming’ the system.

#4

Arby's used to have a "take a survey on the back of the recipt and get a free roast beef sandwich". But when I got the free one, I got a recipt then too. I bought one sandwich got literally dozens for free over the course of a year or so.

Image credits: MermaidRumspringa

#5

Local casino issued a $20 free play coupon in the newspaper with no expiration date. I talked to the newspaper delivery guy and asked him about that copy and he told me he's got 100's of them in the van as they were a few days old now. I got all of them, clipped out the coupons and proceeded to make $19.50 every day after work for around 500 or so days. Not quite years, but pretty damn close. The casino never printed a coupon without expiration/one per customer rules ever since.

Image credits: OlmecDonald

#6

I used to work at a grocery store and we had this era of the steak discounts. Hundreds of coupons for $5 off a steak were just everywhere for some reason. I found out that if I used the self checkout and bought a steak that was less than $5 while using the coupon, the machine would give me back the difference in change. I ate dozens of free steaks and filled my change jar up nicely.

Image credits: retrospect26

In case you needed more persuading that loopholes aren’t all that Legal (notice the capital ‘L’) even though they’re legal (small ‘l’), Investopedia defines them as technicalities that let people or businesses “avoid the scope of a law or restriction without directly violating the law.”

You might not be breaking the law (technically), but you’re using a “flaw or defect” in it for your own gain because the people who drafted the law didn’t see the cracks in the legislation. The fact is, loopholes get closed all the time as some glaring limits of rules and regulations become obvious over time. No law will ever be perfect, so it’s a constant uphill battle against those who find the teeniest loopholes they can exploit.

And though it’s all fun and games on a small scale when you get a free burger because of some quirk in the rules, it can lead to some seriously dangerous things like tax evasion because of how complicated (and full of loopholes) things like tax codes are. At the end of the day, it’s up to us to decide if we use loopholes or end up relying on our conscience.

#7

Was living near & attending our local university. While working full-time in an economy in the midst of a recession I barely had enough money to pay the bills, let alone eat. Where I live is very well known for its tourist industry & casinos so I had quite a few friends who worked in it & would tell me about these MASSIVE employee luncheon cafeterias. At that time there were no id cards or lanyards to be scanned or checked, all you needed was to find it & be dressed appropriately to the employers dress code. After my friend & I did a dry run on one of those trips, in order for me to find it without getting lost I would go it alone. For almost 3 years I had lunch/ dinner for free, learning the peak service times & the dead zones. Even got along with some of the cafeteria workers and custodial crews.

Image credits: lazyeyelefty88

#8

My Aunt and Uncle were trash collectors both professionally and as a hobby. My mom had pulled one of her epic [screw] ups (again) and we ended up living with them.

Most of our food came from the trash, however Dominoes had a rewards system where the boxes had blue or red tabs depending on the size of the pizza.

Collect enough tabs, get free pizzas.

Aunt and uncle collected thousands of those tabs. We ate pizza every weekend for months before the company caught on and they put an end to it. I was 11 at the time but I remember hearing that their address was banned for life from delivery. I'm pretty sure Dominoes also stopped the promotion shortly thereafter.....

It was awesome while it lasted.

Image credits: MissSassifras1977

#9

In high school, our p.e. grade was based on improvement. We took a skills test at the beginning and another at the end and your grade was based on how much you improved. So, once I learned that, I always sucked at the first test and then did miraculously better at the second, so I had a massive "improvement" and thus, a better grade.

Image credits: BarnabyMoose

#10

Not years, but when I was broke and had just relocated to a new city, I couldn’t afford WiFi for a few months. The first weekend I was laying around my apartment playing on my phone, and I noticed there was a WiFi network in range that was named ‘Gandalf.’ Well, I attempted to join and after being asked for the WPA, without hesitation I plugged in ‘youshallnotpass’ and was surfin’ the web for free for the next few months.

#11

At my current apartment complex, they just changed the laundry machines so you need to use this super s**tty slow app. I found out if you press start on the app and start on the machine and then back out of the app while it’s “chatting” with the machine, the machine will start but won’t charge any money.

Been washing and drying for free for a few months.

App name is similar to smallGS or smallPayments

Image credits: FunklerLing

#12

The thing we clocked in on when I worked at Kmart would round to the closest quarter hour. So by clocking in 8 minutes early, and clocking out 8 minutes after my shift, I got paid for 30 minutes rather than for the 16 minutes. By exploiting this, I was paid 2.5 hours of overtime a week. Cumulatively, during my time there, this added up to about 6.5 weeks of extra pay. I wasn’t ever caught, though.

Image credits: ArmyOfDog

#13

Got keys to a new flat on a Friday afternoon, the place had electric but it wasn't in my name.

Went to the electric company just before closing and the lady said "flat 8 you say....... Hummm we only have record of 7 flats on that building. Tell you what (glances at the clock) come back Monday with the serial number on your meter, and we'll get you all hooked up"

I never went back and enjoyed free electric for over 2 years until i moved out.

