People Talk About Loopholes They Discovered and Exploited

You never know when you might find a loophole.

It could be at your job, somewhere out in the business world, or maybe something completely random that you happen upon by accident.

But when people actually DO find loopholes…look out, because they’re gonna use ’em!

Here are some pretty interesting stories from AskReddit users about the loopholes they found AND used to their advantage.

1. Wow.

“Microsoft used to have (still might for all I know) online training for videogame retailers in order to train store employees on current and upcoming products that they could sell.

The training gave points for each video and knowledge quiz you took, which could be exchanged for free games, computer hardware, store gift cards, etc.

By signing in under a random Gamestop store ID number (which was posted online), skipping the video, and brute forcing the knowledge quiz, was able to rack up a whole bunch of points and get several XBox games and simple computer hardware for essentially nothing.

Never worked a day of retail in my life.”

2. A big glitch.

“The soda machine at a dorm I lived in had a weird glitch. If you put in five cents more than the asking price and pushed the product select button, the machine would empty all of its change out at once.

We did this a few times and got $20-40 each time!”

3. Raking it in.

“1 Credit Card point for every dollar spent.

But up to 5X for every dollar spent abroad.

I’ve been on a 6 year “holiday” abroad and they haven’t brought it up.”

4. Smart move.

“I was visiting a hospital on a daily basis for many weeks ( premature twin babies) but they didn’t do multi-use discounts. “There’s the hours you were here – pay up” type of thing. And it was costing something like £5 – £10 per day

Until a few days in I realized that the hospital had only recently appointed the car parking company and they haven’t yet installed the “arrival time” machine at the car park entrance but had only put a temporary machine in the Hospital lobby . . . . which you were meant to use on your arrival.

And from that day on I got my “arrival time” ticket when I was leaving and only paid minimum stay.”

5. Never-ending pizza.

“This pizza place local to us had a glitch in their online ordering service for a while. You could technically combine 2 deals of 50% off. One was 50% off for any XL pizza of an order that was normally $30 or more, and the other was 50% off on a XL Pizza, with two 2-liter drinks, wings, and cheese fries at regular price.

If you put both of these coupons in, you only paid for the wings, cheese fries and pop which would be about $18. With delivery charge + tax it would be about $25. Plus 2 Extra Large Pizzas for literally free.

Normally this would be $70+. Any other coupon you could not combine, but this one worked together for some reason. For some other reason it would mark 50% off 2x on each pizza.

We discovered this when we were ordering food the day we moved in. Feeding our friends that helped us move in. We thought it was a 1-time thing. Tried it a few weeks later and it worked. We did this at least once a month for the year or so we lived there.

We always gave the driver a $10-$20 tip and he knew what we were up to. The place never said anything about it for years. Eventually they updated their site a couple years ago, and we had moved out by then.”

6. Hey, that’s pretty good!

“Had intermittent anemia in college that I was trying to improve. But the blood work was about $100 each time.

I started donating blood and if I was too low they’d turn me away and I’d keep trying to up my iron. If I was high enough, I got to donate to a good cause.

Win win!”

7. Extra cash.

“Opened an Amex credit card and the introductory offer was 10% cash back in restaurants for the first year.

I worked for a sh*tty chain restaurant as a server, so I would just stack a few of my large cash tables and put them on my card, then pay it off every week.

Made an extra $20-$30 a shift.”

8. Free burritos!

“There was a summer where I got free chipotle all the time. I had a gift card that had like 2 dollars left on it. I hadn’t updated the app yet so it still had the “use my gift card and pay the rest in store”.

However either the computer at the store said I already paid the full amount ahead of time or I always came in during a time that they were swamped so no one ever asked me to pay.

They also never charged my gift card. I got away with it until the app made me update it.”

9. Playing the system.

“Coming to school 3 hours late.

I found out that as long as you have a parent’s note, you could come in late unlimited times. The only restriction is that after 15 days missed for a class, you’d fail it.

So, at the beginning of the year I pressured my guidance counselor to move my two study periods to period 1/2 and a blowoff class (which I didn’t need the credit for) to period 3.

