There are rules to follow in every part of life. You better abide by the rules of the road when driving, and if you want to keep your job, you must follow your workplace’s guidelines. Even when you’re enjoying dinner, don’t forget to keep those elbows off the table!

But occasionally, people spot little ways to work around the rules to benefit themselves. Redditors have been sharing the most brilliant loopholes they’ve ever discovered that they happily exploited, so we’ve gathered their most amusing stories below. From clever ways to get free food to tricks that allowed people to save hundreds of dollars, enjoy reading through these tales. And be sure to upvote the loopholes that you would have gladly taken advantage of as well!

#1

I didn’t find this loophole but my friend did: A few years back, an online store had this promotion where whoever spent the most money over a month would get free round trip airplane tickets to anywhere in the world. My friend (who’s a f*****g genius) found that one thing you could buy on the site was a gift certificate. So he bought a $25 gift certificate and kept spending it on another $25 gift certificate. So he ended up spending $25 on round trip tickets to Australia.

Image credits: BrushGoodDar

#2

My brother once yelled “last one to jump in the pool is gay,” and then jumped into the pool. However, I figured out that if I did not jump in then technically he would be the last one in the pool, and he is still gay to this day.

Image credits: bpbucko614

#3

I used to work at papa johns to pay my way through college. There was a contest we had where if you got someone to “upsize” their pizza from like a medium to a large for an extra $2, you got points towards movie tickets. A large was simply $2 extra normally anyways. Anyone that ordered a large, I simply put in a medium and “upsized” it. I won every f*****g week. My coworkers didn’t notice this obvious loophole and it didn’t cost the customer extra so I didn’t have a problem with this morally gray area. Free movie tickets every week was a huge in college.

Image credits: ZachMartin

#4

When I was in high school I applied for a summer job with the county. As part of the “unbiased” application process, each applicant was asked to take an intelligence test.

The test consisted of about 80 questions. Each question was four or five line drawings, and you had to put an X in the box next to the one that didn’t belong. Pretty easy.

I happened to notice, though, that the test paper was two part, which is two sheets of paper that are attached together back-to-back with a sheet of carbon paper in between. I could peel the sheets apart and look inside: the second sheet just had a bunch of boxes printed on it, and I could see from the first few questions that I’d answered that the Xs I’d marked ended up in the printed boxes on the second sheet thanks to the carbon paper.

So, I did all of the questions with obvious answers, and if I was unsure, I just peeled the paper apart, noted where the box was printed on the second sheet, and made sure I got it right.

Of course, I got 100%. I figure that if you can cheat on an intelligence test, you’re pretty smart.

Image credits: TuningHammer

#5

There was a drink machine in college that was $.75 for a juice. If you put a dollar in it gave you 5 quarters in change. I got a juice everyday for months before they finally fixed it.

Image credits: mstibbs13

#6

I was working maintenance at McDonald’s when they did a Best Buy bucks promotion. Large sodas and large fries had a scratch off that was worth at least $1 at Best Buy.

I would go through the trash daily, pulling out all the discarded scratch offs.

I got a free computer that year for Christmas. I also had the poor cashier at Best Buy in tears. She had to manually scan each scratch off and verify the dollar amount.

Image credits: Artanthos

#7

My university was trying to encourage people to walk so if we download a specific health tracker that’s connected to our account, it would convert steps into points. The points would get you stuff like free coffee, mugs, discounts for stuff and the most expensive prize: a university hoodie which costs about £30.

Now, the health tracking app is pretty basic, it won’t let you log your steps manually however it does let you connect with other health apps. I found a health app that would let me add in the steps and I logged in an equivalent of 50 km a day and in a few days of logging manually, I would get myself a hoodie or two and I didn’t get caught.

However, I told my friend about it, and he really perfected the method of getting more steps a day, because apparently there was a hidden physical limit to how far a person can walk in a day, but he managed to trick it by setting his height to be 1 cm and because the shorter you are, the more steps you need to take to cover the same distance.

In the end he claimed about 10+ hoodies and he would just get them for anyone who asks. The uni found it suspicious, so he received an email telling that the activity had to stop unless he could provide evidence that he walked that much.

Another friend had a different method. You get points just by being friends with them on the university health website. He also found that he could access a list of everyone who had an account in that website. So he made a python script that would automatically send a request to everyone, earning him points.

Image credits: SpidurMun

#8

Back in the 1960s, the school district in my hometown was broken up and absorbed into the surrounding districts.
Fast forward to 2003. I’m applying to colleges. I discovered that there is a scholarship fund for people living in that old district’s area. The district is gone, but the scholarship still exists!
I applied, and got the scholarship. I don’t think there were any other applicants.

Image credits: kms2547

#9

Free internet access during the early days of the internet. Aol if you signed up for that free month, call to cancel they would give you a free month or two. Cancel at the end of that period then sign back up with a diffrent checking or savings account. Same process, by that time the original account would fall off their list of known accounts so you could go back to that one. I got 2 years of free internet that way, and got my mom permabanned from AOL.

Image credits: tdasnowman

#10

Went to a catholic school with uniforms. We got “jeans day” passes to wear. They were always different colors, including white. I took one white pass, took it to a copier copied enough to fit one page, printed one full page of passes then printed mass stacks of pages. I made a lot of money selling them out.

Image credits: anon

#11

My dad figured out a good one back in the 80’s. Just like they do now, back then cable companies would give you a free weekend trial of a premium channel (HBO, Cinemax, etc) in an effort to get more people to sign up for those channels and pay more. However, our cable company’s method of giving you access to the special channel was to send a signal to your cable box which unlocked the channel. To turn off the channel at the end of the free trial, another signal was sent. My dad figured out that the signal to lock it was only sent for a short period of time, so before the end of the free weekend, he would unplug the cable box and then plug it back up the next day. Since the box never got the signal, we would have a free premium channel for a while. Usually after a month or two it would get shut off so we’d have to wait for the next free trial weekend.