Image credits: 8bitPete

#14

Worked out how to get the jackpot every time on a Connect 4 fruit machine in a pub I used to drink in.

It would cost about £5-£10 before you'd get into the bonus round, then when you did, you'd play a connect 4 game against the machine.

You place the first counter, and then after the machine places the next counter, you mirror the machines move. Every game ends in a draw, and you win the jackpot, which was £50.

The pub landlord removed the machine after around 3 months as it was regularly empty, basically paid for my drinking and more for 3 months!

Image credits: mammoth200

#15

Circa Late 80s. You could make a long distance collect call from a pay phone, and charge it to a private number. The operator would call the other number to confirm. We’d ask the operator to call the number of another pay phone nearby,and have a friend authorize the call. Free long distance for almost a year.

Image credits: Solo_is_dead

#16

Back in 1999/2000 there was this web advertising company called AllAdvantage. You could install their ad banner on your computer and it would occupy like the bottom 15% of your screen and show you ads and AA would pay you for the time you were exposed to the ads.

Of course they had basic measures in place like stopping your accumulated time if your screensaver came on or your computer went to sleep. But all it took was a simple program that would keep your mouse slowly moving while you're actually away IRL and the AA clock would keep on ticking.

Not sure if it keeping it running at all times I was away IRL ended up being cost-effective in regards to cost of electricity but I was a teenager living with my parents so I didn't care about that. I think I pulled maybe $500 or so before the company went under.

#17

2
Obligatory not years but I can't believe I got away with it- My mum gave me £20 to buy a big thing of a certain brand of cat food which normally costs £10.99. Now heres the thing- when I entered the store I was given a coupon for £5 off that particular brand of cat food. The store was ALSO doing £5 off the type of cat food I entered for. I got to the till and the food was priced at £5.99, I handed over my coupon and it was scanned so that the food was 0.99p. I couldn't believe my luck because normally it says "not for use in conjunction with any other offer". But here's the real kicker - the lady behind the till gave me ANOTHER COUPON so you can bet your goddamn life I went round again and left the store with £22.98 worth of cat food for £1.98, with a third coupon in my hand. The only reason I didn't keep exploiting the loophole was because I had to carry it all home on my BMX

#18

Part-time retail worker for big chain.

Work gives employees a 5% discount over all purchases, increasing to 10% on store products.

Gift cards are store products. So are vegetables and a lot of groceries.

By paying $45 on a $50 gift card and then using said card for my shopping, I can purchase $55.55 in groceries, for an effective 19% discount on almost all my essential shopping (and 14.5% on everything else). I have on occasion bought a card online on my phone while queueing at the checkout.

Four years strong and still wondering when they’ll realise they’re giving me a discount on money.

Image credits: Ediwir

#19

I went to a sporting goods store and they asked me for my phone number when I was paying. I was in a bad mood and didn’t want to fight with the clerk so I told them our local area code + 555-1212 (which is the old number for directory assistance), clerk accepted it and I left. When I checked my receipt I had a huge number of loyalty points - because apparently a ton of other people did the same thing. I called the office the next day and switched the “account” to my new address. A half-dozen times over the next few years, I went and got free stuff with all the points that I kept racking up as one of their most loyal customers.

Image credits: otternoses

#20

My family used to go to this campground in the summer and rent a little cabin for like a week. In the main building there was a little arcade - mostly older games, and a foosball table, and an air hockey table.

What most people didn't know was - the air hockey table was broke. If you put quarters in, you could push the plunger to start the machine and then get your quarters back if you did it juuuust right.

A couple of years in a row were SUPER fun because me and one other kid that knew would keep air hockey going for the entire time. The arcade would be filled with kids who would often play other games while waiting their turn at air hockey. They must have found out after a few years though because one year we went back and it was fixed - the arcade was also a complete ghost town, and the campground made no money off it after that. That's when I fully realized and understood the concept of a "loss leader" at like 13 years old.

Image credits: unknown

#21

Used to work for the BBC - they have (as you’d expect) their entire archive digitised.

I was working on some cloud stuff so needed access to it to check some access rights.

This was literally everything ever shown on the BBC ever downloadable in a ton of video and audio formats, iPlayer is just a fraction of what was in that archive. Took them about 6 years after I left to remove my account , so 6 years free access to probably the largest tv and movie database around

Edit: blimey that was a lot of activity while I was asleep!

For those asking I used it mainly to watch documentaries , I’m a bit of a history bore so would just search something like “world war I” and see what popped up. You could download as video or audio, I’d drop stuff out as MP3s and listen to it in the car!

Yes it was called Redux and good to see other ex BBC’ers who had access for years!

Yes you have to pay for a TV licence in the UK, yes it’s crap to be forced into it, but that does mean there are zero adverts on the channel which is nice when you’re watching a program

Oh and yes BBC these days also stands for something else, hilarious.

#22

When Lyft first came out, they were giving away free rides up to like 20-30$ if I remember correctly, all you had to do was refer a friend.

