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A loophole is a technicality that allows a person (or a company) to avoid a law or some other restriction without directly violating it
When most of us hear the term, we probably think of greedy businessmen and their tax issues, or ethically corrupt politicians trying to avoid legal procedures.
But when Reddit user Ninjalord5 made a post on the platform asking, "What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?" many regular people shared their schemes too.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Back in college we found a loophole with coupons at Kroger for General Mills cereal. If you bought 4 boxes of cereal each box was a dollar. But if you did the self checkout you would be printed out a coupon for $4 off your next purchase. We used the loophole to buy about 300 boxes of cereal. We only spent $12 on all of it. We would've spent less but we had to go to another Kroger once the manager got wind of us. We kept around 20 boxes for ourselves and donated the rest to the local food bank. They were so excited when we showed up with three vehicles full of cereal. Totally worth the $12 and all the time it took.
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#2
I coach a high school team; we recently bought airfare with Spirit airlines to take 9 students to a competition. Two of the students cancelled about a month out from the trip, and we had to replace them with two different students. Spirit airlines' policy: no name changes. Can't even pay a fee to change the name. The tickets are basically lost, I have to buy new tickets. Spirit's customer service is overseas, and they plainly don't care at all about customer service (because they don't actually work for Spirit etc etc). EXCEPT that Spirit airlines DOES allow passengers to correct misspellings. And these folks don't really recognize nonsense names. So over four calls, I change the names of the cancelled students to the names of the new students, two letters at a time. No one at Spirit customer service made a note (because who would care), and no one ever notices that the "correct" names during the intermediate steps were nonsense. Also, f**k Spirit.
#3
One of my professors let us use one side of a 8.5x11 sheet of paper as a test "cheat sheet", so I cut it and made a mobius strip with it so I could use "both" sides.
#4
When I was in high school we had a dress code where the teachers insisted we tuck in our shirts. I (like most of my friends) didn't like this policy, but apparently I was the only one to actually read the rulebook. It said, and I quote: "all shirts and tops must be worn tucked in except for those designed to be worn untucked." So, for the majority of the last three and a half years of high school, I f****n' wore Hawaiian shirts.
Whenever a teacher would tell me to tuck in my shirt, I'd pull out the rulebook and quote it to them. Most would just shrug and let me to carry on my way.
#5
My college didn't put any dates on our Student IDs. No graduation year, no expiration date, nothing. As a result, I kept using it to get student discounts for YEARS after I graduated, mostly the 15% off J. Crew discount.
Amo Mazzuchelli 1 year ago
Did the same, student discounts for movies, entry prices. Had to stop when it faded too much
#6
I'm not sure if this still works or not, but there used to be a 1-800 number on the bottom of a Wendy's receipt, and if you called it and took a survey they'd give you a free cheeseburger.
The thing is, when you got the free cheeseburger, they'd give you a receipt for the transaction. And at the bottom of that receipt... you guessed it.
#7
Bought a s****y sega genesis game, I think it was some flight sim which was the crappiest game I ever played. So I took it back to K-mart and got told "No refunds for opened games. Replacement for the same one if broken." Annoyed that I couldn't get my money back I said it was broken and went for the replacement. They handed me a new copy of the game and my original receipt.
Left and came back an hour later, "I want a refund for this game, here is my receipt and unopened game." Got my money back, went and bought a different s**t genesis game.
#8
I was once the only person to show up to a Microsoft CRM event, since I was the only person to attend I automatically won the door prize of a Xbox 360 with a Kinect.
The downside of this loophole was 3 long hours of talking with MS product evangelists who were very disheartened and desperate to make a sale.
#9
In elementary school we had the Accelerated Reading (AR) program. You would read a book, take a test on the computer, and be awarded points based on how well you did. At the end of the year you could buy things at the book store with the points you accumulated. I had just finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and got a perfect score on the test. The computer was only supposed to allow you to take the test once but I figured out you could take that specific Harry Potter book unlimited times. I racked up so many points and was never found out.
#10
This was more grinding than exploitation, but it was fun.
The grocery store where I lived had a fuel card you could sign up for. If you bought certain items, you would get $.01 or $.02 off per gallon, sometimes more depending on the item or week.
One week, they run a promotion that every one of their store generics would get $.02 off per gallon, per item.
