You should always read the fine print. Usually, this is a precaution we take to protect ourselves. But in some cases, knowing exactly what you’ve signed up for can help you figure out how to exploit the system…

Redditors have recently been recalling the biggest loopholes that they’ve ever taken advantage of, so we’ve gathered their most amusing tales below. From getting a mountain of free lava cakes to staying on a former employer’s health insurance for years, enjoy reading about the clever ways these people gamed the system. And be sure to upvote the hacks that you would have loved to figure out too!

#1

This loophole I learned from someone else on reddit but i’ll share it for those who may not know: If you have a planet fitness plan and can’t cancel it online, change your home gym to a random one in California. Then you can cancel it online!

Image credits: Afraid_Assumption_20

#2

I used to bartend and would have to pay for parking, either on the street (which was a pain since I would have to re-up in the middle of my shift and often forgot), or in a paid parking lot.

Found a parking garage that used a ticket machine on the way in, but had you pay a person on the way out. 90% of the time there would be no one working late night when I left work, so I scored free parking for a few years.

Image credits: kit_kat_barcalounger

#3

I used my college ID nearly until my 40s for discounts.  A few years back, a cashier at a local hardware store gave me a “really” look that cut right to my soul which made me stop using it.

Image credits: fulthrottlejazzhands

#4

When my brother and I lived together, he worked for a large chain restaurant. They had a policy where if someone called in an order for pickup and didn’t pick it up by closing time, it was free game for the employees to take home. Occasionally, I would call in orders for pickup, never pick it up, and he’d just take it home for us. I’m not proud of it. We were both broke af at the time, and most days, it was the only food we could get

EDIT: I’m no longer broke so whenever I buy food from this place I make sure to leave a heavy tip, I guess as a thank you to the chain for keeping me alive but mostly to ease my guilt.

Image credits: Excellent_Debt_2971

#5

I worked for an organization that ordered large amounts of groceries every week for their group activities from a major supermarket.

There was a place to put in your loyalty card number so I just used mine.

Not only did I get heaps of points to use in shopping there, no one noticed it until about five years after I left.

Edit:
– I wasn’t a supermarket employee or other insider exploiting my employer. We were a totally unrelated business who bought from them.
– When I was tasked with setting up the account to purchase online there was a form to fill out. My business didn’t have a loyalty card and wasn’t interested in gettiing one. So I just used mine. It was a set and forget type of thing. The supermarket also had, in addition to our business landline, my mobile number and the delivery people would contact me directly if they had any problem at 6:30am when they brought the stuff.
– I don’t really know if anyone ever noticed it or not. Probably either (a) they changed their supplier or (b) someone else taking care of the account put in their number instead (I tend towards option b). They didn’t ask for the points “back” because they hadn’t been interested in them in the first place.
– For years I also kept getting calls from various suppliers who somehow still had my mobile number – I kept redirecting them to the office and telling them I didn’t work there any more. It hasn’t happened for a while now.

Image credits: shunrata

#6

There used to be a glitch in my Domino’s app that would give free extra cheese as long as you waited until it asked if you wanted it. If you added it yourself it would charge you. It worked for a few years until I got a new phone.

Image credits: opermonkey

#7

When I was in high school, I accidently found a soda machine that dispensed free grape soda. I hit the button randomly while passing by, and a grape soda came out. I did it again the next day just to see and more free grape soda. It must have been busted or some sort of strange glitch. For the entire school year, I would pass by and hit grape on my way home and get a free grape soda. I wasn’t stupid about it either. I kept that s**t to myself. I wasn’t about to ruin my free grape soda by telling everyone.

Image credits: HumpieDouglas

#8

When I worked at Petco I hooked people up for free treats. There was a $2 bag of sample treats with a coupon off for $2 (supposed to be off your next large bag)

One day I accidentally scanned it as the UPC and coupon were side by side. I started doing that more and gave away treats lol.