Image credits: anon

#12

Not very impressive but at my highschool we had to wear a buttondown and a tie to class every day. One of the kids realized that they never specified what kind of buttondown it had to be so he wore a hawaiian shirt to class with a tie. Technically it met the dress code so it stuck.

Pretty soon most of the school started wearing hawaiian shirts with ties to class. We looked like a bunch of ridiculous Jimmy-Buffet-goes-Mormon types but it was worth it to spite the system. They changed the rule to ban hawaiian shirts a week later.

Image credits: taylor1288

#13

They used to have a promotion at Wendys, probably 6 or 7 years ago, where if you filled a survey out on your receipt you could get free burger.

I guess they didnt notice that you could take the survey on the receipt of the free burger and just keep getting free ones. So we would just go after school and chain 5 free burgers after we just bought one.

We did that for a few days until they finally caught on and stopped accepting it.

Image credits: Pterons

#14

I used to get the train from liverpool to manchester every day. The fares were extortionate. £15 a day.

Instead, I’d get a 30 day return on monday in liverpool (£20), then on the way home I’d get another 30 day return in manchester (£20).

As long as the return tickets never got stamped, I’d re-use them, so I always had a valid ticket to travel.

It helped that I was always on the first train, and the guard could not be bothered to check tickets, and on the way home I was on the rush hour train and they couldn’t get up the train to check.

It saved me thousands!

This was before the barriers at most train stations now though, so probably a LOT harder to do.

Image credits: Bigjobs69

#15

When I was a kid my town had a “slow bike race” tournament. So the objective was to cross the finish line in last place, the key is to keep your balance. Well the rules stated that each time your foot hit the ground you would have 5 seconds subtracted from your time. But it didn’t say anything about keeping your foot planted on the ground. So once the race started I just stood there and waited until everyone else finished, waited a good 5 seconds after that, then just rode across the finish line.

Ultimately they didn’t let me win which I think is horse s**t because they wrote s****y rules and a 12 year old found a loophole.

Image credits: machomoose

#16

Local radio station had a contest where you call in when they play same artist back to back to win a prize. Turns out they had a “now playing” and “up next” feature on their web site. My girlfriend at the time would start calling in before the second song even came on. Won tons of prizes ranging from concert tickets to a laptop.

Image credits: mahck

#17

During senior year at my high school, we had a baby photo contest. The contest had a bunch of rules about the photo you could submit, but none of them said that the baby had to be you. I submitted a baby picture I found on google and won “Best Dressed Baby”.

Image credits: iknowvapetricks

#18

When I was a freshman in Highschool my geology teacher told us we had to make a presentation about igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic types of rock. He explicitly said he didn’t care how we did our presentation, but it needed a visual. I asked him to specify how much he doesn’t care about the content of the presentation and what is allowed to be up for interpretation. He clarified that you could do a song and dance for your presentation if it was relevant to igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.

I did an interpretive dance.

Relatively no effort, a sprinkle of shame, and a reluctant A-.

Image credits: anon

#19

Infinite free Amazon prime.

A few years ago you could sign up for free Amazon prime, then immediately cancel the automatic monthly subscription. You could do this every month and use the same card/home address for each new account; all you needed was a different email address.

Did this for just over a year and got free next day delivery and some movies/tv to stream that Netflix didn’t have.

I just wish I’d have known about twitch prime so I could have helped a few streamers out for free along the way.

Image credits: Squidgy_Loin

#20

Favorite on-line clothing store used to do BOGO, but if you returned the item you paid for you could keep the free item. It was crazy. They must have caught on though because they haven’t run that promotion for a while.

Image credits: Hurray_for_Candy

#21

I once had a service that gave me an extra month of service for each referral, even just for a free trial, so I did what any reasonable person would… I just kept creating new accounts and referring myself.

Image credits: NickTheBigGay

#22

Back in 2013, Papa Johns had a promo for the Super Bowl where if you called the coin toss correctly, you would get a voucher for a free 1 topping pizza. However, the only control in place was you could only enter the contest one time per email address. I created more than 60 emails, half of them calling heads, half tails. Ate free for six weeks.

Image credits: TheDrunkenOkie

#23

My high school had a stupid rule that banned you from attending prom if you went to a saturday detention that semester. I got in trouble and was assigned to Sat. D-Hall, but my girlfriend really wanted to go to prom. I just kept skipping it and they kept adding more until they rolled it into a day of actual suspension. They had no rule barring you from prom for an out-of-school suspension so I got a day off and took my girl to prom.

Image credits: anon

#24

My brother got free parking for pretty much his entire time at university.

It was that golden period when the pay parking kiosks were able to accept credit cards, but before they were actually connected. They’d read a card and check it against a locally stored list of banned numbers, and once a month the meter maid would download the transactions, process them, and update the blacklist. My brother found that they’d accept those prepaid gift cards if they were backed by Visa or MasterCard, but couldn’t check the available balance, so he’d buy one, use the balance up on whatever, them use the card for parking until the end of the month when it’d get processed, found to not have funds, and banned. Rinse and repeat.

Guy saved probably $2500 over his degree.

Image credits: el_muerte17

#25

I can’t remember when it happened, but it was years ago. I think it was Nestea, or some other canned tea, but if you bought a case of tea then there was a coupon on the box for a free case… except it was on every case, so now you have case #2 and another free case coupon. All the tea could be had.

Image credits: Daerkyl

#26

For awhile McDonalds had a promo where, when you walked in, you could scan a QR code and possibly get free food. However, different locations and different cutouts had different codes. I took pics of as many unique codes I could find, put them all on a handy pdf, and scanned them all using an android device and an IOS device before lunch. I got free extra value meals regularly. In fact, I still had a couple free ones left over when they stopped the promotion.

