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The rules are the rules, and there is no way of getting around them, right? Well, not necessarily.
Whether we're talking about the law or just simple product promotions, if there's a flaw within a system, it's only a matter of time before someone figures out how to capitalize on it.
So when Redditor Rokzo made a post on the platform, asking other users "What is the best loophole you have ever heard of?", they flooded it with all sorts of genius exploits. Here are some of the most memorable ones.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Little community center/arcade where I used to live as a kid had an air hockey table in the back room. Somebody figured out that if you jimmy the coin slot in just the right way, you could get an extra 3-4 games out of one quarter until the thing was fully pressed in and you'd have to put in a new one. None of us had much money, so this was a lifesaver. The employees didn't really care because what money we did have was typically spent at the snack bar, so they made money off us anyway.
I kind of miss that place. They always had fresh watermelon for free for kids who had absolutely no money so nobody would feel left out.
The now-viral question came to Rokzo after they had seen a similar thread elsewhere. (In fact, we at Bored Panda have covered a couple here and there as well.) "I always enjoy reading what people have to say, but sometimes reposting the question yields different answers so it's nice to see what different things people come up with," OP told us.
"Personally, if I gain a new perspective on how to do or approach something, maybe I can become more efficient at it. A loophole doesn't have to be a 'cheat' per se, it can be a 'path of least resistance' that can lead to quicker or better results," they added.
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#2
Guy from Russia, if I remember right, scanned a credit card agreement offer he recieved, changed all the terms to be in his favor and sent it back, they let him use the card but ended up taking him to court. He won because they didn't read their terms and conditions that he had altered!!!
But Rokzo also believes that loopholes don't have to be used to take advantage of anyone or anything. At the end of the day, you're the one who's in charge of your actions, so "be kind and use [loopholes] for good. It doesn't cost anything to be nice, and good advice is free too, so use the newfound wisdom to better yourself or those around you."
But if you need reassurance, there's plenty. Both companies and individuals dance around rules and regulations for any edge they can find. For example, take The Pandora Papers leak which includes 6.4 million documents, almost 3 million images, more than 1 million emails, and almost half-a-million spreadsheets.
There's the ruling Qatari family who avoided £18.5m tax on a London super-mansion, the Czech prime minister's failure to declare an offshore investment company used to purchase two French villas for £12m, and over 330 other politicians from 90 countries who use secret offshore companies to hide their wealth.
#3
I am the lucky beneficiary of a loophole:
Back in the 1960s, a 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 was a scholarship fund for people living in that old district's area (like me). The district is gone, but the scholarship still exists! I applied, and got the scholarship. I don't think there were any other applicants.
#4
Torvill and Dean’s bolero at the 1984 Winter Olympics lasted 4 minutes and 18 seconds, but Olympic rules state that performances can’t be longer than 4 minutes.
However, the timer doesn’t begin until the skates touch the ice, so they did the first 20ish seconds of their performance on their knees.
#5
In West Virginia there was a law that waived taxes for automobile title transfers between parents and children. A friend wanted to buy a car from his uncle. So the uncle sold the car to his father who then sold it to his other son who sold it to his own son, my friend. Three transactions. Zero taxes.
#6
I used to work in a call center doing tech support for a dial-up ISP. The 10 hour plan was $9.99 and then there were various tiers including an unlimited plan for $50 or something like that.
I ended up moving to a different city and called up the call center to set up internet and I asked for the 10 hour plan. The guy (who didn't know I used to work there) tried to talk me into a bigger plan, but I stuck with the 10 hour plan.
Why? Because the company had no system for monitoring usage. You could use as much data as you wanted and it was all the same to them. There was no tracking system in place.
Alan Green 3 years ago
I kinda had the opposite problem. Years ago when Orange were a ISP in UK they kept putting a speedcap on my connection as punishment because I apparently kept breaking their "fair usage policy" on my supposedly unlimited use connection. I kept calling them asking what rule I broke. I would get a long winded statement that made little sense (I was on a unlimited connection after all) so I asked for a copy of the fair use policy to be sent to me in the post. "Sorry but we can't do that" Me:"Okay have you got a link to a webpage with this fair use policy on it so I can learn what these rules are?" "no we don't" So they wanted me to stick to rules but wouldn't tell me what the rules were while I was paying for their top tier internet package?! Needless to say i jumped ship to another ISP.
#7
A man in China purchased a first-class plane ticket — and used it to eat a year’s worth of free meals at the VIP lounge at Xi’an International Airport. The frequent diner purchased a first-class, fully refundable ticket aboard Eastern China Airline. He used the ticket to gain access to the airport’s VIP lounge, where high-rolling travelers dine for free, according to a report last week in the Chinese-language newspaper Kwong Wah Yit Poh in Malaysia. The man re-booked his first-class ticket over and over again and kept the gravy train rolling. Eastern China Airlines officials only recently figured out the man’s scheme after noticing his single ticket being re-booked 300 times over one year, according to the newspaper report. Airline officials admitted there was nothing they could do to stop the frequent diner.