Image credits: Outrageous-Serve-964

#9

When my son was in high school, he went to one that was connected to the community college. Starting in 10th grade, he could take college classes, so he chose classes whose credits would apply to both high school graduation and an associate degree. He also favored accelerated 7-week courses. He graduated high school with an associate degree and transferred 49 credits to his 4 year university.

Image credits: pnjtony

#10

Got fired two weeks after HR got fired. They never cancelled my health insurance. That was 2001.

Image credits: L-W-J

#11

Back in the days when Groupon was new and so there were real deals to be had, I purchased a one for a free sub from a big sandwich chain.

The process for redemption was to order your sandwich in line like normal, and at the point where you’d pay you held up your phone and the employee at the register would click the redeeem button on your phone, then comp the sandwich.

I would pull up the Groupon, turn off cellular data and then let the employee “redeem” the Groupon.

As soon as they had done so and I walked out with my food, I would uninstall and reinstall the Groupon app. This prevented it from simply relaying the redemption the next time data was available.

I did this nearly every day until the Groupon expired. Usually for a couple weeks. I bought the Groupon every time it showed up, usually every other month.

Probably over a hundred free subs. Such times, the late naughts.

Image credits: knabe4k

#12

Around 2008, the US Mint was trying to get more people to use the new dollar coins. You could buy some via their website and they would ship them to you for free. Those purchases would earn you points on your credit card.

I bought $10,000 worth of coins, then took those coins to the bank so I could pay my $10,000 bill. I would then buy another $10,000 and repeat. A few hundred thousand air miles later and I’m still using those free miles in 2024.

They eventually did close the loophole, but some people with huge lines of credit were able to get millions of free air miles.

Image credits: WorldTravelBucket

#13

Back in university when windows 10 was new they offered free licenses for students. They used a third party website that didn’t have actual limits and even had a dropdown menu to select the amount of licenses you want. I think I got 10 licenses that way but If I wanted I could’ve gotten hundreds.

and they were legit windows 10 education license codes and not tied to any account.

Image credits: Mriamsosmrt

#14

When lava cakes first rolled out on the dominos app, rather than selling them only in two packs as they do now, there was a drop down picklist where you could select the specific number of cakes you wanted. For whatever reason, if you selected 1 cake only, it was added to your cart with no price ($0.00). You could then go into the cart and change the quantity of that $0 lava cake to whatever number you wanted.

I was worried at first that I’d get found out so I would only order 1. Then I got bold and ordered two, and they came just as they do now, two in a pack. No charge. I decided to push it one time and ordered 8 lava cakes with just two medium pizzas. Total bill was $16. Thought for sure someone at the store would realize something was wrong sending out two pizzas and 8 cakes for $16. Nope, minimum wage employees don’t give a f**k, they just see the order and fill it.

After that I was like the Don of crunch cakes, you want a crunch cake? You GOT one. I must have gotten hundreds of those things over the course of 3-4 months. Eventually I knew it would come to an end. I was going to write to dominoes in hopes they’d like give me a gift card or something for exposing the glitch, but my gf at the time was like dude, don’t blow your cover, they’ll just fix it and not give you anything, so I didn’t.

Less than a month later they patched the problem, and I still regret not being the whistleblower and maybe getting some free pizza.

As a totally random button on this story, years later I was helping my company develop their website, and I flew to Detroit to work directly with the developer. At lunch on the first day we were talking shop, and the dev told me one of their claims to fame was developing the Dominoes pizza tracker. I was like, wait, did you just do the tracker or the whole site? Turns out they did the whole site, the app, and tracker! I mentioned my lava cake scheme and the dev almost fell out of his chair, he was like “I totally remember that issue and patching it!”, he was floored I had the inside scoop on that site glitch he assumed nobody knew about.

Image credits: cutty2k

#15

Signed up for a free trial on Audible, when I went to cancel it offered me a free credit to stay. Took the free credit, went to cancel again and offered another free credit to stay. Got about 25 credits in one day before I chickened out and officially cancelled.