Image credits: mtg-Moonkeeper

#27

Our local Tesco accidentally had 2 offers for Terry’s Chocolate Orange at once, so if you bought 4 (or a multiple of 4) they GAVE you 50p.

Tried not to a***e it since if they noticed they change it, but bought 4 chocolate oranges with other stuff through the self checkout every day for almost 2 weeks before they corrected it.

I planned to save them for Christmas presents but Christmas was 4 months away, and you know how delicious Terry’s Chocolate Oranges are.

EDIT: To all non-Brits out there since apparently they’re not sold elsewhere: they’re f*****g delicious. If you ever come to England do yourself a favour and buy one, or find a “foreign confectionery” shop and hope they sell them there.

Image credits: Water_Meat

#28

Italian restaurant my family loves had a candy claw machine we played every time we went. But the trick to learn was, if the claw closed all the way it thought that meant you didn’t get anything, and would let you play til you did get something. This means we would go for individual items that would fit into the claw perfectly (one sucker, one laffy taffy) so it would close all the way, instead of trying to get a big lot all at once, that way it wouldn’t register the candy and we could keep going and going. We actually took so long once our parents made us leave before our turn was up and we still left with hand fulls of candy. the best part? IT ONLY COST A QUARTER! They no longer have that machine :(.

Image credits: httphaimish

#29

An agreement I had with an employer on school reimbursement with additional pay.

I had to agree to remain at the company until X date and they would pay for my schooling + additional pay for various things. If I left, I had to pay the money back. (Edit for context – I received reimbursement + bonus at the end of every quarter based on completion of a class + a certain grade. I had already received ~$20k at this point) The parent company of my division changed after the agreement was signed and time came for me to get the cash owed to me. Head of HR refused to pay. I went to him and asked why I wasn’t getting the check we agreed to. He stated that the agreement was with the previous parent company and therefore was no longer valid. He had this smug look on his face, but then he noticed I had a big smile on my face. I could tell he couldn’t figure out why. I asked him again if there were refusing to pay and he said yes.

I then stated that I no longer have anything binding me here, because the contract stated “if I willing leave the company, I have to repay the money.” He agreed and asked what my point was. I then stated that if the parent company did change then I did leave said company, but I did not ***willingly*** leave. Therefore, I did not owe any money if I left this company as it was not the company I signed the agreement with. The expression on his face changed. I continued on with, “If I, hypothetically, put my two weeks notice in now, I would be able to leave without owing any money.”

It didn’t take him long. He realized by stating that the agreement was longer valid because the company changed that he gave me the information I needed to get out of the contract. He agreed to pay me the money. Spoiler alert, he was fired a few weeks later for various reasons. He was one of the worst HR directors I have ever seen.

Image credits: Vlaed

#30

Old job had a loophole about time. It worked as such. If you were scheduled for 8am shift you had 7 minutes to arrive and be on time. If you arrived past the 7 minutes you were considered 15 minutes late.

Loophole: it worked the same for clocking out. If you stayed and helped for an extra 7 minutes and clocked out. You got an extra 15 minutes of pay. During my tenure there, I would always ask if people needed extra help and make sure I stayed past the 7 minutes. This went on for a full year. Got probably close to an extra 24 hours of pay.

Image credits: Macabalony

#31

When shopping online, this is a bit of a ball ache but if you’re struggling financially you can always just spend the amount required for free delivery, and most places don’t charge you to return items so just send back what you don’t want for a refund and you got free delivery.

#32

Not sure if this will still work but when my buddies and I would go to see a movie, we’d only buy 2 tickets and 2 of us would go in. One of us would then take both ticket stubs and pretend like we were going out for a smoke and come back in with another buddy. We’d do this until all of us got in.

#33

My college campus had a cafe with Deli and salad bar, the deli sandwiches were way over priced, like 8$ for a standard turkey sandwich. But the salad bar was very reasonable. (Subsidized to promote healthy eating)

So I found that the Salad bar had all the same ingredients as the sandwiches, the meat was just shredded. The Deli would sale slices of bread for $0.25 each, so I would just buy the bread, load up and weigh my “salad” and grab some free mayo and mustard packets, then build my own sandwiches for under 2$. Used that trick for my last two years.

#34

At my university the parking pass was like $200 a month for the underground heated parking. Long story short we figured out the pass we got to let us in had a magnet strip on the back which was useless because the machine read the barcode at the top. Me and like 6 of my friends bought one photocopied it and glued it on top of older membership cards. Ended up costing like $30 a month. Best year of my life. We live in Canada so underground heated parking in the winter was the dream.

#35

Back in the 90’s Dr. Pepper ran a promotion where you could win stuff from the bottle caps, including a free Dr. Pepper. You just paid for the new soda with the winning bottle cap. I learned that you could look up the bottle and barely read what was written on the inside of the cap. I bought one Dr. Pepper and continued to “win” maybe 30 or so more Dr. Peppers. As a teen, an unlimited supply of soda was amazing.

#36

There’s a Chinese place my dad and I used to go eat at often. Buffet, before 3:30 it was about $8, after 330 it jumped to around $14 or so and they brought out the frog legs and seafood and stuff. So what we did was show up at around 3:15 and since I’m allergic to shell fish I would just get my regular fried rice and pepper steak. He would get a small plate of whatever, then when the frog legs come out, he would devour them. So basically we paid minimal price for the evening food.

#37

Discovered that the laundry machine in my building didn’t discriminate between quarters and loonies ($1 coins, for the non-Canadians). If the machine wanted 5 coins, it wasn’t fussy about what combination, as long as it got 5 actual coins.

I knew that loophole’s days were numbered, when I ran into another building resident who said to me “hey, you know about the trick with quarters, right?” Yeah, as soon as it starts getting disseminated, guaranteed it’ll reach the people in charge in no time.

