“I Was Out”: 50 Times People Found A Loophole And Reaped The Benefits After Exploiting It

I got this nonsense job, something to do with running a country, anyhow the job comes with lots of perks, I get loads of free stuff like holidays, my house decorated, takeaways etc. All I have to do is tell my underlings to give contracts to my pals without any normal competitive checks and balances.

I wanted out of my mobile phone contract without paying so after researching areas where my mobile phone provider didn't have coverage, I called them and let them know that I was moving to that exact area. I refused to pay for a service they couldn't provide me with and BAM, I was out.

My prepay electric meter freaked out after the pavement outside my house was dug up for some reason (nothing to do with me...was by open reach). Anyway, screen went blank and wouldn't load my credit. I called the provider and told them. They said we will send someone out to replace it. I said well it won't accept my credit, are you going to bill me? The guy said "we have no way of knowing what we are using so we can't bill you! We will get it fixed asap". Well a guy came out to replace it but they gave him the wrong meter so he couldn't replace it. He said he will have to get a new one and they would call and book a new appointment. I said "no rush as long as I still get free electricity!" And I haven't heard from them in nearly a year.

That's how I'm getting free electricity. Not my fault, I did what I had to and notified the company. Company is actually about to go bust too.

One time in like, fifth grade, my English teacher gave us an online test that we were supposed to do by ourselves for homework. At the end of the test, you're supposed to enter your teacher's email so that they get the results. Long story short, I rushed through the test and put in my own email. I then got an email that told me all the correct answers. Then I used that email to retake the test and get 100%.

My grade three teacher told me to fill up a page of text from "here" to "here" and she drew two dots on each corner of the page, so i wrote it diagonally across the page in big letters. she was having a hard time keeping a straight face when telling me off.

Unfortunately, I never got to take advantage of this, but I used to work as a supermarket cashier, and noticed that the way certain offers worked on the computer could mean people got free stuff in certain situations.

Once, there was a deal on melons, buy one get one free. They were £2 each, so they till would register 2x £2 melons, then take off £2 for the deal. One evening, there was a massive surplus of melons, so they were reduced to 50p to get rid of them. This meant, if you bought 2, it would cost you 2 x 50p - £2 = -£1 One guy had realised this, and came up to the till with 2 trolleys full of shopping. One was his normal weekly shop, and the other, just a shitload of melons. Ended up getting £300 worth of stuff plus an excessive amount of melons for about £1. I called the supervisor to point out that this was obviously a mistake, but he was too stupid to work it out, and told me that the computer was displaying the correct amount, and let the guy basically walk out with free stuff.

It turns out that you don't have to take an AP course in order to take the AP test. And if you pass the test, it's worth college credit.

So I signed up for the AP Psychology one, read the book and took the test earlier today. I think I just bypassed an entire year of class.

I'm pretty happy right now.

Not a loophole as such, but a broken meter.
I was a student down in Newquay in 2003.I lived in a flat that had a electric meter that took pound coins. It was an old meter with a little clock looking thing on it, you put the pound, turned a dial, and the hand on the clock moved a bit, put in another pound, turn the dial, hand moved a bit and so on. You could do this until the little hand went all the way round to full. A full meter lasted about a week, and cost about 20quid to fill. One day my flatmate discovered that if we put a pound in and just carried on turning the dial, it would fill up all the way.
My mates kept complaining how cold their student houses and flats were, when me and my flatmate had a three bar fire on and were spending about 5 quid a week on leccy. We told the landlord, but he never came to fix it.

When you use your gmail address to sign up an account, you can place a full stop anywhere in the part before the “@“ and gmail will ignore it, so you can set up multiple accounts for things without having to create a new email, whilst still receiving any emails to the same address (useful if you need to validate the sign up). This works really well for stuff like fast food apps where you get a sign up bonus or a freebie.

So, as an example, if my gmail address is janebloggs@googlemail.com I could get away with making new accounts under “Jane.bloggs”, “J.anebloggs” or “Janeb.loggs”.

Etc etc. Gmail will ignore those full stops!

I’ve used this method to set up multiple Costa accounts as you get a little something for setting up, and also I copy and paste the friend codes on to new accounts for another reward haha.

