Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Loopholes People Found And Exploited


Someone on AskReddit got a thread going about various loopholes that people discovered, and proceeded to exploit to no end. There's nothing quite like happening upon a loophole that affords you the capability to take the shortcut, while everyone else is struggling. 

1.

Text - k_is_for_kwality • 21h Was on a cruise ship a few years ago that had a pay- per-minute Internet policy. You'd buy like 200 minutes of wifi access for $100 or whatever crazy price it was. They had a little portal that you went to, to start and stop the timer, and tell you how much time was remaining. I quickly realized that the timer counted by whole minutes. That is, if I started at 12:00:01, and stopped it at 12:00:58, then it counted as 0 minutes of internet use. For the entire cruise I

2.

Text - Look_to_the_Stars • 23h 3 Awards I worked at a restaurant in a hotel where you could collect "employee bucks" of sorts for going above and beyond at your job. You could use them to pay for things like a room stay or food in the hotel restaurant. They were worth a dollar each, but you obviously couldn't cash them in for real money. I saved up about $450 worth, used $100 worth to pay for a hotel room on a day I was working, bought a soda from myself at the restaurant and tipped myself the e

3.

Text - acp1284 • 23h Moviepass was $10 a month and you could use it to get 1 movie ticket a day. I lived next door to a Regal, and I went everyday because Regal would give their reward points for every ticket purchased. They didn't care that Moviepass was paying for the tickets then giving them to me as part of my subscription. In 8 months I spent $80 on the subscription and saw everything that came out and I racked up enough Regal rewards points for about 50 free popcorns or drinks. Moviepass w

4.

Text - Sporksdirty • 23h 1 Award In college there was a parking garage that charged around $2/hour. I couldn't get a parking pass but learned the heated garage that charged $2/hour had a $20 fee for a lost ticket. I would park my car in there for a few weeks at a time and when I had to leave would lose my ticket and be forced to pay the $20 lost ticket fee. A parking pass was around $500 to park outside and I ended up paying around $300 in lost ticket fees to park in the heated garage. Reply 5.3

5.

Text - magnum3672• 23h Early in the smartphone world there was an app that gave you points for watching TV shows and ads that you could turn in for gift cards or discount codes. The rewards were not great but over time and by waiting for gift card restock you could make out like a bandit. However, the shows they wanted you to watch were not my cup of tea (a lot of prime time shows and reality shows) and I wasn't home for a lot of them so I thought I was SOL. Turns out, the app had a grace period

6.

Text - InTooDeepButlCanSwim • 23h I bought a card once for $10 that had 16 coupons for a BOGO pizza from Dominos. They were little stickers that you were supposed to pull off and hand in when using them, but they never asked for the stickers. They also didn't have an expiration on them. They also didn't tell anyone it was supposed to be one per order. We'd order 8 pizzas at a time, used them for two years. Thousands of dollars of free pizza really help when you're a broke college kid. Reply 1.0k

7.

Text - rudora • 22h Several years ago AT&T was running a trade-in promotion increasing the value of old iPhones way beyond what they were selling for on eBay/ CL at the time. This promo thankfully wasn't bundled to a new phone purchase and could be done on any active line of service with AT&T - so no limits on phone trade-ins. I ended up buying 31 old iPhone 4s for about $70 each on eBay and trading them all in to AT&T on promotion for $200. Worked out to $6200 in AT&T credits (got myself 2 iPad

8.

Text - I used to frequent a sandwich shop (they've since closed) that could be very busy at times due to how close it was to a convention hall. The process for ordering food was much like that of Subway: approach the counter, tell them what you want, you get to sit there and watch them construct your sandwich. They had room enough for three sandwich makers: two people behind the counter and one guy manning the back area for pick up orders. They almost always had a guy dedicated to the pickup win

9.

Text - PM_me_ur_navel_girl • 23h When I was at university, the pay-for campus printers all worked on a system where you'd print your documents, release them at the printer, they'd print, then after they've finished printing, it would then contact the server to get the cost deducted from your balance. That final step always took a while and I discovered in my first year that if I cancelled the print job as the final page was rolling out of the printer, it wouldn't deduct the cost from my balance.

10.

Text - KnowanUKnow • 23h The local Wendys had a survey on the back of their receipt that would get you one free burger of your choice with the purchase of any other "premium" burger. They also had a special on where the Dave's classic single, considered a premium burger, was $2. There was no specification that the free burger had to be "Of equal or lower value". The first time I didn't even make a purchase, just went into the store, found a receipt near the garbage, filled out the survey, got my

11.

Text - Stroinsk • 1d I lived near a casino that would let you get chips using your credit card. I liked some if the show's and restaurants there but never gambled. So every time I went l'd charge $5K to my credit card for chips. Then l'd cash out at a different teller swing by the bank on the way home deposit the money and pay off my credit card. I did this maybe once a week. Boom $5K of free points / cash back. Reply 2.5k ...

12.