Came to school at 10-10:30am every day my senior year opposed to 7am. Extra 3 hours of sleep, bringing fast food into lunch, and avoiding the hectic metal detectors made it well worth.

Props to my grandma for writing 140 late notes for me at the start of the year. That my friends, is how you play the system.”

10. That’s a lot of tea.

“The Starbucks subsidiary Teavana (now out of business) would let you use your Starbucks rewards (“stars” or whatever they’re called) to get loose tea by the ounce.

However, there was an error in their point-of-sale system that only deducted 1 reward point, no matter how many you spent in a given transaction.

My wife and I spent 32 rewards on a couple pounds of the most expensive loose tea they had. She checked her rewards balance the next day, and holy sh*t, she still had 31 reward points left.

So we drove to a different Teavana and got a bunch of loose tea from them, and then another, and then another. We were in Los Angeles, so there were a lot of Teavanas within driving distance.

At retail price, we took a thousand bucks or so of free tea off their hands before the loophole was closed.”

11. School uniforms.

“My school had uniforms, it was kinda strict with those… but nowhere in the rules it stated that girls should wear the female uniform and boys the male uniform.

Sooooooo, I bought the male one and wore it. A lot of teachers wanted to give me detention, but when I went over the school rule book and sh*t, they had to stay steaming mad because I was not breaking any rules.

They assumed it was implied, but the only think stated was that the uniform was to be worn properly, be clean and fit well, but that’s it.

By the time I graduated, a lot of students were doing about the same sh*t I was.

That rule changed shortly after my generation went off to university. sorry kiddos, maybe you will find new loopholes to give the inspector an aneurism.”

12. Life hack.

“The Mc Cheapy.

McFlurries were like 4 bucks. All it is is ice cream in a cup with some shots of topping. They don’t even mix it.

So we asked for a soft serve, 30c, two shots of toppings, $1, a cup and a spoon (free).”

13. No permit needed.

“Not me, but my dad.

He was building a deck on their house. If the deck attaches to the house, you need a permit to build one in our city, since it’s considered an addition/improvement. If the deck doesn’t attach to the house, it’s a free-standing structure, and you don’t need a permit.

So he built the deck right up against the house, but it doesn’t actually attach to the house, so he didn’t need a permit.

All he had to do was add a few extra posts under the side of the deck nearest the house.”

14. Free refills.

“Years ago, Burger King sold mugs that you could refill for free any time at all. With soda or even shakes.

My friends and I would bring a single mug, go in and get a chocolate shake, go back to the car to move the contents to another mug, go back in and repeat until all of us got free chocolate shakes.

We did this regularly for about two years of high school.”

Now we want to hear from you.

In the comments, tell us about the various loopholes that you’ve discovered and exploited.

Please and thank you!

The post People Talk About Loopholes They Discovered and Exploited appeared first on UberFacts.

People Share Loopholes That They Found and Took Advantage of

Some people are really good at figuring out loopholes and shortcuts.

Some of those things can be illegal and you should probably avoid them, while others are perfectly okay.

It just really depends, ya know?

But one thing is for certain: most people are going to exploit the heck out of loopholes if they happen to find them.

Let’s see what folks on AskReddit had to say.

1. Cruisin’.

“Was on a cruise ship a few years ago that had a pay-per-minute Internet policy. You’d buy like 200 minutes of wifi access for $100 or whatever crazy price it was. They had a little portal that you went to, to start and stop the timer, and tell you how much time was remaining.

I quickly realized that the timer counted by whole minutes. That is, if I started at 12:00:01, and stopped it at 12:00:58, then it counted as 0 minutes of internet use.

For the entire cruise I took advantage of this. Start the timer, fire up your internet apps like Facebook and Instagram and let your timeline and emails download, or launch a website and let it load. Stop the timer.

Browse your feed and photos and read your website and emails offline, compose posts and replies etc. Start the timer again to send/upload, stop it again within a minute.

I milked those 200 minutes for an entire 3 week cruise and still had 45 minutes left over at the end.”

2. What a deal.

“Moviepass was $10 a month and you could use it to get 1 movie ticket a day.