I walk by the powdered KoolAid packets and notice they sell a generic version of that, 10/$1. I do the math.
My vehicle has a 16.5 gallon tank.
Gas costs $3.14 per gallon.
Each packet of drink mix costs .10.
Every packet of drink mix I buy will save me .33 at the pump.
I will need 157 packets of drink mix to get free gas.
This will save me $36.11.
I should do this.
So, I count out 157 little individual packets of drink mix, all kinds of flavors, and go to the checkout. I try to save the guy some time by telling him how many there are in each flavor, but the manager had walked by and stopped to see what was going on with the generic KoolAid. So, the poor guy has to scan every single one. The manager makes an awkward joke about the amount of drink mix I'm buying, but when I pull out my fuel card, my ploy becomes clear. The cashier reads off my new fuel discount and I'm on my way to the gas station, where I proudly fuel up my vehicle. (I still had to pay $0.16, they wouldn't let you reduce the price all the way to zero.)
Then, I took all the generic drink mix and donated it to the local food pantry, because I hate KoolAid.
#11
I worked at a sandwich shop when I was a young lass. We were allowed one free sandwich for the entirety of our employment there. Being an endless pit of hunger 16-year-olds are, I was determined to get as many free sandwiches as possible. If someone called in a phone order and never picked it up, the sandwich was fair game for employees after an hour. So I would text my friends to call in the sandwich I wanted and then never pick it up. Every day I got free sandwiches. It was amazing. If I didn't eat it, I would bring it to school the next day and sell it.
#12
I lived down the street from a rare book store that didn't have a website. I would go in, take pictures of really expensive books, list them on eBay with a reserve of the cost of the book +$50 sometimes they would sell for $500 to $1000 over the price of the book.
#13
My son attends speech and occupational therapy every week. Usually, it is a $35 copay for each therapy, but if I do them on the same day I only have to pay the copay once. Saves me about $140 a month!
#14
My friend works for a company where he spends the entire week traveling and staying in hotels and he can expense any hotel. Because of this my roommate and I listed our air mattress on Airbnb for $150 and he's the only one that ever stays there. He's only even in town once every couple weeks but whenever he is we have a small house party entirely on the company's dime!
NewBird 1 year ago
I once worked for a company that had a policy about this. Can't remember what it was called but if you stayed with someone you knew while on business you could still expense a certain amount and it was a decent amount, maybe £50-£100 a night? Of course if you liked the person who was putting you up you'd buy them dinner as a thank you, if you liked them a bit less I guess you could keep all the money. I thought it was nice of the company to let us do that :).
#15
This past semester, I needed to take a Biology class with a lab to graduate. I was told that it was one of the easiest classes at my school to take, but as a lit type, I didn't agree much. It was so much information all at once, and I found it really boring, so I didn't do so well on the tests or assignments. I got Cs and Ds, even on the final which I stayed up all night to study for. We also had a class blog. There were about a hundred and twenty of us, and we each had to write three posts per semester on anything biology-related.
I didn't do well in the lab section, either. I failed the multiple choice test *and* the practical, and I assumed I was f****d. However, the professor said that if we made comments on our peers' blog posts, and turned in worksheets to show what edits we made, when, and on what topic, we could get five extra points per edit.
Most kids did two or three. I did 97. Got an A for the semester.
Kirsten Kerkhof 1 year ago
That is a good professor, giving students a way to compensate a low grade with assignments they are good at.
#16
I spent 5 years on a US navy submarine. Every two years we would do a six month long deployment called Westpac.On my second deployment I got boondoggled with a few other dudes - basically, the boat goes out for deployment without us and we got sent to attend various training schools in Pearl Harbor for the first half of the deployment, then catch a flight to meet the boat. So we watched the boat steam off and then caught a flight to Pearl Harbor.
We show up with our orders to check in, but there was some miscommunication, office personnel done f****d up. We aren't enrolled in any of our classes. We don't have barracks, meal chits, nothing. They had no idea we were coming. They give us something called a "non-availability chit", which allowed us to stay at any reasonably-priced hotel on the gov'ts dime. So naturally we found a palatial estate a block away from Waikiki. We show up for muster the next day and the PO more or less just told us "Yeah, I don't want to see you guys again, ever." We couldn't get a hold of our boat, because it was underwater doing secret things shhh. Once the yeomen got their s**t on straight, they realized that our return plane tickets were already paid for and paperworked up, so they just said f**k it we'll do it live.