Text - artpopstan • 1d One time I was at McDonalds with a friend and I got a McWrap for 2€, and I decided to try out filling out the survey at the bottom of the receipt for a free drink. I got my drink and to my surprise on the receipt I got for the drink there was another code for a survey, so I tried it again and it worked. We did it about 5 times until we decided to leave. The next day I decided to try it again and for some reason it didn't work. A month ago I was at McDonalds but unfortunate

13.

Text - but-did-i-ask • 20h I remember being young and going to Chuck E. Cheese. When you were pulling your tickets out, if you found this sweet spot then you could just keep pulling the tickets out. My mom had a hard time figuring out how I got 10,000 tickets in under an hour Reply 188 ...

14.

Text - mistamistatea • 1d The soda machine at a dorm I lived in had a weird glitch. If you put in five cents more than the asking price and pushed the product select button, the machine would empty all of its change out at once. We did this a few times and got $20-40 each time! Reply 2.8k ...

15.

Text - Curutak • 1d Microsoft used to have (still might for all I know) online training for videogame retailers in order to train store employees on current and upcoming products that they could sell. The training gave points for each video and knowledge quiz you took, which could be exchanged for free games, computer hardware, store gift cards, etc. By signing in under a random Gamestop store ID number (which was posted online), skipping the video, and brute forcing the knowledge quiz, was able

16.

Text - gorgonheap • 20h 1 Award Right out of college I worked a job that had a 100% match to any retirement contributions. I was young, lived rent free with my parents, Had no student debt, and could grab OT nearly every week. After some budgeting I figured I could throw 80% of my paycheck into retirement. I did so for 9 months until my supervisor called me into the office to sign a policy change that limited retirement contributions to 50%. l'd stashed away nearly $35,000 on about a ~$32,000 an

17.

Text - Jorge_Palindrome • 23h There's software that generates credit card numbers. Now you can't actually buy anything with these numbers, because when the system tries to charge them, it gets rejected. However, there was a website (like many others) that would give free amazon gift cards (via email) for trying out partnered subscription services that offered free trials. You'd click the offer link, get redirected to the partner site, fill out all the information and use the fake number, and it

18.

Text - dadtaxi • 1d I was visiting a hospital on a daily basis for many weeks ( premature twin babies) but they didn't do multi-use discounts. "There's the hours you were here - pay up" type of thing. And it was costing something like £5 - £10 per day Until a few days in I realised that the hospital had only just appointed the car parking company and they haven't yet installed the "arrival time" machine at the car park entrance, but had only put a temporary machine in the Hospital lobby .... whi

19.

Text - Failedfisherman • 1d Domino's pizza Australia. When ordering online, delivery charge was added to the first pizza. So l'd buy garlic bread, hot chips, chicken wings, a drink and some deserts and skip the delivery fee by paying by card online. Kept it up for 2 years before they "updated their terms" and shut the loophole Reply 1.1k ...

20.

Text - kay37892 • 1d Opened an Amex credit card and the introductory offer was 10% cash back in restaurants for the first year. I worked for a shitty chain restaurant as a server, so I would just stack a few of my large cash tables and put them on my card, then pay it off every week. Made an extra $20-$30 a shift Reply 518 ...

21.

Text - ILoveBawls • 22h This pizza place local to us had a glitch in their online ordering service for a while. You could technically combine 2 deals of 50% off. One was 50% off for any XL pizza of an order that was normally $30 or more, and the other was 50% off on a XL Pizza, with two 2- liter drinks, wings, and cheese fries at regular price. If you put both of these coupons in, you only paid for the wings, cheese fries and pop which would be about $18. With delivery charge + tax it would be a

22.

Text - NoobMasterSixtyNINE • 20h Coming to school 3 hours late. I found out that as long as you have a parent's note, you could come in late unlimited times. The only restriction is that after 15 days missed for a class, you'd fail it. So, at the beginning of the year I pressured my guidance counselor to move my two study periods to period 1/2 and a blowoff class (which I didn't need the credit for) to period 3. Came to school at 10-10:30am every day my senior year opposed to 7am. Extra 3 hours

23.

Text - burugundi010 • 22h My school had uniforms, it was kinda strict with those... but nowhere in the rules it stated that girls should wear the female uniform and boys the male uniform. Sooooooo, I bought the male one and wore it. A lot of teachers wanted to give me detention, but when I went over the school rule book and shit, they had to stay steaming mad because I was not breaking any rules. They assumed it was implied, but the only think stated was that the uniform was to be worn properly,

24.

Text - emnanemone • 18h T once bought a gorgeous, solid oak dresser with attached mirror accent that was priced at $1200 for only $1. I was on a website surfing for dressers for my newborn and came across a free shipping promotion. So I filtered results for dressers for the lowest priced item. Up pops this dresser for only $1. Upon further inspection I realized that the same dresser in other finishes were priced correctly at $1200. But this oak dresser was priced in error. I reluctantly added to

25.