So me and my college roommate just made a few email address, and somehow my free rides glitched and I just kinda had free rides for the year

Edit: I remember what caused the glitch: I had lost my debit card that was linked to the account, so I had to cancel it and get a new one. For some reason, Lyft kept processing payments to my old card, but it never came out of my bank account

#23

When I was in college they had this deal where if you signed up for a free trial of Netflix you could get a $10 giftcard code for Papa John's.

They didn't even ask for a credit card back then, just an email, so I would just make new email addresses to use and would get a code every time.

Not only did I get free Netflix for a while, but I also got a lot of free pizza.

Image credits: -eDgAR-

#24

Not intentional, but once I found out I didn't stop.

Years ago I used my card to pay for Xbox live during a period before I could pick up a manual 1yr subscription, but when I tried to remove my card details it wouldn't let me and said I had to call MS directly.

Being lazy but smart, I decided to just change the security numbers that were saved so it wouldn't process any future payments. And it never did. But somehow I still kept getting Xbox Live access. This went on for about a year and a half before it stopped.

I was never contacted about paying anything for what I'd used either.

#25

At my old job we had a vending machine in the basement that gave change back when you bought something. Sometimes it gave more than you paid. No one used this machine as the basement was being reconstructed but it was regularly filled.

Image credits: EarlyBirdTheNightOwl

#26

The McDonald's app used to have an entry in the order book for "garlic parmesan fries" that you only found through the search option. It cost $0.00. Every time I ordered it I got free regular fries.

Also you can set the drink option on happy meals to coffee, which is not really a loop hole but handy.

Image credits: jonhuang

#27

I paid three hundred dollars a month to park a really pimped out van in a heated garage in Boston. If you parked front in no one could see you. Found a spot near an electrical outlet and ran a line into the van. Paid for a $10 gym across the street that was open for 24 hours so I had all the hot showers I wanted. Served at a nearby restaurant so ate most of my meals for free. Watched tv on my laptop with the free WiFi from the coffee shop above me. Literally lived in downtown Boston for 310 dollars a month while I went to college.

#28

Whole Foods used to have bacon on the Breakfast Bar. Cooked bacon weighs almost nothing! I would get a pound of cooked bacon for $8.00 It lasted almost a week! Bacon crumbles for the salad, for the turkey sandwich, and the 100 other things that you can toss bacon into!

I used this method for almost a year, then they stopped putting bacon out....sigh......

Image credits: Eponarose

#29

My old job i worked at a pretty large gym (gold level, like the 3rd highest level). Monthly fee was $79 for the gold membership but employees got a free diamond membership. Worked there for a year and a half before i quit, but my account was never deactivated. Been going there for a while completely free, still not found out. Diamond membership is like $200 a month

Image credits: Shooterdude34

#30

On the original Kindle, you could purchase a book with an expired card and Amazon would send you the book. A minute later, you'd receive a notification saying the payment didn't go through. You had to select something stating you were aware of this, and then they would take the book back. If you hit the home button, it took you out of the notification and you could continue reading the book, 'unaware' that the payment didn't go through. I did this once a month my junior year in high school. The summer before Senior year, I could not do it anymore. Coincidentally, my passion for reading died around that time.

Image credits: Melchior-Morgenstern

#31

Two from college, not exactly loopholes but playing the system.

Pizza chain had coupons printed on their larger boxes, with 10 coupons you could get a free cheese carryout pizza. Used to raid every single trashcan of their pizza boxes in the dorms, or offer to throw away someone's box for the coupons. Rarely paid for a pizza, but got plenty of cheese carryouts for free.

Campus paper printed a coupon for two free game tokens in the bowling alley/arcade in the student union, limit one coupon per day. I got a stack of coupons (free campus paper), twice a week I had to go through the student union for class and was usually with a friend. She was a good sport, and the two of us cashing in coupons meant four game tokens a day, eight per week. I made her a pair of earrings out of two game tokens for being a good sport.

Image credits: verminiusrex

#32

Photoshopped a college parking pass to hang in my rear view mirror, complete with a fake barcode. Even had it laminated. Free parking for 3 years, saved 250/year.

#33

I have always lived in a different city/town than where I work. I’ve also always worked in an industry that gives preference to my coworkers who are parents. I learned early on that when asking for time off, if I listed ‘going out of town’ as a reasoning there would be no question or hesitation to grant the time off. I’m rarely ever traveling as that label suggests.... I’m merely at my home... in another town. I have one coworker I have told but the vast majority have yet to ever figure out my system.

Image credits: nannymegan

#34

I don't know if this counts as a loophole but back when I was an unemployed college student and before public transport tickets became electronic where I live, I used to cover my ticket in a thin layer of glue (glue stick) so when I validated the ticket the ink would stay on top of the glue layer. I would then wash the ticket very carefully with water and the ink would come off. I'd let it dry and I magically had a brand new ticket. This would last about a week before the ticket started looking too weird.

#35

I'm still exploiting this one:

Whenever I need a shoulder and neck rub, I offer one to my partner.

He usually accepts, and I spend some time rubbing his shoulders while we watch TV. Then we switch and I get an awesome rub.