We were getting a per diem and having our housing covered by the navy, never had to muster for work, never had to check in anywhere. On top of that, we were still collecting our normal pay and allowances, sea pay, BAH, etc. For three months. I grew a beard, got high as f**k as often as possible, learned to scuba dive, did some surfing, had sex with a bunch of international tourists, went on pub crawls every weekend, did some hiking, lots of snorkelling. Woke up on the beach a few times with no recollection of how I got there. Best vacation ever. Thanks, navy.
#17
I worked in a call center during college. Our main performance measure was the number of donations solicited PER CONTACT. If the person didn't answer or hung up immediately, it didn't count against you.
I discovered a bug where, if I blew into the microphone just as the phone started to ring, it would register in the computer system as a no-answer and dial the next number. I rode this out for several months before I got tired of blowing my microphone for 8 hours a day and quit.
#18
I used to play a lot of backgammon in Yahoo Games - and some people were real jerks when losing. Most commonly they'd stall the game by taking the maximum 5 minutes per move, hoping I'd resign. I learned a way to boot these people off Yahoo for as long as I wanted, by trying to log into their account. When I used the wrong password ten times, the account was locked for 24 hours. They couldn't log in again until I chose to allow it.
#19
At my local movie theater, you could get a small drink for $2.50 or a large drink for $3.50, and large gets unlimited refills. Or you could get a SoBe tea for $2.50. But they didn't give you the SoBe bottle because they wanted to avoid any broken glass incidents. So they poured the SoBe into the large cup. Boom: unlimited large drink refills.
I saved several dollars that way.
Vasana Phong 1 year ago
Meh, if I drink that much soda, I’ll be in the bathroom more often than watching the movie
#20
By accident I found a gumball machine if you turned the dial really slow it would drop the gumball, then you could dial it back just enough so the next gumball would drop into the tumbler bits, then slowly dial forward again until it drops, etc. Got about 20 of them and stopped when I realized that I really didn't want to chew that much cheap gum...
#21
In high school they gave students credit for interning. I started my own corporation and interned at it for my senior year. The boss graded me very highly, as well.
#22
When I Was younger (12-13) I had one of those stupid timers on the computer that would only let me use the computer 2 hours a day before I got kicked.
Found out that if you minimize the screen alerting you that you have ran out of time, you never run out of time. Best summer ever.
Lexekon 1 year ago
Full respect for doing something you enjoy. I get to hear a lot of people in my life who evangelize going outdoors and being particularly active, as if you are broken for enjoying indoor stuff. Spend your time the way you are happy to, you don't get more time for listening to others.
#23
I live in the UK and train prices are a joke. They are so expensive. The best way around this is to split your journey. Say you are going from London to Birmingham; would normally cost around £40+, instead find a stop that the train you want to get stops at and do a journey of London to Milton Keynes and then Milton Keynes to Birmingham for example.
This saves you so much money, and is completely legal. You just have to make sure you stay on the same train when doing it, so double check all the timings. It annoys the rail companies as well as I believe they tried to shutdown a website which did this for you.
#24
Complained to Chipotle corporate when the hours were wrong on the door and it was closed Sunday during my lunch hour. Got a free burrito card in the mail.
Went back later in the week. Ordered a burrito:
* double chicken
* extra beans
* extra rice
* grilled peppers
* extra cheese
* extra salsa
* DOUBLE GUAC $$$$$$
* Oh s**t this thing is huge you better double up the tortilla.
Man, you should have seen this m**********r drawing up the wrapper with his black marker. Giant C, two circles around it, forward slashes, back slashes, Guac x2 circled, some sanskrit and I'm pretty sure even a tilde.
He followed the burrito to the register like I was going to tuck it under my wing and Marshawn the f**k outta there. He shoulder-surfed the cashier while she rung up this $20 monstrosity.
Shoulda seen the look on dudeman's face when I pulled that card out and smiled and said, "here ya go". God my coworkers are still laughing about it.
ConstantlyJon 1 year ago
that Marshawn Lynch reference is going to pass over most people's heads but it's brilliant.
#25
My university requires that you change your password every few months or so. The new password can't be on that you've used in the past. Naturally this sucks because I have to remember yet another password.