I lived next door to a Regal, and I went everyday because Regal would give their reward points for every ticket purchased. They didn’t care that Moviepass was paying for the tickets then giving them to me as part of my subscription.

In 8 months I spent $80 on the subscription and saw everything that came out and I racked up enough Regal rewards points for about 50 free popcorns or drinks.

Moviepass went out of business but I still had all the Regal rewards.”

3. Parking wars.

“In college there was a parking garage that charged around $2/hour. I couldn’t get a parking pass but learned the heated garage that charged $2/hour had a $20 fee for a lost ticket.

I would park my car in there for a few weeks at a time and when I had to leave would lose my ticket and be forced to pay the $20 lost ticket fee.

A parking pass was around $500 to park outside and I ended up paying around $300 in lost ticket fees to park in the heated garage.”

4. Free printing!

“When I was at university, the pay-for campus printers all worked on a system where you’d print your documents, release them at the printer, they’d print, then after they’ve finished printing, it would then contact the server to get the cost deducted from your balance.

That final step always took a while and I discovered in my first year that if I cancelled the print job as the final page was rolling out of the printer, it wouldn’t deduct the cost from my balance.

With this method I got free printing for nearly two years before they upgraded the system!”

5. OT.

“We had a situation at my old job (a huge, international company) where we’d work shifts, either 8/10/12 hours. Anything after 8 hours was overtime.

Sometimes we were scheduled for the next shift quite soon after the last one had ended, for example 05:00-12:00 and then 19:00-00:00.

Someone discovered that if there were less than 8 hours between shifts in a 24-hour period, anything after 8 hours total was paid the overtime rate.

We did it for ages and then in the context of some team chat, some twat asked one of the managers whether the above scheduling would still be feasible.

Turned out the management hadn’t even noticed and stopped it immediately. And back to minimum wage we went.”

6. Little bandits.

“When my brothers and I were 6-10 years old we found a crane candy game where you were “guaranteed to win” something.

We found a laser sensor in the area where you pick up your prize. This indicated whether or not something had dropped. So, by holding the flap door open at the bottom the sensor was never triggered so for 25 cents we nearly emptied the machine.

Thanks Red Robin!”

7. Free stuff!

“Early in the smartphone world there was an app that gave you points for watching TV shows and ads that you could turn in for gift cards or discount codes.

The rewards were not great but over time and by waiting for gift card restock you could make out like a bandit. However, the shows they wanted you to watch were not my cup of tea (a lot of prime time shows and reality shows) and I wasn’t home for a lot of them so I thought I was SOL.

Turns out, the app had a grace period where if you had recorded the show on your TV you could still get credit, so I just pirated the shows and set my phone up to “watch” them while I did something else. Then I realized it only listened for about 2 minutes before it gave you credit so I was able to get through the log of shows in about 40 minutes and make a killing.

Because of that app I was able to get a kitchen aid stand mixer, a smoker and a bunch of other stuff because of the gift cards.”

8. Bring on the pizza!

“I bought a card once for $10 that had 16 coupons for a BOGO pizza from Dominos. They were little stickers that you were supposed to pull off and hand in when using them, but they never asked for the stickers.

They also didn’t have an expiration on them. They also didn’t tell anyone it was supposed to be one per order.

We’d order 8 pizzas at a time, used them for two years. Thousands of dollars of free pizza really help when you’re a broke college kid.”

9. A good promo.

“Several years ago AT&T was running a trade-in promotion increasing the value of old iPhones way beyond what they were selling for on eBay/ CL at the time.

This promo thankfully wasn’t bundled to a new phone purchase and could be done on any active line of service with AT&T – so no limits on phone trade-ins.

I ended up buying 31 old iPhone 4s for about $70 each on eBay and trading them all in to AT&T on promotion for $200. Worked out to $6200 in AT&T credits (got myself 2 iPads, a 2 new iPhones at the time, and enough of a credit on my bill I didn’t pay for cell phone service for almost 2 years).

I really miss this type of promotion!!”

10. Thief!

“I remember being young and going to Chuck E. Cheese.