I find that if I just ask for one he will definitely do it but loses steam after a few minutes. I think when I give him one first it loosens his muscles up so he's more relaxed, plus maybe he feels more obligated.

I intend to keep on exploiting this for as long as I can.

#36

Printers at the university had a flaw that let you print out any number of pages while just paying for a single page. I told too many people about it and they eventually fixed the problem but I was able to print for really cheap and save a ton on printing. I normally am not the kind of person to do this, but our professor made us print out 20 page state diagrams instead of just submitting them electronically, and I wasn't going to pay for that.

#37

My boss was always late and patients would always show up early for the first appointment of the day. I started letting staff know I would be changing it on the schedule to show our first appointment starting 15 minutes earlier. We ran like clockwork for a year until the doc decided to randomly be on time more often. I had to admit patients weren’t late I had just been shifting the schedule to make things run more efficiently.

#38

I used to buy books on Amazon Kindle with a debit card that had no money on it. The transaction would take a little time but you could download immediately. The problem was if you payment bounced they would remove the book from your device, so if you downloaded the book then turned your wifi off on your device you could read for free.

#39

I never once clocked out for lunch. For 10 years. That’s 1300 hours of overtime worked. No one ever said anything and it only ended when we got new clock in software

#40

I grew up down the street from universal studios and went there everyday after middle school. Eventually we learned to go into the VIP line for rides which nobody was ever in. When the guy stopped us and asked us for our vip tickets, we just told them a high up employee named "Rick" should've called it in. After two seconds on the radio trying to verify, every employee just gave up and let us through. We skipped lines for years with that method, and eventually ride attendants came to know us and just let us through. It was beautiful.

One day we got bold though and snuck into the studio area. Guards caught us and asked us who we were with. We told him our fictional "Rick" told us we can be here. Well the guards took radio verification way more serious, and managed to get a real Rick on the line. We waited for Rick to show up, knowing we were busted. Rick showed up, turns out he was actually the backlot manager at the time and gave us a strange look. The security guard asked us if we were with him and this dude said yes! He took us aside and asked us what we were doing and we told him we just loved film and the studio atmosphere. He loved that two young kids were interested in his job and began taking us all around to the studios, allowing us to sit in on tapings of various shows and so on, giving us a free pass to come back anytime, and also....vip line access.

#41

It’s a small one but in high school I didn’t want to wear glasses while playing football (the only had glass contacts back then - and we couldn’t afford them) so I memorized the standard eye chart. The line you needed to read was D-E-F-P-O-T-E-C

#42

Worked a s**tty part time job with no benefits, career growth, etc. that let you clock in 10 minutes before and 10 mins after your scheduled shift because it involved a lot of walking. Extra 2.5 hrs per paycheck for virtually no effort.

#43

HP used to have an employee shop where they sold all of their stuff at 50-70% discounts to employees.

Remarkably you didn't need to log in to anything. If you had the URL, you could place an order, whether you were an employee or not. Delivery was also free and came with the standard HP warranty. Naturally I listed everything they sold on Amazon for marginally less than everyone else. Made about £5k from that in the second year of uni

#44

kept a cancelled credit card in the car for "paying" for parking on city machines that never actually validated the card. Eventually word spread and the city added cellular tech to validate the card.

#45

Many, many years ago I was the manager at a Texaco station. This was circa 2004ish. We didn't have electronic dispensers, they were all analogue, although the prices were controlled from a computer in the office.

Whenever we had a price increase, we had to close the station for about 10 mins as it took that long for the dispensers to update to the new price. I happened to be on the forecourt during an upgrade and picked up a pump to see what price was being shown. I very quickly put it back down again and ran to get my car.

During the update, petrol was priced at 5p per litre. I filled my tank for less than £5. At the time, our receipts only showed the pump number, type of fuel and the amount due - there was nothing about the price per litre or the quantity dispensed. After that, I don't think I spent more than £50 in total for petrol across a few years.

#46

When we had a daily limit of one hour on our AOL account my sister figured out if you unplugged the phone line during your session and logged back in it reset your hour

#47

Ok, pretty amazing stuff

I got a friend who worked for a year at EDF, the main French electricity company.

When you work there you pay only 10% O your electricity bill

Fun fact, you can use this ava'tage on 3 résidence

Fun fact 2,for some reason, 10 year after quitting your jobs there you still have the advantage

#48

Wife and I financed a very nice fridge. They did their financing through a bank that sends you a CC after the fact with the item already charged.

Card showed up, no balance. Called the card issuer, never been a balance.

This was over 6 months ago, still no balance or record on either of our credit reports.

#49

This is super weird and I haven’t thought about it in years, but I suppose it was a loophole... Soda companies used to run giveaways where they would put a code under the cap and then you could enter the codes for points, and get free stuff once you had banked enough points. I was a stock boy at a local grocery store and we had to take care of the bottle return machines also. Any loose caps (and nasty soda juices) would settle in the bottoms of the bags, so on slow nights we would cut the corner of the bags to drain, and collect any loose caps which I would then wash in the mop sink and take home to bank the codes. I ended up getting some sweet stuff like a few CDs, a zip up sweatshirt, and even some decent noise cancelling headphones lol

#50

I got Amazon prime for free in high school and still have it... I graduated in 2017. Idk why they haven’t caught on, my high school email is long gone and not even on my account anymore.