A spokeswoman for the carrier called the man’s free-meal scheme a “rare act.” Still, Eastern China Airlines officials confronted him, and the human meal ticket stopped chowing down. The freeloader ended up cashing in his fully refundable ticket and getting back all his money.
#8
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.
#9
There was once a big uproar at some sporting event where the venue had an exclusive deal with Aquafina or Dasani, and they HAD to sell only that water. Any vendor on premise was forbidden from selling any other bottled water.
So the vendors started doing this: They posted signs saying, "Single peanut for sale, $1, free water bottle included with every peanut purchase." Genius.
Giles McArdell 3 years ago
Not uncommon, I've seen the same idea in several forms - One was, there were some Sunday trading laws (possibly in Ireland) where you could only sell essentials (groceries etc), some car dealers started selling £15000 oranges with a free car. Ultimate result was a law change to stop it happening.
#10
Went to a private school where the teachers were real power hungry sh*t heads, you could get in trouble for having your shirt untucked, and some would be real a*s bags about it, literally crouched down and scooting along the benches at lunch time, ie even at lunch if it popped out while sitting you could get in trouble, I ran through the school hand book and it said sweaters with the school emblem can be worn at any time, so I bought one 3 sizes too big and wore it constantly, it went down to almost my knees and I would happily announced that I wasn't even wearing the uniform shirt let alone tucking it in. the a*s teachers got pissed off and took it to the school dean but I was right and it was allowed, like half the school switched to sweaters after that.
#11
There was a promotion a bunch of years back where Hoover included a plane ticket to select destinations around the world (from Europe) with any purchase of one of their products over $100. People could buy a vacuum that was like $109 and get a $600 plane ticket for it. Hoover ended up having to have people work crazy overtime to fulfill the demand for the cheapest model, and eventually they stopped honoring the promotion, which caused the people who hadn’t collected on it yet to sue them.
The company made 30 million from the promotion and lost 50 million in plane tickets and legal fees
#12
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.
DennyS (denzoren) 3 years ago
This is cool, I'll have to try it sometime....after the pandemic. When I'm not broke. Lol
#13
When I was in college, a parking sticker to park your car on campus was something like $250 a semester.
Senior year, we were sick of this, so I bought one, stuck it on my car, (it was front facing and stuck to the inside of your window facing out) and then we took a high resolution photo of it. We edited the photo on a laptop and sent it to a sticker making company. They printed a sheet of those for like 8 bucks. We got a couple pages of stickers and gave them out to our trusted friends.
As long as no one parked illegally or next to each other on campus, there was no reason parking police would notice we had the same parking number. Never got caught and saved a ton of money because we split the price of the original sticker.
10/10 would do it again. But you best believe I came out of that place with 45k in student loans, but that’s a separate issue.
#14
In music festival or venue that use reusable cups, you usually pay like 1$ for the cup refundable when you bring it . There's always cups left everywhere that people are to trashed to bring back. Collect a couple, cash the refund and there you go : free drink.
Drank all day long for 5$ at Osheaga the last time I went.
#15
When I was 10-11ish, I really loved my little pony. And there was an app on the app store for equestria girls (an MLP spinoff), where you did quests and stuff. Well, to complete the quests you often needed help from MLP characters. The way that you got their help was either by scanning a doll, or using gems. You had to pay for gems, and only got them for free rarely. I had no Equestria Girls dolls, so this really sucked for me. Until I thought, "Hang on, what's stopping people from just going to the store and scanning dolls?" which then led me to realizing that I could just look up pictures online and scan them. It ended up working, and I was so proud I bragged to my mom about it for ages.
#16
In the shipyard, you gotta have safety glasses. If you lose them, our safety department makes you talk to your boss's boss and have him write a note saying that he talked to you so you can have another pair of glasses. Well, I walked in to the safety office without safety glasses and asked for another pair. They said to go get a note. I then asked if they were going to let me walk out without any safety glasses. They knew that wasn't allowed, so they gave me a scratched up pair. Well, the reason they had those on hand is because you can trade your scratched ones for new ones. So I took the scratched ones, dealt with them for a day, and then went in the next day and traded them in for new ones. Never had to talk to my boss's boss and get a note.
TheWickedOne 3 years ago
So much stupidity for safety glasses. My work has them in the vending machines, no hassle... safety is supposed to be first, not making you run around like an idiot to get what they require you to use.
#17
NY State had a glitch in their Motor Vehicle system for a while. If you got a moving violation, you would plead guilty, and overpay it by $5. They would send you back a check for $5, but you don't cash it. They would not apply points to your license until the case was fully adjudicated. If you waited until a year passed, and then cashed it, those points would roll off, so you would never actually have any points showing on your license.