Image credits: PolishGazelle

#16

I had found out and abused the fact that Bed Bath & Beyond’s had a birthday reward loophole, I essentially had created multiple BBB accounts, set the birthday to next day, and had $5 birthday giftcard rewards roll in on the next day. It also turned out you were able to stack them together into one account, so I cashed out about $600 worth of them to buy my mom expensive kitchen appliances. Ninja Creami and Ninja Smart Foodi, great products, use them almost everyday.

Image credits: Idionare

#17

It was a multi step process but damn it felt good. A local grocer had coupons for $1.00 off a 32oz Gatorade, branded by Gatorade, so they worked at multiple retailers. I clipped a bunch of them.

Then I went to Walmart down the street and loaded my cart with as many gatorades as coupons. At the register, the cashier was baffled I was buying so many gatorades (I was in high school). She scanned all my gatorades and the total was something like 68 dollars. Then I had her apply a price match to Meijer’s price, something like .88 cents each, bringing the total down a bit. But it doesn’t stop there.

Then I had her scan all of my coupons (deducting a dollar for each Gatorade in my cart). The look on her face was hilarious, as my ‘total’ went lower and lower each scan of a coupon, eventually passing zero and showing a negative value. After ringing them all up, she got smug and said, “I bet you think you’re pretty smart, getting all of these for free”. I looked at the total on the screen, then at her, and said “oh no, not free. I actually think I have some change coming back”. Her jaw hit the floor as she called her manager and was told, indeed, that she had to also shell ~$8 out of the register and hand it to me. What a feeling that was. [Proof of Gatorades](https://ift.tt/IhiVRXb).

Image credits: number_juan_cabron

#18

In college I was dating this girl who worked at the bookstore, which had an ATM.

She texted me informing me the ATM was giving out $20 bills instead of $5s, so if you withdrew $15 it’d give you $60.

I and my friends and like 7 other people who happened to find out made quite a bit of money that day. I only made a few hundred because I was broke at the time and only had so much to withdraw.

Some people were there for a *long* time though. Everyone was super respectful about it, they’d withdraw, get their $60, and then move to the back of the line and do it again. Not one argument about hurrying up or anyone trying to double withdraw.

Just broke college kids living in harmony, stealing from a bank. Was beautiful.

No one got in trouble. We were bugging for a while. The machine was completely cleaned out of $20s by the time the ATM people came. Girl I was dating said she heard them say it was well over 10k.

Image credits: ihopethisworksfornow

#19

Parking in the financial district of my city is around $40 per day. There is a department store that offers free parking if you purchase something over $50. We used to make daily purchases for the free parking and return everything at the end of the week. Did this for 5+ years before they changed the policy to a 3 hour parking limit.

Image credits: 1970Tango

#20

In college there were these snack and soda machines with conveyor belts. The door that led to where you picked up the item was a plastic door/flap that didn’t lock. If you bought something, and held the door shut, the machine would end up returning your money and the item would remain on the belt.

You could then buy something else, or the same thing, and a second item would drop to the belt, next to the prior purchase. Again, holding the door shut would force the machine to return your money. You could do this as many times as you wanted, provided all the items fit on the belt.

Being a poor college student, when I realized it did this, I was able to get a few days worth of drinks and snacks for the price of one. I recognized this is stealing NOW, but at the time I just thought “cool, I don’t have to buy lunch tomorrow.”.

Image credits: BarnacleMcBarndoor

#21

I was leaving an abusive ex, and he had made me put our apartment only in my name. I was gonna have to pay a bunch of money to break the lease. Until I looked at it and realized to my had put the wrong year for the lease ending. They had done the year before, so legally my lease was over and I had technically been month to month. The manager was super pissed when I pointed this out, and that I did not have to pay any lease break fee or additional rent past my submitted move out date. They tried to hit me with a bunch of maintenance and cleaning fees after. But I had picture proof the place was in the exact condition I’d rented it in. So they informed me I would never be able to rent at any of their properties again. Which was super dumb. I’ve always been a really great tenant anywhere I’ve rented and I was not going to let them do anything legally that could f**k me over. Buuut that whole lease thing was a huge relief and very helpful during the worst time of my life.

