Loopholes are… interesting, to say the least. There’s the obvious gain more for less deal or gain something when you should’ve gotten nothing, but there’s also the excitement of finding the loophole and seeing it work. Some are more obvious than others (both in terms of discovering the loophole and someone figuring out that you’ve done it in the first place), but it’s exciting nonetheless.
And folks on Reddit were sharing this excitement in a recent AskReddit thread, where they answered the question what loophole did you exploit before someone found out?
#1
My old apartment complex had a soda vending machine at the pool that was broken. If you put in 50 cents and pressed the button, nothing happened. If you put in another 50 cents and pressed the button, nothing happened. But if you put 50 cents in a 3rd time and pressed the button, you'd get 3 sodas. I could see the vending machine from my couch. So I would watch for someone to try, and then try again, and then give up without trying a 3rd time. And then I'd head over and get 3 sodas for 50 cents. .
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190points
#2
Back when physical media video rentals were still a thing, we were gifted a Blockbuster gift card for a free rental. The card proved to be unbreakable. Everytime we rented a movie I would hand the clerk the card. They would scan the bar code on the card, hand the card back, and the movie was free. We used the card for about 3 years until our local Blockbuster closed. There was obviously some sort of software error, but the gift card was never rejected.
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167points
#3
When my baby was in the NICU for two weeks after birth, I realised if I waited for about 30 seconds, the hospital car park barrier would just open without me having paid. Saved a lot of money.
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160points
For context, loopholes are, in essence, workarounds in a system or structure that benefit someone when it wasn’t necessarily possible. At the very least, it wasn’t intentional in the beginning, but somehow nobody either noticed, or nobody ever bothered to do anything about it. And, so, here we are, with people getting away with something without anybody technically being able to do anything about it.
#4
A new Fast Food place opened near my work. My mother-in-law got me a gift card to the place as a birthday gift. I went on opening day and tried to use my gift card, they said the system wasn't in place yet and just gave me my food for free. This worked for almost a month. It was the best gift card I ever had! Started with $20 on it and I got at least $100 worth of food.
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145points
#5
Found a website where you had to vote for best diving liveaboard company.
It was shared by a company in the competition trying to boost the votes. The first prize was a dive trip in the Maldives for 1 week on their liveaboard.
I found a flaw in the voting system and asked the company trying to win if they counted individual votes as entries or 1 person gets 1 vote. They replied that each vote counted as an entry.
Politely told them to prepare me as the winner.
The flaw in the website was that it used simple cookies to check if someone has already voted.
Made a script to vote and clear cookies - rinse and repeat.
I found a flaw in the voting system and asked the company trying to win if they counted individual votes as entries or 1 person gets 1 vote. They replied that each vote counted as an entry.
Politely told them to prepare me as the winner.
The flaw in the website was that it used simple cookies to check if someone has already voted.
Made a script to vote and clear cookies - rinse and repeat.
I had a great trip scuba diving for a week in the Maldives!
126points
#6
For a year I lived in a house in London that was split into three flats. The landlord had submitted meter readings before I moved in, so I just waited for each new bill to put my name on the accounts.
When we moved out, I went to submit the meter readings and couldn't figure out who was supplying our gas (heating and cooking). Couldn't find any bills, couldn't see any payments from my bank accounts, it was a mystery. Ended up just calling suppliers asking if they had an account for my address.
In the end it turned out that whilst three meters had been installed for the flats, only two had ever been registered. Without a contract with a supplier (or even any readings for the years the flat had been there), there was no way we could be charged for our year's usage - or for the few weeks until we moved out whilst a new account was set up. As the guy from the gas company said to me "Congratulations - you have free gas!"
The annoying thing was that we'd kept the thermostat down during the winter to save money. Went totally wild for those last few weeks though.
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118points
Now, is it a bad thing? Well, for the person gaining something from it, it most certainly is beneficial and hence good. Unethical and immoral? Absolutely. But is it legal?
Loopholes are considered a particular kind of gray area where legality is often not an issue, but it does stir quite a bit of trouble because anybody with a voice can start calling you out for exploiting the system.
#7
When I was in middle school, Pepsi did a thing where if you bought a 20oz soda, there was a decent chance the cap would say you were a winner on the inside, and you could exchange it for another 20oz.
Problem is, a dark colored soda like Pepsi is reflective. Hold the bottle slightly tilted and you could look at the reflection of the inside of the cap.
For a whole school year I didn't pay for soda. Bought a winner, and every day I'd exchange the cap at a gas station I passed on the way home for another winner.
Eventually Pepsi caught on and instead of it saying you won on the cap itself, there would be a code you had to enter online. We didn't have the internet in our pocket in those days (and it wouldn't have been worth it to read and enter multiple backwards codes for a soda if we had) so this ended the scheme.
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100points
#8
I learned before my ASAF basic training to say that I played an instrument whenever they ask the group on the first day. I raised my hand and lied, "the cymbals."
So most days I got to angrily smash cymbals together in the air conditioned band trailer, instead of marching/drill practice in the San Antonio summertime sun.
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99points
#9
For a while, you could buy $1 coins from the US Treasury using credit cards. They would ship them to you for free.
If you had a rewards credit card, let's say an airline one, you could buy thousands of dollars of coins. Go to a bank, deposit them, and then pay your credit card back.
It was a good way to get a ton of points for flying without ever paying for anything.
They stopped doing this.