#18
In the Netherlands you can get crazy discounts in the december month with a coupon in the mac Donalds app. But these coupons would expire after like 4 min so you couldn’t use it all day. The loophole was that you just could screenshot the QR-code on the coupon and use is al day. Oooh I gained so many kilograms that december. Dont mind my bad english btw..its not my mother Tongue you know.
Linda van der Pal 3 years ago
Bad English? The only minor issue I can find is that tongue is capitalized! ;)
#19
The promotion at subway were you would get a free 6 inch sub if you bought a 25$ gift card. Then you buy another gift card with your 25$ gift card and get an other sub. You could do that to infinity the year after they changed it so you cant buy gift cards with gift cards
Katherine Boag 3 years ago
Most places dont let you buy gift cards with gift cards, and exclude gift cards from promotions
#20
A good shot but not eventually a real loophole was the "drink Pepsi, get a Harrier jet" guy.
In 1996, Pepsi ran a promotion where you could collect points by buying Pepsi products. The more points you got, the more stuff you could get, such as t-shirts, free Pepsi, sunglasses, etc. They also had a commercial where they advertised a Harrier jet for 7 million points.
One guy read the rules of the promotion and found that you could buy points fo $0.10. That means to get 7 million points you'd have to pay $700,000. The going cost for a Harrier at the time was about $20 million or so.
So, one guy raised the money, bought the points and demanded the jet. When Pepsi refused he sued them.
He lost, but it was a good try.
#21
My math teacher in seventh grade told us if we put “toaster” as an answer anywhere in our work, she would count it right. She said it so quietly that only a few people could hear. I had forgotten about it until finals that year and I had no idea what six of the answers were, so I put toaster and she gave me full credit for all six. She wrote that she had never graded one where someone put that
#22
Our dog is supposed to be in her crate while we eat dinner. She considers it being in the crate if her hind feet are in there.
#23
When I was a kid, I found a laundry machine that gave you 5 quarters instead of 4 when you put a dollar in. Abused that like crazy as a broke kid.
And by abused I mean I did it like 5 times then went to do other stuff
#24
For appointments that cost money to cancel with less than 24hrs notice, they often are free to reschedule within that window, so you reschedule it to a week later, then cancel it a day or two later.
Beeps 3 years ago
Yep, a local business I worked for had someone do that to them repeatedly, so now they a) don’t allow reschedules and b) have a clause that states if you cancel 3 appointments, you won’t be able to book any more future appointments, but have to go on the waiting list to be allocated last minute availabilities. So one person’s aresholery has caused the system to now suck for everyone.
#25
Some McDonalds have a 4 piece nugget on the dollar menu. It's often cheaper to buy 3 of those (12 nuggets and three sauces) and a fry separately than it is to buy the 10 piece meal.
#26
When you're playing a phone game that wants to charge you extra to play without ads. These are between levels and sometimes during play.
As the game is loading (before you start playing) turn on airplane mode and the game now runs ad free. The trick is to let it load THEN turn off your connection. You can't save your progress online, but it's a small price to pay for preventing full-screen ads with no timer or x.
Some of these games will actually tell you that you're playing the ad-free version when you do this.
#27
One time the local mall was having a guitar hero contest back when those games were super popular. Whoever got the most points on a song throughout the whole day won tickets to see Stone Temple Pilots. What they didn’t know was their contest was fatally flawed to anyone that actually knew the game. If you play a song on expert like cherub rock and hit most of the notes, you will naturally get a higher scorer than if you hit every note in a song like Mississippi queen just because there are way more notes in the song, so that’s what I did, played cherub rock and got a score of a couple hundred thousand, and no one beat it the rest of the day, and I won the tickets.
Devil's Advocate 3 years ago
Being good at the game that's being played as part of a competition, isn't exactly a "loophole", neither is understanding the basics of how more difficult levels give more points.
#28
There is a limit on how much money an individual can move out of China each year. One guy created a shell company in another country, sued his parent company, and didn't show up to defend himself. The judge automatically gave the lawsuit to the plantiff, moving millions out of China.
Mazer 3 years ago
This drives me crazy. So instead of supporting the systems that got him so successful, he jus blew them off. TSK. Nobody is self made, lots of people and money go into creating wealth for one person, the least that person could do is to pay their fare share of taxes so the system continues for others. Bottom line greed sucks
#29
There was a guy in Texas who bought a $500k house for just $16. No one had lived in the house for 3 years and the bank had not claimed it so he just filled out a $16 form claiming ownership and the house was his.