But you "forget" your password and reset it it can be anything, and it counts towards changing your password. I've had the same password for my entire college career.
Edit: Guys I'm aware this is a security risk. You can stop telling me now. I change my important passwords (banking, health insurance, loan accounts etc.) religiously.
urvish sanghvi 1 year ago
On the contrary, if any websites asks you to keep changing passwords every interval there is a greater chance of the user setting up a simpler password and hence the security risk.
#26
When my friends and I were in 6th grade we were always looking for a hustle. We would collect our parents empty soda and beer cans to return to the safeway near us for a few bucks to buy candy. One day they installed these big machines that automated the process so the employees didnt have to manually count the cans. You would put your can in the machine through a wide tube, it would roll the can around until it read the bar code, drop the can into a locked storage bin inside and you would repeat this until all of your cans were tallied. It would print a receipt that you would exchange for the cash amount of your cans at the register inside. My friends and I tied a can to the end of a stick, got the machine to read the barcode and then pulled the stick out before the mechanism would force our can-on-a-stick into its belly. We did this once a week and got about twenty bucks each time before we would get nervous and stop so we wouldnt get caught.
Vasana Phong 1 year ago
I remember my first job on the books at 14 , I stayed at my uncle’s house in CT to work at a supermarket (Waldbaums’s) for the summer, I lived in PA so the return exchange for the cans were different, if you bought a 6 pack of Pepsi, the register would charge automatically an xtra .30, we had a large recycling machine where the customers can come in and put their recycling in to obtain a receipt for the $, some people would bring in 3 trash bags of cans, a man that did this at one transaction got more $ than my weekly paycheck ( minimum wage back in 1987-$ 3.75)
#27
In the 80's Chuck E Cheeses didn't shred the tickets you get out of their games and use to buy toys, candy etc. My friends and I were biking one day behind a strip mall practicing our wheelies and jumps. We saw a worker throwing a garbage bag of tickets into the dumpster behind Chuck E Cheese. We grabbed it and then started circling back about once a week. Garbage bags and garbage bags full of tickets. We were doing so well, one of my friends parents got in on it. She would take the mini van behind there and have her kids load up. And this is why tickets are now shredded.
I think I still have a huge stockpile of frisbees and stuffed animals in my parent's attic somewhere.
#28
Around 5 years ago I used to work as a Sales Rep at a cell phone booth. Every new smartphone that would be released, the wireless provider would usually send us a demo unit of that phone with a demo line. The demo line would have unlimited talk, text, and data but would deactivate after 2-3 months. This was so we could show customers how the phone works with all of its features.
One time we got a demo line that didn't expire after the 2-3 months. So my manager at the time told me to use it as my work line. I didn't want to carry two cell phones so I cancelled my personal line and used my work line as my personal too. Fast forward one year later, my manager is transferred to another store and we get a new manager. New manager has no idea about my work/personal line. I left the company 6 months later with my demo line and to this day I still use this demo line. Have not had a cell phone bill for over 5 years and counting.
TL;DR - Got a cell phone line that I have been using for free for over 5 years.
EDIT: Just to clarify on a couple of questions that come up a lot. I can upgrade the phone whenever I want but I have to buy new phones for cash, rather than worry about contracts. The talk and text works fine in the US but I am limited to 1 GB of data per month. The line does not seem to work internationally, but I usually use WIFI anyways.
BONUS STORY: Around 2 years my phone got stolen from my car, along with my laptop, hard drive, and tablet. I was utterly devastated, but more for losing my phone line than anything else. After moping around for a few days, I started to think of ideas of how I could possibly get the magical phone line back. I called and texted the phone line non-stop, offering money for just my SIM card back, but no response. I decided to try a different approach. I called my old store I used to work at, pretending to be a customer I asked for my old manager, but I was told there was a new manager and I got his full name. I called my carrier, remembering the protocol from my working days, pretending to be the new store manager and I gave them our authorization code (which I luckily still remembered). Told them one of our demo lines was on the fritz and needed to transfer onto a new SIM, they ask for the phone number of the demo line. I give them the number and they say it's some special line that I have to contact some special department for. They transfer me to special department, I tell special department dude about the situation and he's like he can definitely do the transfer but only through email requests. So I have to send him an email request of the transfer through our store email. SCREWED! Another dead end, so maybe the magical phone line is gone forever, looks like I have to pay for a phone line like the rest of you peasants. But then I had a magical flashback to 5-6 years ago, when I used to work at the wireless store. My then manager asked me to create a store email for our team to use, for whatever use. I couldn't remember the password of that email but I did remember I just made a regular gmail account. So I made a new gmail account for my old store and emailed the special department my phone line transfer request onto a new SIM card, under the guise of that store's new manager. The line was transferred within 2 hours and I got my magical phone line back.
