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Even though rules are often in place to keep things in order, some seem like they're there to keep things less fun. Well, it wouldn't be human nature if people didn't try to cheat the system when the opportunity presented itself and some bright ideas popped into their heads.

Perhaps led by curiosity, perhaps seeking inspiration for some life hacks, one Reddit user asked the smart people of the Internet one question "What is the best loophole that you've ever found?." And people replied with the most creative ideas, incredible stories, and amazing life tips. Some silly, some useful, and some even illegal! Scroll down to read what loopholes and hilarious plot twists people found in their lives and don't forget to comment and vote for your favorites! (Facebook cover image: Lars Plougmann)

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#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**king 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.

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#2

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**king 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.

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#3

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.

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#4

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 sh**ty rules and a 12 year old found a loophole.

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Night Owl
Night Owl
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I agree, they should have let you win, or at least to share the first place. It's not your fault you were smarter than whoever wrote the rules.

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#5

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.

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#6

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.

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#7

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.

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#8

My friend made a spreadsheet of all the restaurants in town that gave you free stuff for your birthday, and mapped out the shortest route to take you to all of them.

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#9

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.

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Not_Alec
Not_Alec
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Thats smart and all, but it would take a lot of time to set up all the emails... But I’d say it’s worth it!

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#10

I've said this before on alt accounts that are now erased, so do forgive me if the wording is different. I'll be saving it this time so it remains consistent after this account is erased and someone asks a similar question.

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 assholes.

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.

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#11

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.

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#12

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.

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Arietis
Arietis
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wait. Do you mean to tell me that American students not only pay huge sums in tuition but also have to pay to park their car at the university? Holy hell. I paid about 2,800 Euro in total for my degree – almost everything went to administrative feed that paid for things like my ticket for public transportation. The parking lots were free, meals were subsidized and the rent on my dorm appartment was like 200 Euo/month, internet, water, heating, electricity included. You guys are seriously being ripped off. Unbelievable.

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#13

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.

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Molly Block
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I'm confused; you say you got an out-of-school suspension for 1 day because you kept skipping your saturday detentions, and finally it accumulated to an entire day? Okay, got that part, but what is an out-of-school suspension??? And how did you get a day off if the detention was held on a saturday, a non-school day anyways? Well, good for you for finding a way, hahaha, I LOVE a good story like that, where the underdog wins~!

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#14

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.

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Bored Fox
Bored Fox
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That is why here in Finland you usually can use only one discount code for the same item. Other way people would just combine all the discounts and get free stuff.

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#15

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.

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tuzdayschild
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I don't know if this classifies as beating the system, but you did earn that conversation.

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#16

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 it's awesome and I thought just the key would be cheap. But they said it's still under warranty and they sent me a replacement. 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.)

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Night Owl
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

"If they would ever give me an opportunity to buy a replacement, I would." Aww, poor you 😂

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#17

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.

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Ben Smith
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Kids will be kids....but maybe talk to your brother about not being a homophobe.

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#18

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.

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#19

Certain retailer had Xbox Credit at £10. Instant digital download.

They also had an offer, £10 off your next order.

I tried it with the credit, it worked. Sweet, free £10 code.

Then I saw you could get a new discount code every 60 minutes.

I got £1200 in free Xbox credit before the discount codes stopped working.

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#20

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.

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#21

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.

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#22

When I used to own a console, the auto-renew function for Xbox Live would not allow you to cancel it online, you had to call a number where you would wait on hold and they would try to convince you to keep auto-renew on.

I found out if you switched your zip code to Illinois there must have been a state law that forced them to allow you to cancel the same way you would sign up or something like that.

So i switched my zip, reloaded the page and magically a "Cancel Auto Renew" button appeared. Good times.

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#23

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.

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Person2638
Person2638
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

When they introduced the 'bottomless drinks' to restraunts in India a long time ago, my mom used to go with her friends, sit at a table, and order one coke. They would spend hours sharing one bottle of coke and talking. My dad said he had done the same. Apparently youngsters all over India would do this, so many restraunts stopped.