#30
I have purposefully booked flights I had a good hunch would be overbooked, then show up the day of, claim the rebooked flight +$500 voucher and have myself a damn good time in vegas for 48 hours
#31
One time when I lived in the barracks, the rule was you could only have a 6 pack of beer, a bottle of wine, or a 750ml bottle of liquor in your refrigerator. A guy down the hall kept a 30 pack in his room, and when they came by to do inspections one day they tried to give him sh*t, but the beers were just in his room and not in his refrigerator. We received an updated SOP shortly after that to remove that loophole
Cass Malone 3 years ago
I get why they only allow so much though. Military personnel are supposed to be ready at a moment's notice like a Firefighter.
#32
Company cafeteria had an option to order a half burrito. However, the cost of two half burritos was less than the cost of one full burrito. On top of that, the chef would make a half burrito by cutting a new tortilla in "half" and generally gave a healthier portion than just a half. Thus, ordering 2 half burritos was equivalent to about one and a half full burritos and cost less than a full burrito.
#33
My microwave stopped turning on, so I went to Best Buy to get a new one. I tried the old one in another outlet and it came back to life so I reinstalled it. Returned new microwave to Best Buy. Went back home to see that the old microwave had now died again once more (for good) and then just drove right back to Best Buy where I bought the brand new microwave I just returned as an “open box item” for half price.
Probably a fluke, but it was a rare instance of “the system” working in my favor.
#34
Opening Day in my Major League Baseball city: it is cheaper to park at a meter and get a ticket than to park in a legal parking lot.
#35
When I was young (~12yo) I received a free chicken sandwich coupon for Chik-fil-a that I got from a contest at school. There was no fine print on it. No exp date, no "one per customer", no nothing. So I used my dad's photocopier at home and made a f*ck ton of copies, talking like 100 copies. Every week my mom would drive me to Chik-fil-a, wait in the car (I think she was embarrassed but didn't want to suppress my enthusiasm), I'd go inside, and walk out with a couple free sandwiches.
Did it for like a year before we moved away. Pretty sure the highschool employees just took pity on a 12yo and honestly didn't care enough to say no. I work in marketing now and fine print is one of the things I proofread 3 times before approving.
Hobby Hopper 3 years ago
There's a difference between a loophole and outright breaking the law. This is the latter. In fact several of the examples on this list are fraud.
#36
Here's the one that saved me $100.
For some f*cking reason, my car got towed from a Taco Bell parking lot while I was at a store next door for only a few minutes.
$100, cash only, to get it back, because typical towing company.
I looked up the state law, and to request a private tow at a business, the owner of the establishment must be present. A manager is not good enough. Since they probably don't even know who owns that particular place, obviously, that didn't happen.
Got my car back, no charge.
Karin Jansen 3 years ago
All I read was: "I parked my car at a business where I wasn't buying anything". So you're taking up spaces reserved for actual customers. Not as cool as you think.
#37
some guy with a math degree won tens of million in a small time lottery by figuring out a way to almost almost always win by buying a certain amount of tickets (10k worth or so).
Devil's Advocate 3 years ago
Except, most lotteries you can't win by buying loads of tickets, the prize will always be less than the spend.
#38
Applying for graduate schools, all the apps cost money to submit ($50+ each usually) but you can often get them waived if you're a member of certain organizations/groups (stuff like honors societies, career development orgs for underrepresented minorities, etc.). I found out that just being an APPLICANT (which was free) for one of those groups counted for the fee waiver, and got application fees waived for over half of the schools I applied to, even after being rejected from that program.
Cactus McCoy 3 years ago
Even APPLYING to schools costs money? Where in the world is that legal?
#39
While I was at university, my department at one point switched from requiring students to hand in physical copies of assignments to digital submissions. Apparently a few people on another course had some problems with the procedure on deadline day, so the department sent us a note round saying that to cover for that, anyone who submitted incorrectly on deadline day would have their individual deadline extended by 12 hours.
Cue a load of students deliberately submitting unfinished assignments incorrectly so they could get the extra time.
#40
In Sydney, Australia, we have the Opal card system for public transport. You load up the card with monies, and tap it when you get on and off public transport. Now these days, per week you get a discount on all your trips after your 8th. Well. That was brought in after people exploited the previous rule. After 8 trips, all trips were free. So people would ride the buses to and from stops, tap tap tapping away, leaving enough time between each tap for it to register as an individual trip, and after a few hours of venturing the city and tapping, they then had the rest of their weekly travel FOR FREE. The news did a piece of everyone doing it, and soon after the new rule came in lmao.
What do you think ?
Freya the Wanderer 3 years ago
I agree, though maybe not that half of them are. There is a fine line between harmless exploitation and out-and-out fraud or cheating.
Load More Replies... Freya the Wanderer 3 years ago
I agree, though maybe not that half of them are. There is a fine line between harmless exploitation and out-and-out fraud or cheating.
Load More Replies... Related on Bored Panda