Image credits: DiscombobulatedElk93

#22

When I was studying I used to take the train home almost every weekend. There used to be a perk with the first class ticket that you could rebook the train if you missed it in a 24 hour window after it departed. I figured that the only way they would know if I missed the train was that if they scanned my ticket. So I just put on something that made me look like I belong and then I pretended to be asleep when the conductor came to check the tickets. This worked almost always so I had two tickets, one for each direction that I just rebooked into the next week. The first class had single seating, free coffee, biscuits, oj and water. It was almost empty usually so very nice and quier, the train otherwise was usually aleays booked near full but people didn’t want to pay the 50% more for the first class. I think I got ”woken up” like 5 times during the 3 years I studied so I paid about 320€ for about 100 first class trips on those trains. I guess they realized people were doing this and it was changed as an optional addon to the ticket and had to be rebooked before departure.

Image credits: Graceful_cumartist

#23

In college, I discovered that if you reported your laundry card as ‘lost,’ they’d replace it and refund the balance. I ‘lost’ my card every week for a whole semester and never paid for laundry again.

Image credits: MayaLux111

#24

I got a hefty ($300+) parking ticket out of state; the officer wrote down the correct license plate number, make, model, and color, but used an incorrect state abbreviation. I fought it and won.

Image credits: FaceFuckYouDuck

#25

A telco in Australia had a $40 x 24 month contract for a phone that was worth like $1100.

However, when you cancelled they charged you 50% of the remaining contract price. So, you could a new phone for less than half price by signing the contract, getting the phone, and paying the cancellation fee the next day.

I got me and my partner new phones, but in the forum’s there was people who were doing this for like 20 or so phones and then reselling them and making a decent profit.

Image credits: starsky1984

#26

Blockbuster ran an ad in a magazine about doing three trade ins for a new game (59.99, no sports trade ins). They had another coupon for X dollars off, I forgot how much, but we did that special so many times they ended up shutting it down at our local branch.

Walmart stocked the aisles wrong one night. They left the 4 packs of Red Bull in the pallets and put it under the sign saying 4.99. My brother worked at Walmart and told us they’d honor whatever pricing they advertised. We ended up with 120 Red Bulls for 25 bucks.

Walmart also spider locked their dvd collections together instead of locking a single box. We convinced the teller to give it to us for the price of one unit.

Image credits: DarDarPotato

#27

Not too exciting but the marcos pizza in our area had a “free cheesybread” coupon when i was in highschool, you got a survey on the receipt and if you filled it out you got a free cheesybread and you didn’t have to buy anything else. we saw that they still put the receipt with the survey with the free cheesybread. my ex and i abused that at least once a week until they got rid of it lol.

Image credits: unfortunate_leo

#28

TBF I am not sure if this is considered a loophole or not but…

I got the movie pass and used it to buy a ticket at AMC. Then, I’d go into AMC to exchange it for another timeslot. When they did that, the new ticket was eligible for a cash refund. I used to work right next to an AMC.

I did that every day or every other day, for at least 3 months.

Image credits: thishitisgettingold

#29

JUUL Vapes had a starter pack for $60. Shop down the street from my house had them 50% off.
Inside the $30 starter kit was a $50 survey offer.
I bought ten starter packs, made a couple hundred bucks.

Little did I know these surveys would come every month, each time $50.
I made thousands…

Image credits: TobyDumb

#30

Dropbox free tier was like 5 gigs but offered extra storage for referrals. I spent maybe 5 dollars on Google ads containing my referral link. Maxed out my account at 20 gigs, which I haven’t had to pay for, for like a decade and a half now.