#51

My parents didn‘t want me to use my phone for hours when I got one in sixth grade. So they installed an app called screen time. It only allowed me to be on gaming apps etc. for a certain amount of time and they could see how long and what apps I used too which bothered me like hell. I accidently found out that there is a safe mode that you can start your phone in, where third party apps are deactivated. It was a bit annoying because some games were also gone but if i was quick enough i could still start them before the app dissapeared from the screen or find them if i googled the app on my phone. My parents somehow never found out and I taught my little brother this strategy as well.

#52

There was a soda machine that was really old that would still charge $.25 for a can of soda. Pretty soon I realized that it would give you a can for free if you just mash the buttons repeatedly. It was the best part of grocery shopping.

#53

Not years but 2 weeks. I was on vacation in the Dominican Republic with my wife for 2 weeks. At the Resort they would give every adult $20 a day to gamble at their little casino. We would go to the Roulette table and put $20 on red and $20 on black. Made $280 those 2 weeks.

#54

Way back when, I did the grocery shopping for my large family as a teenager. Mom didn’t drive, dad didn’t shop. I drove, so she send me for groceries. Deal was I could keep the coin part of the change from the purchase for doing the shopping for the family. Didn’t take me long to figure out to ask for a $10 roll of quarters each time when I was given change.

Went on for a few years; Mom didn’t know about it until I fessed up in my 20’s. “You little s**t,” she said while laughing.

I miss her.

#55

There was this thing for t mobile called T-Mobile Tuesday’s and every Tuesday they would give you stuff/ offers. Well one week they offered a free whopper at Burger King. I used it and a few weeks later they gave it again. But I noticed the code was the exact same one. So me and my fatass brain thought, what if I can screenshot it and use it every Tuesday? So I did, and it worked. I eventually started to use it on days that weren’t even a Tuesday. It was fun while it lasted but Burger King removed the offer.

#56

My Spanish homework in high school would often have three possible answers while allowing three attempts by default, so you could trivially get a perfect score. I got through three years of Spanish class with that and I don't think the teachers have realized that loophole even to this day.

#57

Parked in a reserved space that never had a car in it at work. It eventually became mine because I just kept parking there.

#58

Not really for years, but I used to make tons of money on coupons driving for Pizza Hut. I lived in an area that didn't tip for s**t, and one on delivery this lady gave me a coupon after having paid and said "whatever it takes off the price, keep it as a tip"

So I started answering the phones as often as I could (this was before online ordering), take the customers order, tell them the total and hang up. Then I'd apply whatever coupon I could find that fit their order and print out the ticket. It only worked when I was the closing driver because you have to remember the total you told them, but it wasn't uncommon to get $15 + whatever they tipped for driving a half mile down the road using this method.

#59

Bank of America would give you 3% cash back points on gas purchases. Back when I did this, I was a heavy smoker, and realized by coincidence that if I paid for gas inside and made other purchases, that I would still get 3%

So buying like $1 of gas and cartons upon cartons of cigarettes became my thing.

Now I dont smoke anymore though, which is even better savings :)

#60

My local Groupon website had always a 30% discount coupon that changed every day. Once a month you would get one in the mail (Coupon was processed on top of the normal 40% discounts that Groupon has in restaurant’s, so it was a real 70% discount). I noticed that it always started with an L and then four numbers. So I wrote a python script that every day would send me the daily 30% coupon by testing the 9999 posibilites agains the website API that wasn’t properly secured, this took 4 hours to code and less than 20 minutes to run.

That year we had dinner at restaurants like if we were middle class, then they patched it, but my GF and I remember it as the golden year

#61

Not really a loop hole, but more so employees that didn't care/weren't trained well.

Saw a movie back in high school and mid way through the audio cut out. The theater handed out vouchers to everyone so they could come back and see another movie. I ended up just flashing the voucher to the ticket takers for months and just walking in. Eventually someone told me I was supposed to use the voucher to buy a new ticket at the window. Probably saw dozens of movies by doing this lol.

#62

Because I was a good student and rarely got into trouble, I was allowed to have my own phone extension in my room. So, if I was out past curfew, I'd call home. When my mom answered, I'd say, "It's for me. I've got it." And she'd think I was up in my room.

She never did catch on. :D

Edit: It was 1976. My mom never knew. I know that because I confessed to it years later. She was very shocked and mad, and she grounded me. But I was forty and had my own house by then. My parents were the early-to-bed and early-to-rise type, and my room was a converted attic two floors up from the rest of the bedrooms. I often came home after everyone else was asleep because I had a part-time job, so I was used to sneaking in like a ninja. It was a bright yellow Princess phone. And finally, I knew a good thing, so I did not abuse this technique, just a few times when it was absolutely necessary, like the time we hitchhiked to see Peter Frampton.