#38

Back in 2016 Chick-fil-a launched their mobile app with a promotion that gave you a QR code for a free sandwich (or some other options) when the app was first downloaded. For the first few months you didn’t need to include an email address to register so you could just delete the app and re-download it to get another code for a free sandwich.

There were too many times that my buddies and I would just go through the drive through get free sandwiches, delete and re-download the app, and then go into the store for another free sandwich.

#39

There was a printer at my university (back when they were in person) you scanned your ID to pay for a print job *but* if your print job cost more money than you had remaining, it would “cancel” the job after completing a portion of the job. Essentially the free printer.

#40

When I was in high school McDonald’s had a promotion where if you signed up for their app you could get a Big Mac with any purchase. Additionally the app had a coupon for a free medium fries. We would just use 10 minute mail to get a new email and sign up every day on a new account. Buy a large drink and get a free Big Mac then use the fries coupon. Big Mac meals for $1 every day. 4 of us would do this every day after school for over a month. We’d rotate going to every McDonald’s in town. Good times.

#41

Walmart ran a promotion years ago on their groceries. Find a lower advertised price, they’ll give you double the difference back. So, I’d go through the Sunday ads looking for items that end up free. For instance , items where Walmart would charge $2.99, but Albertsons had them on sale for $1.49. The difference is a buck fifty, so doubled I’d get $3 back on each one i bought. I would get tons of free items! Granola bars, yogurts, cereals, cake mixes, fancy breads, lots of things. tons of different foods. Lots went to the food bank, but I ate like a king for a year and a half.

#42

I have a Coca Cola vending machine at work that drops dimes directly to the change return, but still counts the credit. I have gotten over a hundred coke zeros with the same dime for two years now.

#43

I opened a checking account during a promotion of free checking for a year. One year later, I started getting charged a monthly fee for checking. I went to the bank, and they explained that my free year was up. I saw a sign offering free checking for a year. I told them I wanted to close my account, and open a new one for free checking. She said they couldn’t do that because it was a lot of paperwork. I said I don’t care, I have time. She talked to the bank manager, who put a note on my account, “this customer never has to pay for checking.” I had that account for over 15 years, but nobody ever knew why I was not charged a checking fee.

#44

Michigan used to have a law that a minor could not plead guilty to a crime without a lawyer. I found this out by accident when I was 13 and used it three more times before I was an adult. What happens is that I as a minor would just plead guilty, they would then give me a sentencing date and let me leave. Then a week or so later I would get a letter stating that it is not legal for me to plead guilty without a lawyer and my case was dismissed, or thrown out because of it. I got out of three minor in possession tickets that way.

#45

Using Limewire to download Limewire pro when I was in highschool.

#46

Took a “survey” course in college, which basically amounted to a course the school was planning to offer in the future, but giving the professor an opportunity to fine-tune the curriculum before officially offering it as a class. Easy enough course, got my credit, went home happy.

Next semester the course went “live” and was offered under a different course number – but the description was identical. Signed up, never attended a class, took the final and got my credit again.

#47

I’m not sure if they do this anymore, but many years ago, while an employee at HomeGoods, the store had this promotion where, employees could get these scratch-off cards that reduced the cost of an item by 1/5/20 dollars each time they found a price sticker on the floor. Each card had three scratch-off areas, and the catch was that you could only scratch off one.

However, if you used a lamp, you could see which scratch off area was the 1/5/20 – meaning that you could very easily rack up a 20 dollar gift card for every sticker you found on the floor.

The idea was that if employees collected these fallen stickers, regular, nefarious shoppers, couldnt stick them on something of far greater value and check out at that price.

There were no rules on how many an employee could have, or combine, because most folks who worked at that store were middle aged women who really couldn’t give a f**k and most of the stuff HomeGoods sells is garbage.

*But then there was me* – a starving, broke college kid, who got paid s**t, but who worked in the back room unloading trucks, and who also was occasionally tasked with stocking shelves. In short, I was the only person who seemed to give a s**t about this promotion, and my bosses, who wanted to show their higher-ups that they were putting the corporate programs into effect, were happy to oblige each sticker I presented with a scratch off ticket of my own.

Now HomeGoods, while normally a purveyor of fine garbage, also *occasionally* has very nice, very high end, house-wears on the cheap (comparatively), these items, like cook-wear, linens, comforters, etc, are more often than not, usually much more expensive than the rest of the store’s stock, and take a while to sell.

For me, the guy who unloaded the trucks, this meant that when I saw something absurdly nice, I could put it very high up into a loading bay, and just let it sit for a while, because the senior citizens I worked with would never go up to get it.

At the end of a 4 month summer, I’d amassed about 1100 in these little gift cards, and with them I bought:

* A full set of AllClad copper core cookwear (a new piece came in once a month)
* A Queen sized down comforter, duvet cover and sheets
* Pillows
* Nice flatware, Plates and Glasses
* A dozen useful kitchen tools

To this day, ten years later, I still have all the AllClad, which alone retail for 800, and some of the kitchen tools.

All of it for free.

#48

Back in the day, two 5 piece chicken nuggets at Burger King cost less than a single 8 piece chicken nuggets.

Me and those 2 extra nuggets were laughing all the way to the piggy bank.

#49

In third grade, our teacher had to leave the room for some kind of emergency, and left one of the students in charge (the “teacher’s pet”, of course). The teacher said that we were not allowed to talk, and if we did, we would have to write 100 times “I will not talk in class when instructed not to”, or something like that. Well, my friend and I were bored, so we started writing out the “punishment”, and when we were finished, proceeded to talk to each other until the teacher returned. The student left in charge wasn’t sure what to do. It was hilarious.

#50

Math lesson

Teacher: For this project you will work in groups of less than seven.
Me: Sir, one is less than seven.
…
Teacher: Ok, fine. Do it all yourself then.

I got 70% on this assignment, highest mark I ever got in group work.