Text - BL_2019 • 23h There was a summer where I got free chipotle all the time. I had a gift card that had like 2 dollars left on it. I hadn't updated the app yet so it still had the "use my gift card and pay the rest in store". However either the computer at the store said I already paid the full amount ahead of time or I always came in during a time that they were swamped so no one ever asked me to pay. They also never charged my gift card. I got away with it until the app made me update it. R

26.

Text - go_do_that_thing • 1d The Mc Cheapy. McFlurries were like 4 bucks. All it is is ice cream in a cup with some shots of topping. They dont even mix it. So we asked for a soft serve, 30c, two shots of toppings, $1, a cup and a spoon (free) Reply 319 ...

27.

Text - PapaOoMaoMao • 23h Used to go to the casino for a night out. My friend and I would go to the heavily subsidised gamblers restaurant at the back and get a really nice meal for $10. After which we would go to the sports betting room and play free billiards for an hour or two. The coffee machines made great hot chocolate (also free), so we availed ourselves of that service heavily. Once we were done, we would wander the floor of the pokies and usually find a few stray coins which we would pl

28.

Text - Prussiandreams • 22h On Airbnb, some hosts allow you to change the date of the booking without any additional charges, (but would charge you if you cancelled the booking within certain hours) so if i had to cancel my booking without losing money i would change the date of my reservation to a month ahead of what it is currently and then in a couple of days cancel my reservation and get a full refund. Reply 295 ...

29.

Text - JMS1991 • 1d Not me, but my dad. He was building a deck on their house. If the deck attaches to the house, you need a permit to build one in our city, since it's considered an addition/improvement. If the deck doesn't attach to the house, it's a free-standing structure, and you don't need a permit. So he built the deck right up against the house, but it doesn't actually attach to the house, so he didn't need a permit. All he had to do was add a few extra posts under the side of the deck n

30.

Text - PrivateTumbleweed • 21h I haven't been able to afford to exploit this yet, but in my county, if you display a historic aircraft and open it to the public 12 times a year, you don't have to pay property taxes. Reply 189 ...

31.

Text - -Myrtle_the_Turtle- • 1d We had a situation at my old job (a huge, international company) where we'd work shifts, either 8/10/12 hours. Anything after 8 hours was overtime. Sometimes we were scheduled for the next shift quite soon after the last one had ended, for example 05:00-12:00 and then 19:00-00:00. Someone discovered that if there were less than 8 hours between shifts in a 24-hour period, anything after 8 hours total was paid the overtime rate. We did it for ages and then in the co

32.

Text - Powerctx • 22h Not really a loop hole I guess just a way I ripped Pizza Hut off for a couple thousand dollars in food and drinks. Back many years ago when places were just starting to set up their websites for online ordering I found a way to refresh the page the right way where I could enter a coupon code to take 10% off as many times as I wanted to. We did a practice order to make sure it worked. We did like a $30 dollar order and brought it down to like $7 and paid with a $20 and let t

33.

Text - duanehaas • 23h Sears has a program called Shop Your Way Rewards. They had some electronics items back in the day that would give you roughly the same amount of points back that the item cost. So a $40 pair of headphones would come with $30-$40 worth of the SYWR points. Well a group of enterprising folks found out how to generate as many coupons as we wanted and that $40 item became $25-$30 and the $30 in points became $40 by using coupons. You could also use points to pay for the item in

34.

Text - blepblepblepblep1 • 1d At my work, if you want to purchase more holidays they calculate the cost via what they pay you per day and then spread the total cost over a 12 month period to make the purchase easier for you. So if you buy 1 extra day and your rate is £50 a day, you only pay £4.16 a month for example. If your pay increases the cost scales with it which gave me an idea. I knew i was in for a pretty big payrise so I bought 10 holidays just before it happened and asked if I could pa

35.

Text - crimsonlaw • 1d Several years ago our state enacted some statutes that made renewing or obtaining a car tag more much challenging/annoying. The idea was to drive off all of the undocumented folks from our state. The problem was, it hit just as hard on other segments of the population, like folks who work a 9-5 and can't afford to take a day off to go stand in line. However, the new rules did not apply to vehicles owned by businesses. So I made a killing helping folks create an LLC, "sell"

36.

Text - punninglinguist • 19h The Starbucks subsidiary Teavana (now out of business) would let you use your Starbucks rewards ("stars" or whatever they're called) to get loose tea by the ounce. However, there was an error in their point- of-sale system that only deducted 1 reward point, no matter how many you spent in a given transaction. My wife and I spent 32 rewards on a couple pounds of the most expensive loose tea they had. She checked her rewards balance the next day, and holy shit, she sti

37.

Text - dopexile • 22h I used to have a Suntrust debit card that offered Delta Skymiles rewards with every purchase ($1 purchase = 1 Sky Mile). Walmart would let you buy a $1500 money order for 70 cents. I would drive around, buy $10000 worth of money orders, fill them out, deposit it into my bank account, and then buy more money orders. I would often have to call Walmart managers and ask them to refill the ATM machine with money orders. %3D I bought a few million dollars worth of money orders an

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