EDIT: a couple of redditers have blown my mind and also said you can use a “+” in a similar way - it will also get ignored, so you could have

Janebloggs+costa@googlemail.com
Janebloggs+kfc@googlemail.com

Great for keeping track of what you’re using for each app!

I had a kobo e-reader bought from WHSmith. It packed up after a little over 12 months. I took it back and after a little to and for (sale of goods act, etc.) the manager agreed to swap it for a new one. Thing is they had reduced by £20, and the only thing the system would let the assistant do was refund and re-sell.

"Is cash OK?" he said. I agreed that it was, and he handed me a bag with a brand new kobo, and £20 cash.

I thanked him, and walked smartly out.

I used to buy rolls of Subway Stamps on eBay for like $100. I think you could get 125 footlongs with a roll. Really wish they didn't get rid of that program!

I was heading to a Forrest for bike rides and parking was £9 all day. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to click the “I have a voucher” option, put in a random 7 digit code and it worked, had free parking about 10 times before they clicked on.

I wanted to get a Mass state driver's license while still in college. Normally, you can't use a college address to establish residency since you're still considered a resident of your home state. Despite not being residents, Massachusetts will call out-of-state students for jury duty. In addition to the normal documents like a utility bill, the RMV accepts a jury duty summons as proof of residency. If you're unlucky enough to get called for jury duty in college, it worked like a charm!

The vending machine at my work has these unreal bakewell flapjacks, priced at £1.20. However if you use the option to pay by card for some reason some of the prices change, and the flapjacks change to 70p.

I’ve not told anyone else and it’s a secret I will keep to my grave.

Just to edit this, I’m don’t think they’re the ones in HomeBargains/B&M, they’re in a clear and pink packet with pink on the front, I *think* they might be Marywell brand or something similar.

Edit 2: Did some Googling and they’re 100% ‘Marybake’ brand flapjacks. But no results on where to buy the Bakewell ones in bulk!

If you buy a day's worth of travel insurance through Compare the Market for ~£2, you get the year's 2for1 movies and meals which has saved me wayyy more than the £2!

I ordered a vegetarian pizza from big John's, for some reason it had tuna as an option. They never actually had any in so they would call and ask what I wanted instead so I would ask for chicken, pepperoni etc

Got a meat topping for £5 less than I should every time.

For years 10 McNuggests cost $3 and change but the 4 piece was a buck.

In my first project for my Principles of Engineering 3 class in high school, we had to create from a pool of common household items (paper, paper clips, rubber bands, balloons, straws, etc.) a semi-self-propelled toy boat kit and instructions for assembly, the premise being that it would be something to sell in a small vending machine or whatever. The scoring was based on the effectiveness of the boat times the ease of construction and coolness (as judged by the freshman engineering class) divided by the time it took to go 1 meter over water and the price (each item had some cost).

Most of the people built elaborate floating straw monstrosities with rubber-band powered propellers. I examined the scoring and decided that if I could reduce the cost enough, the other stuff wouldn't matter that much, so I convinced my group to submit a design that consisted of:

1 balloon
1 paper clip
1 straw
1 piece of tape (to keep it somewhat together)

The straw dragged in the water to keep it going relatively forward and to keep it from flying away. The freshmen gave us 5/5 for ease of construction, but we lost 50% of the score because our teacher said it didn't work; instead of going straight across the tub to the finish line, it veered off to the right, got caught on the wall, launched into the air, did a flip, landed in the water, and crossed the finish line.

We ended up taking 1st place on the project by a huge margin. The next year that teacher implemented a minimum requirement for the number of items to use.

Iceland has a savings card: for every £20 you put on the card they give you a £1 extra (which for all intents and purposes is better interest than a bank).
So a few days before a shop buy a pack of sweets or something and slap £60-100 on the card (whatever your weekly shop amount is) then when you do your shop, you get some free money.

I am on a dual rate electricity meter (only electricity in the flat, no gas) and on an Economy 10 plan. The meter records my energy usage the wrong way round, so my company think I'm nocturnal which makes my bills cheaper. My average energy cost over the summer was around £7.

Yes, I have reported it to them, twice in fact, and they've done bugger all about it. I'm not doing it a third time, they've got it on record and aren't interested at all.