#29
When vending machines first started accepting credit cards you could swipe your card, select a drink and when the little drink pod starts moving to collect your drink hit cancel. The cancel button would stop the card transaction but not the machine so you could get free drinks.
Was a sad day when it stopped working.
#30
There was a Papa Johns coupon for 50% off if the official PJ twitter retweeted you.
I found the code looking through their website.
I got half off pizza for a year and a half.
What do you think ?
The Queen Of Upper Butt Crack 1 year ago
Hospital parking. My brother has had to be hospitalized for long periods over the years. Our mom and I would take turns staying with him 24/7 as he had seizures and hospital wanted/need to tie him to the bed and would do so unless we were there. Mom would stay during the day. I would come after supper.pull a new parking ticket and go to bros room and give mom the ticket I just pulled so she would get out of the parkade for 0 or minimal charge (depending on how long it took her to het out of parkade). When she came back in the morning I would take the ticket she pulled and head off to work paying nothing. Would keep this going for duration of his stay, usually a few months at a time.
ConstantlyJon 1 year ago
Hospital parking should be free anyway. No reason for any patients or their visitors to ever pay for parking. At the hospital I work at, you get a ticket when you enter the garage, bring it to your appt or the desk of the clinic you're visiting, and they validate that you were there. This puts a discount on the ticket that pays for the parking so no one who is there legit ever has to pay. The system is in place to keep random people or employees from parking there for free (us employees park miles away and get bussed in).
Load More Replies...
Captain Awesome 1 year ago
My only loophole was a memory game at a pizza joint. The higher you score the more freebies you got. I had (and still do) a damn near photographic memory especially when it comes to patterns. I would walk out with a pizza, bread sticks, and soda every week for only a quarter. Damn good times.
Cass 1 year ago
Phone calls outside of our area code used to be wildly expensive and it cost more the further it was from your area. My best friend moved 3 hours away. My dad almost had a stroke when he got the phone bill and I was not allowed near the phone. Desperate to talk to my BF I went to the phone booth and found that a little wriggling with the return coin lever would allow me to talk for free. The coin dropped out and the call went through. I spent many cold hours in the phone booth that winter.
The Queen Of Upper Butt Crack 1 year ago
Hospital parking. My brother has had to be hospitalized for long periods over the years. Our mom and I would take turns staying with him 24/7 as he had seizures and hospital wanted/need to tie him to the bed and would do so unless we were there. Mom would stay during the day. I would come after supper.pull a new parking ticket and go to bros room and give mom the ticket I just pulled so she would get out of the parkade for 0 or minimal charge (depending on how long it took her to het out of parkade). When she came back in the morning I would take the ticket she pulled and head off to work paying nothing. Would keep this going for duration of his stay, usually a few months at a time.
ConstantlyJon 1 year ago
Hospital parking should be free anyway. No reason for any patients or their visitors to ever pay for parking. At the hospital I work at, you get a ticket when you enter the garage, bring it to your appt or the desk of the clinic you're visiting, and they validate that you were there. This puts a discount on the ticket that pays for the parking so no one who is there legit ever has to pay. The system is in place to keep random people or employees from parking there for free (us employees park miles away and get bussed in).
Load More Replies... Captain Awesome 1 year ago
My only loophole was a memory game at a pizza joint. The higher you score the more freebies you got. I had (and still do) a damn near photographic memory especially when it comes to patterns. I would walk out with a pizza, bread sticks, and soda every week for only a quarter. Damn good times.
Cass 1 year ago
Phone calls outside of our area code used to be wildly expensive and it cost more the further it was from your area. My best friend moved 3 hours away. My dad almost had a stroke when he got the phone bill and I was not allowed near the phone. Desperate to talk to my BF I went to the phone booth and found that a little wriggling with the return coin lever would allow me to talk for free. The coin dropped out and the call went through. I spent many cold hours in the phone booth that winter.
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