Image credits: Irregular_Person

#31

Back in the day, the UK video game store Game were running an online competition that had a prize every time (usually just a small coupon) but the top prize was an XBox Kinect which had just come out. There was a limit to one entry per email address per day but you could enter up to 10 email addresses of friends as a referral with every entry and if they won you would also win, of course each referral email could also enter 10 more referrals.

I had my own email hosting and had every possible email address at this domain (1@, 2@ etc.) redirect to my main mailbox. I just entered a few thousand times with a little helper script to automatically fill the referral email addresses. Over about a week of doing it on and off I won the top prize of a Kinect (they didn’t let my referral email address also have a Kinect, so only 1 prize not 2).

This was back before captchas were being widely used. Still by far my biggest exploit, based on them assuming you don’t have access to unlimited different email addresses.

#32

This isn’t exactly a loophole, it’s more an unknown exploit.

In the UK if you work for a large business they have to spend 0.5% of the salary bill for the Apprenticeship Levy. They need to spend this money within three years or it’s forfeited to the government.

One of the “apprenticeships” you can do is level 7. These are the level of a masters degrees. I got a £25k MBA for free, paid by my employer with zero strings attached.

#33

In college when we wanted to go to concerts, we would buy one pit ticket and the rest were cheap GA tickets. I’d print out however many copies of the expensive one we needed, everyone would use the cheap ones to get into the venue, and then we would all separately go in and give them the paper ticket because they just took them at the entrance to the pit area and didn’t scan them.

#34

When I was a struggling single Mom there was a well known rewards program that ran a promotion that you would get 3 points for every “review” posted on business listed on a business directory website.

I wrote reviews non stop for months, always gave 5 stars if it was somewhere I hadn’t been (figured the business owners would be happy with that) , and everywhere I did go I wrote an honest review. I worked my way through the alphabet and after a few months I was able to buy my son a PlayStation for Christmas with the points.

#35

It’s pretty minor, but Fuddrucker’s kid’s hamburger meal was less than half the price of the regular burger combo, so I’d just buy two kid’s burgers and fries and end up with more food than if I’d gotten the regular burger meal. And I’d get two cookies.

#36

Subway’s Chicken Bacon Ranch is cheaper if you just order a Chicken Breast Sandwich, Add Bacon, and Ranch instead of ordering it by its marketed name.

#37

I used to fish a lot. WalMart guaranteed their trolling motor batteries for 12 months to charge to I think 90%. So I bought 3 batteries for $125 each and kept the receipt. At month 11 I’d go in and have them tested and without fail they’d be in the 80% range and I’d get new batteries with new 12 month warranties, that’s how they wrote the policy. Finally in year 6 they gave me my new batteries with a 30 day warranty. But I got 7 years of new batteries and used the final 3 for 3 years.

#38

In the early 2000s, many credit cards would mail you 0% balance transfer/cash advance checks for 6-18 months with a 3%-5% fee. What was unusual (compared to today) was the the fee was capped at $75-$150 (loophole 1).

I took a bunch of these checks across different credit cards and borrowed $30k at 0% and used that money as a down payment to buy a condo in Europe.

The European bank for the mortgage could see the cash I transferred to Europe but not the balances on my U.S. credit report (loophole 2).

When the time period for the cc loans ended I’d transfer balances to other cards at 0%, until eventually I got tenants for the condo, moved back to the US, got a job and paid off the $30k.

That condo is now worth €375k ($415k USD). And that’s how I as a 20-something with no money bought an apartment via credit card.

#39

I remember a co-worker telling me about a loophole he found. There was some promotion with a bank where every transaction you made you’d receive 5 reward points. So he wrote a script that paid for all these transactions in 1 cent iterations and he’d get 5 points for each cent. So for example if he had a $100 bill, he’d pay in 10,000 1 cent transactions and get 50,000 points. They found out soon after but let him keep the points he accumulated.

#40

A few years ago, Leafly sent out a “gift code” for $50 on a specific CBD/THC company’s site. I realized that, rather than having a single-use code locked to your email (or per IP, computer, address, or whatever) like they usually did, it generated a new code every time you clicked the link from the email. That is to say, none of that “this code has already been used” nonsense.