#51

When Presto card first came out in Toronto (the swipe card that gets you onto public transit) the card I got was faulty from the moment I bought it. I’d loaded it with cash but 9 times out of 10 it wouldn’t scan. The transit operators would see me curse & swear at it and let me through the gates anyway. Then I’d pick up a transfer which passed as my proof of payment.

I must have done that a good 30 times over the course of 2 months, saved myself $100 or so on transit. Didn’t want to push my luck too much so eventually replaced the card with a working one.

#52

This was something of a literal loophole, which my friends and I exploited at Dave and Buster’s.

For those of you who may not be familiar with the establishment, Dave and Buster’s is sort of a restaurant, sports bar, and arcade all rolled into one. There are dozens of allegedly skill-based games from which you can win tickets, and then you can use those tickets to buy cheap prizes that you don’t actually want and won’t actually use. (That is, of course, unless you buy a whole bunch of those sticky hand things. Those things are awesome.)

Anyway, on the night in question, my friends and I discovered a game in which you were supposed to hit a button at *just the right time* to make a ball drop into a numbered ring. It was designed to be insanely difficult, and in fact it might have been impossible… had it not been for the hand-sized hole in one side of the machine. We took turns “playing” the game, which involved acting like we were trying to time our button-presses, then catching the ball as it fell and quickly depositing it into the highest-scoring ring. We managed to rack up several hundred tickets in this way… but our best discovery came when we were ready to turn those tickets in.

It used to be that when you exchanged tickets for prizes, arcades would run them through a counting machine. At Dave and Buster’s – or at least, at the one that we visited – they used a scale to determine how many tickets a customer had accumulated. This scale happened to be positioned in such a way that if one were to lean on the counter at *just the right angle*, they’d be able to push down on it during the weighing process.

By the end of the outing, my friends and I had actually managed to buy a twenty-dollar piece of schlock for the low, low price of only twenty dollars… and at one of those arcades, that’s definitely a victory. If I recall correctly, we left that night with a vaguely futuristic-looking alarm clock.

That was only because they were out of those sticky hand things, though.

**TL;DR: We cheated Dave and never got Bustered.**.

#53

Not me, but I read about a guy that bought coins from the canadian mint with his credit card, deposited them in his bank (they have value) and ended up doing this multiple times, which turned to millions of air miles.

#54

I still use the loophole of jumping on a shuttle bus out of LAX to a parking garage(/or hotel, yes) and then calling an Uber/Lyft from there to avoid the airport prices. Brings the ride home down to $10 from $40.

#55

In the summer of 2009, a new water park, Aquatica, opened up in Florida. My cousin and I went nearly every single day, from open to close,for two months. It’s my favorite out of all the water parks I’ve visited with many awesome rides and attractions. But, for the purposes of this question, we’ll be focusing on just one ride and a couple other things: the River and some of their restaurants.

See, the park had lockers where people could store their stuff: small, and large lockers. Smalls were $5, large were $10; *but* if you brought the key for the large lockers back, you’d get back $5. There were also three restaurants in the park: one was a buffet, one had great chicken tenders and fries, and another had awesome burgers. Luckily for my cousin and I, there was a pass you could get that let you eat unlimited at all three restaurants for the entire day.

Now, the keys did come with a wrist strap so you could always have your key on you and not lose it, but most people would stick the key in their pockets and go into the river, not realizing that it wasn’t the typical lazy river and, in fact, had some pretty powerful jets under the water to keep things moving. Even full grown men can have trouble standing in the middle of the river, due to how fast it was going.

Well, my cousin and I figured out within the first couple of days that people were just losing their keys and loose change all over that river. We could’ve done the responsible thing, which was to turn in the lost keys and pocket the change, but we were teenagers and a******s.

So what we did instead was turn in the keys, yes, but as if it was our own key, and we’d pocket the $5. We would alternate who would turn in a key, as well as time it so that each time we did turn in a key, it was with someone brand new, further lowering the chances of getting caught. We’d turn in an average of about 10 keys every single day. We’d then use that money, plus whatever change we’d gathered to buy the eating pass, and pig out. Add into that the fact that my dad was actually giving us money so we could buy the food pass, and we were turning quite a bit of profit that summer.

He spent his money on hair stuff, and I spent mine on videogames.

Best summer ever.

#56

When I was a student, the laundromat at the end of my street would launch the selected machine if you press the # key twice. It worked for a month or two, and then it got fixed.

#57

Got some in ear headphones at this big branch electronics store. Didn’t like them, the quality was s**t and they just didnt fit in my ear nice. so I went back to the store to receive the answer that I couldn’t return the headphones because of hygiëne reasons. When I went home I checked their website for any weird return policy rules. Didn’t find anything useful but it did say that I had a 2 year guarantee on it. So I drowned my headphones in the sink, and smashed them agains a wall for 5 minutes. Headphones were broken. I went to the shop again to tell them that my headphones were broken and that i’d like to have a refund. They gave me one without question.

It would’ve saved them a lot of hassle if they just accepted my headphones in the first place.

(+ with the 2 year guarantee, when my 2 years are almost over I ask for a refund of money instead of the same headphones, which I use to buy the same headphones which resets the policy.).

#58

There were old “codes” on baseball cards you could put into the website towards a PS vita – so I bought a set of like 5,000 codes online to start inputting for like $20, figured eh even if it’s fake and I lose $20 it’s not a big deal for a $200 value. . .there was a max allowance per day of how many you could input which sucked. . .but it also struck me as odd that this person had all codes that were indeed working. . .as if the codes weren’t unique or random or one time use (they were one time use per account).

I never did input enough codes for a ps vita but I did make a few hundred bucks on eBay selling the codes for $30 over and over again.