#63

Still ongoing. Thanks to a charge card i was granted top tier elite status with a hotel chain. I downgraded 6 years ago but the status remained. The hotel chain went through a merger but since I had retained the status for over ten years I was given lifetime top status in the new program that was created.

#64

One week the local Chick-fil-a put a coupon in a local coupon magazine flyer which was Buy 1, Get 1 Free, any item on the menu. Next to that coupon they had a 50% off any menu item. I carefully checked, and neither coupon mentioned "Cannot be combined with any other offer" anywhere on it. So I ran out to the local grocery store and grabbed a stack of these flyers. Sure enough the next week the offer was gone, but it was too late to stop me.

I spent almost 2 years as a grad student living almost exclusively off of 128-count nugget platters that I would get for 25% of the cost (1st half off, 2nd free). Place went under new management and they put up a sign saying they would no longer be accepting those coupons. Not entirely sure if that was due solely to me or if anyone else was pulling the same thing. I had about 20 coupon pairs left when they shut it down.

Image credits: bravehamster

#65

parking meters took credit cards. But they weren't actually connected to a live network at all times. The machine just confirmed the card number was valid and was not expired, then spit out a valid pass. So when my card number got stolen and replaced, I kept my old, cancelled card. Of course when the system tried to run the card later it would be declined. My car and I were long gone by then. Sadly they wised up and now it charges your card before giving you a pass.

Image credits: pierrekrahn

#66

My first credit card ever when I was 18... many moons ago. I opened a bank account and they sent me a CC. I used it for just shy of 2 years, all kinds of stuff, my first apartment was baller...... NEVER GOT A BILL. bought nice clothes, systems, subscriptions, food- you name it. Never got a bill. Went to the bank one day to deposit some money and ask when my new card was coming (my old one was about to expire) and they said, “What CC? You aren’t supposed to have this.” They took it on the spot- never got a bill. Tens of thousands of dollars EASILY, all for free.

#67

There is an app for a local burger chain where it allows you to "roll the dice" to get a code for a free double-patty burger upgrade. It was designed so you could only try it once per day and it even shows the date of the roll on the code so the cashier could verify it.

However, I found out that you can just change the date on your phone and try again immediately. If you got nothing, change it again and just keep going until you get the code. Then, when you got the code, you change the date back to current date and the app updates the code so it looks like you rolled it today.

I got free burger upgrades for years until they finally got rid of the feature alltogether. I don't know if anyone ever figured out this exploit, they removed it for other reasons.

Image credits: SpookyPlankton

#68

My high school counselors told everyone we needed two years of a foreign language to graduate. It was common knowledge, everyone just listened and took the classes. Everyone. I read the student handbook and it listed the graduation requirements and it said nothing about foreign language. I never took one. My friends didn’t catch on until senior year and when I told them, they warned that I would be in big trouble and might not get to graduate. They freaked out. One girl called me an idiot. I showed them the graduation requirements, available for anyone to read in the student handbook or counselor’s office. No one ever said a word. I graduated. Always read the terms and conditions, y’all.

#69

It was only once. Bought a game (license) on steam for a game which was on a different launcher. Tried out the game, didnt enjoy it and refunded it.

Later i checked the alternate launcher and while steam gave me my money back, they never canceled the license at the other company. Got a game with it's newest expansion (€70,-) for free.

Image credits: Chulo078

#70

There used to be a third party warranty you could get at Newegg that was called "replacement or refund". It was for laptops that were under $500. The warranty cost like $75 for two years. At the end of two years, I would file a claim for whatever small thing was wrong with the laptop (headphone jack, card reader, bad key, etc), I would send it to them, and they would refund me the full $500. Then I would just buy a different laptop and get the warranty again. I rolled the same $500 for three different laptops. I basically rented a laptop from Newegg for $37 per year.

#71

Used to wait tables at an old steakhouse that would put buy one get one free steak coupons in the local newspaper, the first Sunday of every month. Early Sunday morning like clockwork I would drive around and buy as many as I could, sometimes all of them, cut them out and keep a couple in my server book as needed for each shift. Then shift after shift, anytime someone would pay cash for their tab, and before the customer got up (or I'd bring back change if needed) I would walk up to the manager and ask for a "comp" showing the ticket and coupon, and that extra cash went straight into my pocket. Turned $100-$150 nights into $250-$300 nights. Very quick and honestly too easy. Did it for over a year and a half. Managers never caught on.

#72

My friend used to restock condom machines in pubs and collect the money from them. The machines would always break and get jammed all the time but because it was condoms no one would ever tell someone that the machine ate their money. He would just count how many condoms were gone and give that amount of money to the company and pocket the rest.

#73

In 4th grade when the teacher accidentally gave me a teacher's copy textbook that looked like a students. I ran test answers out for 50¢ a answer.

#74

Years ago I was a season ticket holder for an awful NBA team. My tickets came electronically via PDF. I had OK seats in the upper part of the lower bowl, but nothing great. Anyway, on nights where I knew it would be empty (which was most nights unless a superstar like Kobe or LeBron was in town), I would use the full version of Adobe Acrobat to edit the PDF's to indicate a much better seat location than mine. The bar code still scanned just fine because I didn't mess with it, but when the usher took my print out all he saw was that I was sitting on the floor.