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97points
But if it’s technically legal, why does it make it unethical and immoral? You see, loopholes can be evil, for lack of a better word. And there are varying degrees of it. It depends on how you look at it. But generally speaking, exploiting a system deliberately is not something most would consider fair and thus not good, especially if it’s at someone else’s expense.
#10
Work allowed us to skip breaks and bank them, but the contract language basically made it so you could bank both 15 min breaks each day, as well as bank your lunch if you never technically clocked out. So I'd just eat while driving from job to job, and bank an hour a day.
Was able to use all that time after a while to take an entire month off of work, paid, without even using any of my assigned PTO. HR got pissy about it and tried to rake me over the coals when I got back, but I pointed out the contract language and they realized their hands were tied.
They pushed out a new contract to fix this exploit, but my work contract was still good for another year, so I declined and kept banking time, taking time off when I wanted. Of course they didn't offer me a new contract once mine was up, but I had a better paying job closer to home lined up already anyway, and took the last 2 months off, paid, while I started my new job, so I was basically getting 2 salaries.
97points
#11
When in highschool there was a company that offered money to run an advertising window at the top of your screen. It would monitor mouse movement to track whether you were at your computer and pay a small amount per hour.
A buddy and I downloaded it and a mouse moving software and would run both 24/7, except when we were on the computer. Made a few hundred dollars off of it before the company closed down.
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80points
#12
Buffalo Wild Wings used to have a check-in thing. Check in enough times and you get a free meal. The office I worked in was close enough, geographically, that I could check in from there without physically going to the restaurant. A bunch of coworkers and I had an alarm to check in every day and then once we all had the free meal, we’d go there for lunch. I got probably 4 or 5 free meals out of it before BWW revamped that system.
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78points
You can argue that looking for loopholes is natural for humans. Mainly it’s because some suffer from severe laziness and, like electricity, they look for the shortest path possible to success. And then there’s also the desire to get free stuff, even if it means compromising your moral reputation.
#13
Taco Bell had a $5 box deal to win a PS4 before it was released to the public. I found that towards the end of the promotion you could enter to win without purchasing a $5 box. You could only enter once per pone number and address... Also the rewards were time based, every 15 minutes someone would win. I woke up every night at 3:16 am and entered 4 times, using my home, work, and my Mother in Laws home and work numbers and addresses. After about a week I was about to stop AND I WON!!!! I had a PS4 3 days before the public could even buy them.
The next year I did the same thing and won a second PS4 for the kids game room.
After that they changed the rules slightly to make it much harder to game the system.
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74points
#14
Had a college professor that insisted on doing all tests and quizzes online. If you looked at the page through 'View Page Source' all of the answers for each multiple answer question had a marker on which one was correct.
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72points
#15
I used to work for Sears as a teen. When someone came in without the rewards program, I would just put my own info in. That way my sales percentage for rewards members didn't drop, and I got all of their points. The amount of coupons and free money was insane, especially when I was working back in the tools department. I didn't stop until they started upgrading their ancient point-of-sale system. I also had an employee discount of 20% on softlines (clothes, home, etc) and 10% on hardlines (tools), which they didn't take away for a few years after I quit.
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68points
Then there’s also more justifiable (sometimes) reasons to abuse loopholes, and that is to fix an existing system by proving a point. In other words, you use the system and then someone gets so upset with you that they make it right. Win-win?
Or it’s the other way around—the existing system is unfair to you, and so you abuse it to make it fair—like ripping a CD for your personal convenience.
#16
Coca Cola did a campaign where you registrer a code from the bottle cap and earn prizes. I worked at a store with bottle deposit and "earned" myself a sweet mp3 player with room for 5 songs or something. I was the only one I knew that had a mp3 player, so it was pretty sweet at the time.
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63points
#17
Back in the late 90's with the dot com boom there was a web site called Prize Point. You would play one of their many games, when the game was over you would hit a cash out button and win tickets that was based on your score. My computer was running slow with dial up internet and I was frustrated and hit the cash out button a whole bunch of times. The next thing that popped up was I reached my daily limit of point, something I had never done before. I started doing this everyday and reached the daily limit with just 1 game. The tickets were used like raffle entries for one of their prizes, 1 ticket= 1 entry. I saved all of mine for months and dumped them into a trip to Hawaii. It was one of my best vacations ever.
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63points
#18
About 25 years ago Microsoft had a training program where you would take tests for points depending on your grade. You could use those points for free stuff. The loophole was that if you answered a question wrong, you'd lose your points and it would tell you the correct answer, so you could press the back button, fix your answer, and resubmit. I had gotten myself a bunch of shirts and hats, and even managed to get an ink jet printer before they caught on.
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57points
Loopholes also trigger a sense of achievement and boost our intellectual ego because we had to be clever enough to find it. Or anarchistic enough to go against being told no. Whatever the case, does it make it wrong or right when the system allows for it? Again, it depends.
#19
I used to buy the teacher's edition of textbooks. Tests and quizzes in the back. Lazy teachers never changed a thing. Nobody ever found out.
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57points
#20
I’m a traveling RN and on one particular assignment the cafeteria staff was under the impression that travel nurses ate for free. Anything we wanted and as much as we wanted. So for almost 6 months I got all of my meals for free and I also picked up extra stuff for my friends on the unit. Eventually they sent out a hospital wide email stating that we absolutely do not eat for free and never was supposed to get free food so that ended that.
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53points