#59

Want a tall iced latte at Starbucks? get an iced espresso in house and pour in the milk yourself. This saves you about $1.30. If you want a hot coffee and like milk in it, order in a bigger cup so that you get the full cup of coffee and still have room for milk (for example rather than getting a grande coffee with room for milk, get a tall coffee in a grande cup). There are tons more tricks for the same experience but a little cheaper price when you know the ingredients in the store and what they charge.

Source: former Starbucks employee

Edit: I apologize to all the Starbucks employees I’ve triggered but full priced post Starbucks life *is* expensive.

Also the ultimate hack is to do what I did and splurge on a nice home espresso machine. It’ll pay for itself after a year or two if you compare it to Starbucks prices.

#60

Little community center/arcade where I used to live as a kid had an air hockey table in the back room. Somebody figured out that if you jimmy the coin slot in just the right way, you could get an extra 3-4 games out of one quarter until the thing was fully pressed in and you’d have to put in a new one. None of us had much money, so this was a lifesaver. The employees didn’t really care because what money we did have was typically spent at the snack bar, so they made money off us anyway.

I kind of miss that place. They always had fresh watermelon for free for kids who had absolutely no money so nobody would feel left out.

#61

A (very) old place of work decided to have a Christmas party, and provide everyone with a few vouchers each for free drinks. They’d arranged with the venue that employees would hand over one tag for any drink of any size, and would settle up in the days after the event.

The problem was that these vouchers were simply tags that you’d put into a filing cabinet sleeve (and write on) with a coloured sticky dot on them.

They distributed the tickets half an hour before we closed for the party.

Guess what was stocked in the stationery cabinet? Filing tags and sticky dots.

They had no idea how the bar bill was nearly £10,000…

#62

In high school our science class had one of those projects where you had to drop an egg and build something to not have it break. The assignment sheet said “fall six feet without breaking.” This particular teacher was a stickler for following instructions, often taking points off for little things like not putting the date in the preferred format on stuff.

Come the day of the project, one of the kids who has no obvious egg catching contraption walks up to the front of the class where the measurer thingy was, lifts his egg up about a half a foot above the six foot marker and drops his egg. It splatters all over the floor and the teacher tells him he’s getting an F.

That smug legend replies “Why? The egg fell six feet without breaking.” I wish we had camera phones back then because the look of realization on the teacher’s face was epic. The teacher tried to tell him that isn’t what he meant but we all reminded him about “Always Following Instructions.” He gave him an A and the next year the instructions were much more precise.

#63

In 2014 I had the moviepass and only a part time job so I would go to the movies a lot. if I went early I would use my moviepass to buy a later movie from the kiosk then go to the box office to exchange it for the earlier show. Since the early shows are cheaper AMC would usually give me the difference in cash.

#64

Costco, if something is mislabeled mis-priced they will honor the lower price.

It was near Christmas, I was shopping for a prime rib roast.

Usually the Prime rib roasts are $16 to $18 per lbs.

They had USDA Prime Rib primal ( the whole roast ) marked as USDA Choice Chuck (about $3.50 per lbs. )

I walked out with two 12 ish lbs roasts that should have been 400 dollars but I only paid 80 dollars for them.

#65

Snake on Nokia 3310. Pause the game the moment the snake eats food. You collect points while that snake ain’t getting any longer.

#66

In my highschool we had the rule: If you lost your book you get a new one. But if you don’t return it before the end of the school year you have to pay for the book.

In the first few weeks I ‘lost’ my books. Eventually I got a stack at home and in my locker.

Never had to drag a heavy backpack.

#67

GameStop once had a “return ANY 5 games for $10 in credit” deal. I did a bit of mental math, walked over to the used bin and sauntered up to the counter with 5 copies of Princess Ponyland Express or whatever for $.99 each. The cashier looked more curious than weirded out as he rang them up. I swiped my card and then gestured at my pile of used garbage and said “I’d like to trade in some games”. He laughed out loud, gave me a high-five and said “This promo has been live for weeks and you’re the first person to figure it out! I can’t let you a***e it, but just take any one game you want”.

And that’s how I got Read Dead Redemption 1 for the low, low price of high-fiving a Gamestop employee.

#68

I used to work on checkouts and at one point they started to care about scan speeds. The top 3 people on items per minute got “star points” that could be exchanged for several things including a gift card to spend in store (1 star point=£1)

I figured out pretty early that it was timed from scanning between items, not in a continuous fashion or between a transaction. If you pressed the total button it stopped the timer, so i a****d it hard. There was a target of 18 items per minute. The first month i had 40 items a minute, 2nd place was 28.
Obviously i won the points that month.
But it looked suspicious so i pulled it back a little and kept it around a low 30 to make it believable.

Paid for my shopping for about 6 months using that trick.

#69

My college used to have a bunch of rooms you could book for meetings for free if you were a student or faculty member.

Included the rooms were barebones, just chairs and a table.

And a coffee machine set to free vend.

My group had “production meetings” booked every morning for our project.

#70

If you live in an area that has Amazon Prime Now and need something but not enough to meet the $35 order minimum for free delivery, you can buy an Amazon gift card to meet the minimum and then add it to your account to apply towards your next purchase.

#71

If you want double meat at Chipotle, ask for it after the first scoop so the first scoop isn’t compromised by the idea of a second.

#72

If you still play candy crush, when you run out of lives, go to your phone settings and change the date to tomorrow. Go back to candy crush and see you have full lives, go back to setting and click on auto date/time set. This tricks it into thinking you’ve waited the required hours for the lives to reset. Essentially never ending lives.

#73

I got an ad on Facebook once for a survey offering a $20 Amazon gift card for each response. They weren’t verifying responses, so I was able to take their survey about 10 times before I had to go to work.

#74

At one point you could use American Express to buy and/or refill and American Express gift card and get airline miles for it. But at the time they let you use a gift card to make a payment on a credit card.