Got away with it for years until the team actually got good for a while and the place was packed.

#75

Phone phreaking to call long distance BBSes for free. Yeah that hasn't worked in a long time, it's all digital now.

#76

Delivery broker sites, Found out one delivery company never knew how many or how much each parcel they were collecting weighed. So used to send large parcels for fraction of the cost. They have gone out of business now...

#77

When I was in school they sent us home with a form for our parents to fill in. The idea was to collect updated contact information in case anything had changed (phone numbers etc).

If you were late to school, the school texted your parents to let them know. For myself, the usual punishment was a grounding.

I was frequently late, so I filled the form with my own phone number and started to receive the text messages that were intended to tell my parents that I was late.

Got grounded far less frequently after that

#78

Growing up I worked at a chain grocery store. They had a policy in place that if an item price label didn’t match the scanned price in the computer, the first item was free and any subsequent items would be for whichever price was lower.

Every few months an elderly woman would come in and spend 4-5 hours shopping. When she would come up to the register, she would have a full cart and near everything would be free. I had to ring her out a handful of times and only caught a few items overall that she was wrong on. At one point, she found a comforter BBB mislabeled and got it for free ($40-50 sticker price).

More than once the store manager would watch her on the store cameras to ensure she wasn’t switching the stickers but never saw her do anything sneaky, just very calmly looking over every item shelved one at a time.

Eventually the policy changed and she stopped coming in at all.

#79

Staples used to let you recycle an infinite amount of ink cartridges at $2 a pop. My old job used to run through ink cartridges at an insane rate and it happened to be my duty to recycle them. I brought them to Staples and recycled them under my Staples rewards account to what amounted to 1000s of dollars over time. If there wasnt something in the store I wanted to buy with the coupons, I could buy from their online store which had video games, tvs and other non office items. If I still didnt see something I wanted, I could buy a Visa giftcard or giftcard to another store via their website to translate the money in to direct cash. Staples eventually put a 10 cartridge per month cap on recycling which ended my madness. All technically legal mind you.

#80

I used to go to this Mongolian bbq spot at the mall that had those thinly sliced frozen sheets of meat that they let you pick yourself and they cook it for you so long as it fit in the bowl they gave you, then choose your veggies etc, so they used to be kinda “folded” into like ribbons so they’d take up more room in said bowl, well it’s stupid but I realized if I just used the back of my hand/ knuckles I could kinda “crunch punch” the folded frozen meat down and I would back in like a pound of meat when that wasn’t what they had intentioned at all, but since it was in the bowl they had to cook it. So good.

Anyways me and my ex would go like 3 times a week and just get one of those and it would feed us both pretty good for like 5$. Eventually they caught on after like a year and one time we went I proceeded to do the same good ol back handed meat punch in my bowl when one of the workers yelled out to me to get my attention and pointed to my right at a printed paper that had a fist on it saying “no to fist meat” with a circle and a cross going through it. That was my legacy there and the food was never the same when it was 99.5% noodles. Me and my ex broke up that was the only good thing in that old toxic ass relationship

#81

Spoons old menu. if you ordered 2 sides of "half rack of ribs" and a portion of chips. It would work out cheaper than if you ordered the ribs meal. You gotta sacrifice the 2 or 3 of onion rings you get with the meal. But the instead of a dash of chips you'd get a whole basket. And it was a couple quid cheaper.

#82

When I would commute to work I would have to pay to park at a nearby lot that would change $5 per day on a prepaid card. When the amount would get low I would use the ticket machine to reload money onto my card. Well one day, unknown to me, they were doing a software update right when I reloaded my card with $40 cash into the machine. As a result it didn't register to new amount on my card (I think my card had something like $10 left). I went into the parking office to complain but they told me they didn't believe me and that I was out of luck. Well the next day I use the card but instead of deducting $5 it instead added $5 so my new balance was $15 and the next day I had $20 left on my card. I used that card for almost 2 years and the final balance was thousands when it finally stopped working one day. And, honestly, I would have let them know about the issue right away if they hadn't been total jerks about my initial $40 issue. Net gain.

#83

Jack in the box used to have a “Get 2 free tacos with any purchase “ coupon on the bottom of their recipes. A group of my friends found out that we would buy the cheapest item which was a slice of cheese we could get 2 free tacos everyday for 20¢.

#84

About 10yrs ago American Eagle distributed $10 off $10 purchase coupons on my campus. No restictions. I asked nicely and one of the reps gave me a STACK of them. Guess how much socks and underwear were? $10.50. It was years before I ever paid more than .50 for a pair of either. Sunglasses were like $2. Flip flops. The accessories world was mine for the flaunting.



Never saw that deal again.

#85

When we moved into our new house we put our trash out like everyone else and routinely it was taken every Wednesday morning for 12 years. One afternoon we heard the neighbors complaining about the increased cost of trash removal and learned it wasn’t free at all. We thought it was county sponsored the whole we lived there. We called the trash company, explained the mistake and offered to make amends - they seems disinterested but just took our name and address down and told us they’d begin billing.