When you were pulling your tickets out, if you found this sweet spot  then you could just keep pulling the tickets out.

My mom had a hard time figuring out how I got 10,000 tickets in under an hour.”

11. Smart move.

“Right out of college I worked a job that had a 100% match to any retirement contributions.

I was young, lived rent free with my parents, had no student debt, and could grab OT nearly every week. After some budgeting I figured I could throw 80% of my paycheck into retirement.

I did so for 9 months until my supervisor called me into the office to sign a policy change that limited retirement contributions to 50%. I’d stashed away nearly $35,000 on about a ~$32,000 annual pay.

I had no life for about a year, but d*mn if it didn’t jump start my retirement.”

12. Infinite burgers.

“The local Wendy’s had a survey on the back of their receipt that would get you one free burger of your choice with the purchase of any other “premium” burger.

They also had a special on where the Dave’s classic single, considered a premium burger, was $2.

There was no specification that the free burger had to be “Of equal or lower value”.

The first time I didn’t even make a purchase, just went into the store, found a receipt near the garbage, filled out the survey, got my code, and then ordered their Asiago cheese chicken burger (their most expensive item) with a Dave’s Single. 2 burgers for $2.

Then of course I had a receipt for that purchase, which lead to infinite $2 for 2 burger deals.”

13. Long lunches.

“Not sure if it’s a loophole but I’m currently remoting in from home to work because of COVID.

Since I’m salary I don’t log in or submit a time card. Instead they require all employees (hourly or salary) to log in on Skype so they can track how long you’re online.

Except that they didn’t disable the settings so I have my status remain “Available” for 20 minutes of inactivity so I can take 50 minute lunches and not get docked for it.”

14. Whoa!

“I lived near a casino that would let you get chips using your credit card.

I liked some if the show’s and restaurants there but never gambled. So every time I went I’d charge $5K to my credit card for chips.

Then I’d cash out at a different teller swing by the bank on the way home deposit the money and pay off my credit card. I did this maybe once a week.

Boom $5K of free points / cash back.”

15. Loophole or crime?

“Idk if it was so much a loophole as a crime, but in my defense, I like money

So, it’s 2009, summertime, and a new water park in Florida called Aquatica had opened up. In those days, they had two kinds of lockers; small lockers for $5 and large ones for $10. Both were unlocked by keys, and if you brought back the keys for the large lockers, you’d get $5 back.

Now, another thing you need to know so that there was a river that was basically the opposite of a lazy river. It had jets along the wall that pushed the current of the water to the point that it was difficult for even grown adults to stand in place. This also meant that whatever you put in your pockets, would get pushed out by the current.

So, my cousin and I would use swimming goggles and we’d find the neon orange keys, and we’d stagger which one of us would go turn the keys in and we’d space it out as well to ensure the employees handling the keys wouldn’t recognize us.

We’d go, turn in the keys, get $5 back, and f*ck off for about a half hour before coming back to turn in some more. Between that and the cash we’d find in the river and other pools in the park (sometimes it was just free floating quarters and mother times it was actual bills), we never had to actually pay for anything with our own money.

My dad would give us money each day so we could get this little arm band thing that would let us eat as much as we wanted from any of the three restaurants in the park, but we’d find so much money each day that even after spending that money, we’d still have some left over plus the money that my dad gave us. We weren’t so much having a vacation as we were doing a job that entailed finding money and keys, and turning in the keys for money.

We did this nearly every single day for the entire summer. From 9am to 6pm most days that we were there, sometimes until the park closed around 9pm.

I spent my money on video games and idk what my cousin spent his fortune on but knowing him, it was probably designer clothes

I always love telling this story and I haven’t had the chance to in a long time.”

Those are pretty interesting, don’t you think?

How about you?

Have you ever uncovered any useful loopholes?

If so, please tell us about them in the comments!

The post People Share Loopholes That They Found and Took Advantage of appeared first on UberFacts.

A legal loophole in the…

A legal loophole in the UK allows alcohol to be sold without a license on a train in motion. An unlicensed distillery exploited this by setting up in a disused railway building, obtaining a steam train, and selling gin to customers while they road it back and forth from the distillery.