The Best Loopholes People Have Ever Discovered And Exploited
"Reddit user Aarunascut asked: 'What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?'"
Loopholes are everywhere.
But finding them can be time-consuming.
Or they can be a straight-up accident.
Sometimes corporations don't even realize the ways they've given out great deals.
In the early days of the internet, scheming for loopholes was a favorite pastime, but companies caught on.
They're still out there though, just waiting to be discovered.
Redditor Aarunascut wanted to discuss the best "deals" they've stumbled upon and utilized, so they asked:
"What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?"
I love a good loophole.
I would always use the free gym trial memberships.
They've caught on now by using better tracking.
Alas...
Rinse & Repeat
coins GIFGiphy"You used to be able to order dollar coins from the mint."
"Pay for it on your credit card, free delivery."
"Get sky miles."
"Take dollar coins to the bank, deposit, and pay off bills."
"Repeat."
AMLT1983
I Love Pizza
"I run a recycling center and when Mountain Dew did the win an Xbox One with codes under the soda bottle caps we got a total of 20 Xbox ones. Every worker got one that year. Also, Casey’s Pizza had a thing going that you collected 10 tabs off the large pizza box you’d get a free pizza. We had free pizzas weekly for years till they stopped doing it."
Otis_Firefly
Her Code
"During my first year teaching, teachers were each allowed 1500 photocopies a month. I had 150 students. That wasn't enough. One day, a coworker announced that she was leaving for a different opportunity. I asked her for her copier code. They never deleted her code, so I had 3000 copies per month for the last 5 months of the school year."
driveonacid
Sacagawea
"Older vending machines like the ones in my high school and car wash used to take golden dollars (yes, the Sacagawea coin), count them as a dollar and then spit them back out. You could buy the whole machine with one golden dollar. My friends and I exploited this for 7 months senior year until they swapped all of the machines out."
MapUnitKey
"Interestingly almost all of the US dollar coins ended up in Ecuador as they also use the US dollar. It was super weird but convenient as an American going there and I guess it really messed up their economy. I had always wondered where they disappeared to though. Major issues with counterfitting them too, any shiny one was basically useless even if it was real."
ember3pines
Coded
Girl Cheese GIF by Pizza HutGiphy"When Pizza Hut first started online ordering they gave me a code for a free pizza for ordering online for the first time. Turns out the code also worked if you just ordered as a guest and kept working."
Stone_Reign
I miss the Pizza Hut deal days.
Online coupons used to give away the whole company.
$1.50
Make It Rain Loop GIF by Chris TimmonsGiphy"My bank thinks the vending machine at work is an ATM and refunds my 'atm fee' automatically... Chase bank if anyone wondered. I noticed I was always getting like $1.50 returned to my account here and there and then I realized what it was."
homerinthebushes
Past Services
"Back in the 80s, we found vending machines that were not regularly serviced that would overflow the coin box and spill quarters on the floor. We used to scrape them out from under the machine with a stick. Was a good time to be a latchkey unattended minor."
weakplay
"Vending machines in college (Ireland early 2000s) had a flap at the bottom that was supposed to stop you reaching your arm up to steal. But it also had a sensor used to determine if had something been dispensed. So if you held it shut, the machine would think nothing had dropped and you could order as many things as you wanted, then refund your coins and release the flap."
BrianHenryIE
Senior Year
"My senior year of high school a Chick-fil-A opened in our town and to advertise the grand opening they put a free chicken sandwich coupon in the yellow pages of the phone book. No purchase, no stipulations. For whatever reason there were like 1,000 phone books stored in a storeroom off the gym. Me and my buddies ate a chicken sandwich damn near every single day of senior year."
Panther90
Switched with Michelle
"At a former job management rearranged the schedules to expand our call center hours from 7 am to 9 pm. It was still an 8-hour day, you just started later. We had a meeting to discuss if we could pick our own hours so employees didn’t run the risk of working until 9 pm then having to be back the next day at 7 am. Management gave us a hard no-on that. But we were allowed to swap with a co-worker."
"A few of us got together to review the monthly schedule and noticed that 5 people were in the rotation who hadn’t worked there for years. (Seriously!). So, whenever we had to work a late schedule that we didn’t want we 'switched with Michelle.' This went on for almost 2 years before management scrapped the whole idea."
Crazy_from_the_heat
The King
burger king GIFGiphy"Burger King used to have an app where you’d shake your phone and it would sometimes display a free item. A guy at work wrote his own app that looked identical to Burger King, but would only ever show a Whopper Meal. Every lunchtime he’d go to Burger King and get a free meal."
RedLeader7
I love a free meal.
Especially a free meal at any "cost!" LOL.
Who hasn't found themselves screwed over by a loophole at one point or another?
Such as getting a gift card to a restaurant, only to discover it doesn't apply to alcohol, can't be used for dinner, and can only be used during the week.
Or, on a more serious note, discovering that maternity and paternity leave counts as vacation days, forcing you to go back to work when you're not ready, and precluding any potential vacation plans.
Of course, loopholes can work to our advantage as well.
That is, as long as no one finds out.
"What loophole did you exploit for years before someone found out?"
Key To The Kingdom
"I was really good friends with my building superintendent, super, at a job I have since left."
"He was also the super for several other buildings in downtown."
"My friend, the super, got a terminal cancer diagnosis and on his last day at the building he gives me an envelope with what appeared to be a parking garage card inside."
"He said 'Phys you have been such a great friend I wanted to give you my key to the kingdom'."
"'It should save you a lot of money because it works in every city owned parking garage in downtown'."
"I left that job in 2012 and to this day the card still works at over 12 parking garages in downtown."
"Go see a concert or sporting event?"
"Swipe the card for the O-rena, no longer the official name, garage."
"Need to park at the courthouse or city hall garage, swipe the card."
"Want to go see a movie or go to a club or park?"
"Swipe swipe swipe, free parking day or night."
'Bruce you left us way too soon, but gave me a gift that just never stops giving."
"Miss you buddy, and thanks for saving me a ton of money."- THE_PHYS
la GIFGiphySupermarket Sweep
"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."- DrunkPhoenix26
Daddy Needs A Free Burger!!
"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 all together."
"I don't know if anyone ever figured out this exploit, they removed it for other reasons."- SpookyPlankton
happy homer simpson GIFGiphyOkay Then.
'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."
"He moved onto another job."
"Apparently the next person that did it collected all the money correctly and threw all their figures out."- thebollard
Dedicated Fan
"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."- neglectedhusband24
Evaluate The Menu Carefully...
"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."- Shad666
Labor Day Cooking GIF by MunchiesGiphyTaking Collect Calls To A Whole New Level...
"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."-Reddit
No system is 100% foolproof, leaving the possibility for someone to cheat the system wide open.
But let's be honest, if you could cheat your way into having a free burger every day, could you really resist?