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#24

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**ked 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.

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JV
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

That's great. I hate it when businesses try to screw clients like that. They got what they deserved.

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#25

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.

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Suzi Gauthier
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

We used to do this at my old job, although I wouldn't purposely stay late every day, but if I stayed a few minutes late, I waited until the 7 minutes was up.

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#26

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.

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#27

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.

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#28

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.

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Kiss Army
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Premium 6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

There was a pop machine that was $0.80 but we found out that if the power went out, it reset to only $0.50 and would stay that way until they filled it and reprogrammed it. Someone started unplugging it and plugging it back in ("forced power outage") every time it would get reprogrammed to keep the price at $0.50.

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#29

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.

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BusLady
BusLady
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

But you could have been actually walking and improving your health, silly.

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#30

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 abuse 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.

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#31

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 fre internet that way, and got my mom permabanned from AOL.

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#32

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.

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#33

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

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#34

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.

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Charl Marx
Charl Marx
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

I used to do this when I went to uni. Birmingham to Stoke every day, kept this up for ages

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#35

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.

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#36

I used to work at a restaurant and the manager decided food costs were too high because of people snacking and stealing food. He attempted to remedy this by giving out meal vouchers if you work a full shift. I started to buy up people's vouchers that weren't using them for 25% of the value. Then I would resell the vouchers to short shift people for 50% of value. Then I started trading meals, bought with my vouchers, to the pizza place across the street that my friend worked at. I would sell the pizza for $1 a slice to everyone. I started to make about 20-30$ extra per shift. Then the manager found out and ended it all. :( This only lasted a few weeks. Also a great example of how I ruined something for everyone else.

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#37

Parking at my old work lot was a little over $1000 a year. However, night passes cost $40 for the year. A night pass would allow you to scan in/out after 4:30PM, and before 7AM. There were also visitors spots, where you'd take a ticket at the gate on the way in, and pay it on the way out.



For about a year I took a visitors ticket on my way in, and scanned out with my night pass after 4:30. Eventually parking enforcement caught on, I imagine because many people were doing this and they weren't making any money off visitor parking (despite the lot being full every day). They ended up installing scanners that could differentiate from in/out, and if you used your pass to scan out without having scanned in, your pass would get confiscated. Good while it lasted though!

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BusLady
BusLady
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

These places can't afford to lose money. But if the parking pass had been more reasonably priced, people probably would not have resorted to pulling this trick.

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#38

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 :(

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#39

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.

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BusLady
BusLady
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Wouldn't the school have noticed that there were way more kids wearing jeans, than passes that were handed out? This is kind of like printing counterfeit money.

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#40

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.

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#41

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.

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BusLady
BusLady
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Don't you usually have to pay postage to return an item? Sometimes that is more than you paid for the item.

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#42

Got some in ear headphones at this big branch electronics store. Didn't like them, the quality was shit 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.)

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#43

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.

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BusLady
BusLady
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6 years ago

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Should have done that in the first place.

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#44

My former workplace would tell us every Monday that we had to work overtime Saturday, then often cancel overtime at the last minute. That way they didn't have to give us the minimum 24 hours notice of mandatory overtime and they could take as long as they wanted to decide if they needed us. They also got to play it off like they were doing us a favor by giving us our weekend back. It was a dick move, but it was certainly effective.

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#45

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.

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#46

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.

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#47

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..

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#48

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.

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Miss Cris
Miss Cris
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Here when you go out you get a pen mark in your hand, and paper tickets are taken when you enter so you don't have them anymore.

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#49

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.

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#50

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.

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BusLady
BusLady
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

Or make your own at home. That will save you lots of money.

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#51

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

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Sage Jay
Sage Jay
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

only the bubblegum and coconut ones taste vaguely like candy

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#52

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.

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Conrad Strucker
Conrad Strucker
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6 years ago DotsCreated by potrace 1.15, written by Peter Selinger 2001-2017

not exactly something to be proud of but hey good job I guess

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