At that time, the majority of their products were under $50, and they offered free shipping on orders over $25, lol.

So over the next 3 months, I “bought” thousands of dollars worth of gummies, oils, lotions, and other health/wellness products…all for the low low price of $0.

#41

I worked in a gas station attached to a grocery chain. For every litre of fuel you would get a cash coupon to the grocery store. I learned they didn’t properly track the coupons themselves which is wild. So I would ring in like 150 dollar gas purchases, coupon would generate and I would refund the purchase back. The books would be balanced at the end of the day. As a broke a*s student this kept me fed pretty well for months.

#42

Parking meters on the streets around my office did not check for funds on credit cards before accepting payment. So I bought a reloadable credit card (doesn’t require registration or activation) and saved $40 a day in parking for well over a year.

#43

I used to work at Staples many years ago and every item that we sell has a status. For example, A status stands for active, C status stands for clearance and F status stands for final. For whatever reason, when an item goes to F status, the price drops DRAMATICALLY. I’m talking a desk that was $250 would ring up for $8.50. Also, because it was no longer an active item, that meant it was no longer on display on the sales floor so anything that would not sell would just sit in the back unnoticed. I used to run a report in our system constantly and it would list everything that our location had in stock under F status. There was a time when like 1/3 of my furniture at home was F status items and I paid probably $50 total for it all. Got my first DSLR (with lens) for $250 (regular price was over a grand). It was a great time to be alive.

#44

Was broke and living in Reno for a (literal) hot minute. One of the casinos would give you a $10 chip if you cashed a check (early 90s). Cashed a $5 check. Then used the $10 chip at the $5.99 breakfast buffet. Left a $2 tip. Passed my bank on my walk to work and would deposit $6 back into my account. Did this most days before work.

#45

Friend of mine. This was over a decade ago, it wouldn’t work nowadays but it did then and it was genius. He was starting a small business. Him and his partner went to 5 banks in the same day. First bank ran his credit, looks good, they get a loan. Next bank runs his credit, doesn’t see the previous bank’s loan because it was too soon to see the update, looks good as far as they know lol, they get that loan. They did three more times that day, 50K each time, total 250K. Nice little chunk of change for a start-up. It wouldn’t work now because the credit report would probably be updated within 3 seconds. But damn he’s a clever m**********r for thinking of that.

#46

If you buy a mattress from Amazon, you can request a refund if you don’t like it. Since it’s so big, they will refund you the money and let you keep the mattress. So, go to a mattress store, figure out what mattress you absolutely love and then go buy it on Amazon and initiate a return. Note: this can only be done once per Amazon account.

#47

Got an email promo code for a pre made meal delivery service where 6 meals were only 7.99 delivered. The way the email was set up was that the link you clicked could be reused over and over. My family, friends, and I used that emailed linked for probably 9 months getting meal packages delivered every week and freezing extras. My grocery bill had never been so low!

#48

I would buy a train ticket via an app (my trip was London to Manchester) and I’d apply the Railcard discount when buying via the app this cost me £70

When it comes to travel day I’d say to the front desk that I had accidentally applied the discount when I didn’t have a railcard, my mistake so can I pay the difference of whatever is discounted (OG price is £100, railcard price is £70 so I paid an extra £30 at the desk)

I was then provided a paper ticket to show the rail staff on the train along with the original ticket on my phone…. which I would then refund to receive the £70 back meaning in the end I only spent £30 on a £100 trip

I did this a total of three times tee hee.

#49

When I worked at Lane Bryant ages ago, there were coupons that were based on how much you were spending. Something like $25 off $75, $50 off $150, and so on. Not everyone got these mailed to them. If a customer was not a pain in the a*s/generally kind, I would fish one out of the trash and scan it. To be nice back, but also f**k you, Bonnie, you toxic boomer s**t stain manager.

#50

I used a coupon multiple times before they noticed.

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