Buy 1 $100 gift card, use it to pay off your credit card and reload it from your credit card to get airline miles.
Repeat.
I didn’t do it because I figured there must have been something in a contract somewhere forbidding this and it’s be a waste of $100 to find out it didn’t work.
But a friend tried it and for one week straight racked up airline miles.
American Express at the end of that week closed the program down, changed the rules, and sent a letter to the other people who also found that out that their airline miles wouldn’t be as much as they’d original thought they were getting due to an error.

#75

At a Surffestival there was a great lottery. You had to put a card in a Box and the card, the robot selected would win a surfboard. They did this everyday for 6 days. However I noticed that the robot would pick the card with the weirdest handwriting the first two days. So after I filled out the information at the third and the following days, I drew on my card. So the robot selected me 4 times because he thought it would be my handwriting. I won 4 boards and made 3.200 Dollar with selling them.

#76

A few years back, I signed on to Amazon music. My credit card got hacked, and I stopped using that one. I got a new one , and one was deleted, but my Amazon music unlimited kept trying with that card. So it would let me have the free 2-3 months and then not ab able to charge my card. This went on for a year or so until i got spotify. They since patched that.

#77

Hobby Lobby’s 40% off coupon. If you left the store you could buy another item with the coupon. I did it once when I had two pricy items to buy. The coupon got discontinued.

#78

Back when interest rates were really low, I figured out I could make enough profits by borrowing against assets and buying more with the borrowed money to pay off each subsequent loan and still have worthwhile gains. It was basically a free money if you already have money loophole that was going on for years.

#79

Contacting large companies (generally food) and either saying that something wasn’t that good or that you really liked something will generally result in you getting some coupons.

#80

I was a maintenance worker on a paint line, working a 4-day work week. Monday through Thursday, 10 hours per day. This day, a slow Thursday, I was greasing the wheels on the chain as it passed through the line.

A top manager was passing through, steamed off for some reason. He noticed the line was running with no work on it, and he screamed at the line leader, “Why is this line running with no work?! He (pointing at me) gets three days off with no pay!” and stormed off with no explanation.

After he was gone, the line leader came up to me and said, “You heard the man. Three days off with no pay. Let’s make it this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. OK?”

#81

We rented an apartment in a Spanish resort via a travel agent. We had to pay a deposit for the key but that would be refunded when we returned the key.

At departure there were lots of people that had thrown away the paper they gave you when you paid the deposit. So no money back but they did take back the key. That was just a scam they had going.

I knew we still had the paper but it was in out suitcase and I didn’t want to go searching for it. So when I presented the key the asked for the paper and “no paper, no money”. So I calmly said: “Then I keep the key”.

The man’s brain went full-stop. He looked at his partner, they talked to the travel agent present. Huge panic. So I explained again: no money, no key. It was as special security lock so it would cost them a lot more to make a duplicate.

The agent, who was in on the scam, asked what I was going to do with the key. “Nothing”, I said. “You keep the deposit, I keep the key. No problem for me.”

I got my money back and they got the key. I told everyone who was behind me in the queue what to do.

I’m in IT, looking at procedures for loopholes is my job

#82

I got into a three year contract for expensive business class Internet from Comcast. Fell on some hard times, and they wouldn’t budge. I couldn’t cancel without paying a $1500 penalty. Even emailed the CEO…no help at all.

So I just watched my bill. Three months later, they arbitrarily increased the rental fee on my modern by $2 per month. But one party can’t unilaterally change a contract.

I immediately emailed the CEO and informed him that I didn’t consent to the increased cost and told him the contract was now void due to their change. A few days later, they cancelled my service without penalty.

And I’ll never do business with Comcast again, simply because of their lack of any form of human compassion.

#83

Several years ago we had a family reunion on Anna Maria Island in Florida. We realized that we would need a rental car after we were at our hotel, so we all started researching deals online. My daughter found a dollar a day rate-I think it was with Hertz-and we immediately said, “Book it!” When we went to pick it up we were asked where we would be returning it, and we said we would be bringing it back to their location. They honored our deal but were not happy at all. Turned out that that deal was supposed to be only for people renting in Florida and driving north. It was June, and they had too many cars down south and too few up north. We took full advantage of that glitch!

#84

A co-worker of mine never got any parking tickets and never had his vehicle towed. I asked him why was he so lucky? He revealed to me that inside his vehicle, there were hangar clips above both of the rear side windows where he would hang one of his father’s police uniform shirts. It was that simple.

#85

Instead of buying sandbags to weigh down the bed of my pickup truck in winter, I just shovel the snow right in there. When it warms up, the snow melts. No muss, no fuss.

It’ll be a cold day in hell when I pay for a bag of sand. Or when I recognize Missourah.

#86

When I wear glasses white people aren’t afraid of me. I can blend in anywhere. Nobody wants to be the guy who asks if the black guy really works there. I can walk straight in Area 51.

#87

That you can jiggle the handle of certain gumball machines to get free gumballs.

#88

I purchased a wireless keyboard at least eight years ago, maybe ten? It’s awesome, except I broke one of the keys about two years later, so I contacted the manufacturer to see about just buying a replacement control key because the keyboard is awesome and I thought just the key would be cheap. But they said it’s still under warranty and they sent me a replacement keyboard. About two or three years later, a similar thing happens and I’m all set to throw down $$$ for a replacement, but the replacement keyboard’s warranty time started when they sent me that one, so I wound up with a replacement for my replacement. This just kept going on.

I’m currently on my third or fourth replacement keyboard. I’ve lost count.

(Over the years, the design of the keyboard has improved so much, the current one is not at all identical to the original K800 I purchased, but it’s still a fantastic keyboard. If they would ever give me an opportunity to buy a replacement, I would.)

—

EDIT TWO, MAYBE THREE, YEARS LATER

The 0 and 9 keys went out on the top row, so I contacted them again only to discover that after nearly twelve years I went out of warranty. I *finally* get to give them money! (They’re sending me a discount code for one, though.)