The never did. We stayed another 10 years before selling the house and never paid for trash service. Hey we tried...

#86

Tudor's Biscuitville once did a promotion at a minor league ball game: everyone got a coupon for one free biscuit sandwich, and it didn't say limit one per customer. Attendance was low, so at the end of the game the guy came up to me and offered basically a box of these coupons and told me to pass em out to my friends. For the next year and a half my friends and I were rolling around with money clips of free biscuit coupons, passing them out, and getting tons of free food for ourselves. I still think it was weird that at no point did a manager ask why we had so many coupons, or try and tell us that we couldn't get twenty sandwiches at a time for free.

#87

There was a machine at an arcade similar to Dave n Busters called Round 1. One day, im there with a group of friends, and I go to the prize area. I see three kids with funko pop dolls stacked over there heads, headed to the register. I jokingly ask what their secret was. They won't tell me, so I said I'd tell them my ticket making secret in exchange (mine sucked)

They inform me there's a machine giving more tickets than normal. I go find it and it's one of those mobile games turned arcade machines that no one would ever play. I play it once and get 700 tickets for probably $0.50. To put in perspective, a 3DS was 40,000 tickets. I play it for about an hour, and get enough for a 3DS. We got so good at the game, wed win the jackpot everytime and itd give us 6000 tickets. It would take 15 minutes for the machine to just count it all.

Long story short, my friends and I stayed all day the next day and made enough tickets to get 2 PS4s, 2 Wii US, and 2 3DSs. It was such a lame game, no one ever bothered to try and play it besides us.

They eventually found out later that day, as they walked over to me while I was plahing to observe the game. I just walked out, drove to one a town over just to be safe and redeemed all my tickets.

Tldr: got 6 consoles for about $80

#88

Back in the day, I built a red box out of a Radio Shack phone dialer and made free long distance calls for literally years. Payphones back then made a different sound for each denomination of coin that you put in and the red box just made that sound into the mouth piece to fool the phone into thinking it was getting real money. Weird, stupid trick, but worked almost all of the time.

#89

I got tons of free food from Moe's Southwest Grill by doing their online survey daily from my phone and computers at work and home.Then put the codes into the app for points. Did this for a few years. Along with $5 burrito during Moe Mondays, It was a no-brainer.

#90

Me and my friends used to sign into each other’s PSN accounts (back in the PS3 days) to download each other’s DLC. We’d pay for one each, then get all the rest for free. Think Sony found a way to stop you doing it by the time the PS4 came out though.

#91

There is a mall beside where I work that has 3 hour parking limit (work charged for parking). I took my car for auto servicing at Canadian Tire there one time and noticed that they used a slip on the dash to identify the car as one worked on by Canadian Tire and free to park there for the day. I photocopied the slip and parked there daily for over a year and a half before I was caught. One day canadian tire called me confirming that I was doing what they thought I was...they asked me to move before I got towed. Never parked there again after that.

#92

I worked with servers who would collect the coupons printed in the paper, then when a customer paid cash, they'd apply the coupon and then close the check. Extra $5 several times a day. I only realized what they were doing close to the time I left. Working for chain restaurants is a special hell full of special devils.

On a related note, I once worked for a restaurant where I got called in because a customer called to complain about being charged more for tip than he left. I double check the tips, and at checkout, the manager double checks the tips. I had to go apologize to the man at his business.

I realized only years later that the managers can Alter tip amounts and one or more of them was adding a few bucks to tips here and there to servers tip out amounts before closing the checkout and then giving the server the actual amount while keeping whatever amount they added.

I'm pretty sure one of the managers was a psychopath and drove a super expensive car, so it seemed plausible.

I work in the film industry and used to work in the hospitality industry. Hospitality industry was shadier by far.

#93

In my middle school they had a Snapple machine. Someone figured out if you unplugged, plugged it back in and pushed a button you could get a free Snapple. It lasted for a few weeks until the Snapple machine guy came to refill it, opened the machine and yelled “Eleven Dollars?” at the top of his lungs. The machine was moved in such a way that you couldn’t reach the plug anymore.

#94

This was back in the 90’s but many major websites used to have affiliate click link subscriptions you could make and put them on your website, and get paid a few cents for each click that was made.

Now at the time, me and my buddy were getting into learning stupid JavaScript alert prompt prank pages at the time. I wish I remembered the website, it was something like “monkey coding”? Wish I could remember. An early resource for learning to code. Anyway, I changed a lot of the basic annoying prank alert stuff we’d been using into clicking the affiliate link repetitively for me.

Now I wasn’t too wise of either coding or network security at the time but I thought, surely, it won’t count if the same computer (IP), or same few IP addresses have clicked the link thousands of times...

Sure enough, for a few months at least, I got cheques sent to me for $20-30 usd a month. Not much, but I wasn’t even in high school at the time, and was so proud of actually receiving them that I don’t think I ever cashed them I just hung them up on my wall.

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