—

EDIT NOT EVEN NINE MONTHS AFTER THAT

Honestly, I don’t know if anyone will ever come across this thread or not or, if they do, stumble across this response. But this is hilarious. I wound up purchasing a brand new K800 in April and then in late November, the keyboard started acting up in a strange way: I strike a key and it inputs that key and a different character. This on a few different keys, consistently. Tested on different devices, unpaired the unifying usb thing and reconnecting. It was a deal with the keyboard.

So I’m in touch with Logitech customer service and they’re all “well, we’re out of the K800 right now, so we’ll send you an MX KEYS” but they need to review for final approval. And I just got an email from the warranty department asking for the original receipt, which

>Is necessary because you received 2 replacements before and to validate the warranty we need to check the original receipt of the first keyboard that you bought.

So I got to write up an abbreviated version of the above and how I tried for over a decade to give them money, but they just wouldn’t let me.

Luckily, I purchased the most recent keyboard on Amazon and was able to send them a pdf of the invoice showing that I had finally been able to purchase something. And, of course, it broke within the warranty period.

We’ll see if I have better luck with their new MX KEYS keyboard, but I’ll probably be updating this comment sometime before the end of the warranty period.

—

UPDATE SEVEN WEEKS LATER

After not getting any tracking information for the MX KEYS, I contacted CS again.

>*Turns out the MX KEYS is out of stock as well, but how about an MX KEYS FOR BUSINESS? That is basically the same thing as the basic MX KEYS but with a different usb receiver.*

Sure. But my month away from home was coming to a close, so could you ship the replacement there instead of my temporary address?

>*No problem!*

The day I get home, it arrives. New keyboard.

And now, four days later, Fed Ex arrives with ***yet*** ***another*** new keyboard.

So far I’ve purchased two keyboards (one at 30% off) and received… eight? nine?

#89

I had a lawyer friend who leased a car from a dealer that had a really poorly written contract. Depending on how a car lease is written (and maybe depending on what state you’re in), the dealer either continues to hold title to the car while it’s leased to you (with the contract giving you right of possession) OR you hold title to the car while the dealership has a lien on the title so that ownership returns to the dealer at the end of the lease.

This contract gave the dealer the lien, rather than the title, BUT the way it was written, the entire contract expired at the end of the lease term, *including the provision that returned the title to the dealer*. So essentially, the contract disappears, my friend is left with both the car and the title to the car, the dealer has no legal rights to the car.

The dealership called her and asked when she would be returning the car, she says “I’m not.” They said “oh, you’re buying the car?” She says “no I’m just gonna keep it, thanks.”

The dealer sued her, then once they looked closer they realized they f****d up the contract, and offered to settle. Since she wasn’t completely confident that a judge wouldn’t just find a way to justify giving the car back to the dealer, she settled but the settlement ended up being her buying the car for like 20% of its value.

#90

My college required two semesters of either: Biology, Chemistry, or Physics (provided those weren’t your majors).

You can imagine how intense things get in the second full semester of Biology. Or Chemistry.

But upon closer inspection of the coursebook, there was a fourth option: Two semesters of something called Earth Science.

This turned out to be, four HALF semesters, one each of Astronomy, Oceanography, Geology, and Meterology.

You can imagine how easy the coursework is for a half-semester of any one of those topics.

So while all my colleagues were slaving away in a 200-level Chemistry or Biology course, I was coasting doing a mere half-semester course on fun stuff like Meterology or Astronomy.

#91

There was an app where you could get groceries delivered, and if you referred someone you both got a discount on groceries. All new accounts got free delivery, and the discount went towards your grocery cost. They incentivized new accounts over current accounts and since people move often, didn’t have any features stopping someone in the same apartment making an account, as if they might have just moved in.

So, I made an original profile and anytime I needed groceries I made a new profile, recommended myself from my first profile, and got my groceries delivered to me for cheaper than at the store; tip included.
I did this for weeks and my original account had accumulated $50 off groceries.
I then took the original account, signed up for a free trial membership, which gives free delivery, and then got $50 off my next grocery delivery, which usually meant free groceries.
Then, I’d close that account, and use my second started account as a main, and cycle through the process again.

It took the company about 3 months before they implemented a safety mechanism that stopped me from getting my groceries and having them delivered to me with tip cheaper than getting the groceries myself at the store.

#92

When I was a kid, my mom had a rule that I couldn’t take food out of the kitchen. I asked if I could take food that was already in my mouth out of the kitchen, and she said yes. So I put wrapped candies in my mouth, walked out of the kitchen, took them out of my mouth, unwrapped them, and ate them.

#93

I got off the plane in Amsterdam after a bumpy, crowded 10 hour flight. I was tired, hungry, and a bit nauseous. All I wanted in the entire world was – my comfort drink – a glass of milk.

No problem. I’m in Holland, land of dairy.

I walked up to the coffee kiosk, and eyed the alluring white bottles in their cooler. “I’d like a glass of milk,” I said to the perky young barista. “We don’t have milk,” he replied, cheerfully.

Pause. Regroup.

“OK,” I said. “I’d like a cappuccino, but without espresso and don’t steam the milk.”

He laughed hard, and then gave me my blessed glass of milk for free.

#94

I was working in a garage, each job was given a “job time”, say 3hrs if you got the job done quicker you put the 3hrs on the time sheet and got the next job. At the end of the week these were added up for a total work time. Any hrs over your clocked in time 8–5, you got paid over time at 1,1/2 times the hourly rate. Fridays were usually quiet so on a Thursday night I would look at my “work time total”, it was normally 50 hrs, but my clocked in time was 32 hrs. So anything over 32 was paid as overtime. Well I took Friday off, getting paid over time for not working. It worked out 32 hrs flat rate +18 hrs overtime. If I worked the Friday it worked out 40 hrs flat rate + 10 hrs over time.

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