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“You Never Have To Pay The Late Fee”: 24 Loopholes People Are Not Gatekeeping For Themselves
Don’t you just love it when you stumble upon something that makes your life easier and more convenient? Perhaps you found a website to buy excellent concert seats for half the price, or a secret step to getting free tacos indefinitely. It’s like finding a hidden passageway in a video game that cuts your mission in half.
Life is filled with loopholes, and it’s all about finding them and taking advantage, as long as you’re not causing trouble or hurting anyone. Fortunately, we have these people who offer these gems, which are essentially cheat codes for us to use.
Some of these may be familiar to you, but you may also very well be discovering something new. Scroll through to find out.
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
If you are looking for a job and you have your resume on CareerBuilder or Monster just delete it every week and upload again. When employers do searches, resumes appear by date they were uploaded.
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#2
Walk with good posture and confidence: just watch, people will treat you with more respect.
#3
The Metropolitan Museum of Art (and probably lots of other museums) has free admission. But they have a "suggested donation" that everybody *thinks* is the admission fee. So if you are poor but still want to be sophisticated, when the cashier says "Is $25 okay?" just say, "No, I can only give $10 (or $5) today." You'll still get in.
Also, because it's really a donation, any amount you pay for admission is tax deductible.
#4
If you need to cancel a hotel room last minute, you can avoid paying the late cancellation fee (which can sometimes be just paying for the room) by just calling and requesting to move your reservation to a few weeks in the future. This is completely free. Then, once it's moved, you can cancel it without the penalty.
#5
Didn't get any scholarships? Call the Financial aid office a month into the semester and request a list of all the school based scholarships to which no one applied. Many schools will receive a scholarship the following year if no one applied this term as donors get fussy and upset no one wanted their money.
Apply to everything you might even slightly be eligible for. The school will be so happy someone applied and they can keep the scholarship (hence saying X number of alumni donate or whatever) they will almost always give you the $$$. Sometimes each one is only $300 or so (hence why no one applied when you needed to write an essay about your connection to South Eastern Monaco's swim team) but apply for a bunch and suddenly your meal plan is free....
#6
The answer to, "What are you thinking?" is always, "How much I love you, girl." **A L W A Y S.**.
#7
If you are at a theme park like Six Flags, and it is really hot, you can ask any booth for a small cup of water, and they need to give it to you by law.
#8
If you're in a city and desperate, and there either aren't public bathrooms or there might as well not be, just go into a hotel and walk with purpose toward the back. Don't look around - you belong there, you're a guest, the bathrooms are for you - don't think twice.
Also, I moved to a new city recently, and when I have a question about something local I call up a local luxury hotel and ask for the concierge and say "hi, I'm a hotel guest and I was hoping someone could help me figure out something to do tonight/ a salon/ a nice place to walk around/ bus times" or whatever. They never ask any personal questions, and are usually pretty helpful.
#9
Here's a slightly specific one. Delta charges $25 for each checked bag. If your bag is small enough to fit in an overhead bin and can get through security (no water bottle, etc...), you can act as it will be your carry on. At the gate, they almost ALWAYS ask if anyone would like to check their bag to save space on the plane, except it's free. I don't know if other airlines do this, but it has saved me some money in the past.
#10
If you want to get into college and you're worried about being accepted, apply a couple weeks before the semester starts. All schools, regardless of prestige, have enrollment goals - meaning they need X students to start school so they can depend on that tuition revenue for various budget things. If they're still advertising "classes start soon!" that means they more than likely haven't hit their goal. The admissions standards lower a LOT the closer the start date - trust me, I've seen some crazy things.
Also, if you're applying to an undergrad program and the department you want into has requirements you're worried you won't meet, apply to another college with more lax standards (it's typically the college of liberal arts) and once you're in it's way easier to transfer between departments.
#11
Never buy accessory equipment in stores, the relative markup is huge. A TV might cost 50$ more than its real price, but at 2000$, who cares. A pair of audiophile headphones at an electronics store will cost 90$ but be worth 45$ online.
#12
If you receive a ticket on private property that is not issued by a Police Officer, you don't have to pay.
Anyone-for-tea? 1 month ago (edited)
Not true in the UK as many on private property are run by parking operations, and parking offences have been decriminalised and therefore handled by local authorities and not the police. Always appeal though. I won an appeal firstly because the signage was incorrect (although I looked it up so I could quote it in my appeal) and secondly because they said my car had been observed from say 10am, I sent them a screenshot from my ring doorbell of my car on the drive at that exact time.
#13
When you get an automated phone message with keypad options to reach different extensions, zero almost always gets you to an operator.
Ace 1 month ago
Nope. People used to say the same about the hash key, and some systems may have worked like that in the past, but most would not. On voice-operated ones you can try "I'd like to speak to a real person", several times, which may work (my bank told me this one and it worked for them).
#14
It's actually written *on* parking tickets nowadays (at least where I live, WA), that you can go 5 mph above the speed limit. This applies up until 40mph, when you can go up to 10 mph above it. They call it a "speed zone" now.
Ace 1 month ago
In Switzerland they always subtract 5kph from the recorded speed, which will be shown on the ticket, and the fine sill be calculated based on the net value after the 5kph is deducted. In fact nearly all countries will have a similar margin of error in both automatic radar-camera operations and as a threshold for an officer to charge you in person.
#15
Anyone can open a business bank account. You don't have to have a registered business. The lines are much shorter and they put on extra tellers at lunch time.
#16
Bring flight attendants candy, we will treat you better (possibly get free things from us).
#17
I have two:
* Need to send a letter, but don't have a postage stamp? Send the letter as normal, just without a postage stamp. But this time, put the destination address in the return address, and the return address as the mailing address (in essence, just flip flop the addresses). When the post office goes to "return" the mail to the sender for not having a postage stamp on there, it will go to the place you wanted it to go to all along.
* Did your expensive smart phone just break, and you don't have insurance to get a new one? Instead of paying full retail price for a new one, add a second phone line to your plan. You will, at most, pay $10 extra a month (typically the price for insurance anyway), and have a new phone you got discounted.
#18
You **never** have to pay a late fee at Family Video. The sales associates are trained to ask for the total with the late fees included to begin the transaction. It's a tactic to make the customer feel obligated to pay off the late fee. Just tell them you can't afford to pay the late fee today. Offer to put the movies back on the shelf. They'll always rent you the movies without paying on your late fee no matter how big your late fee is. It's company policy.
#19
Hire a Lawyer for any ticket you get. Most are pretty cheap, and they get the ticket dismissed, in my area Seattle metro, they charge about $200 per ticket. Saves a lot of time ans sometimes money, my last ticket was $580, lawyer got it dismissed for $200.
arthbach 1 month ago
Here's a more workable hack, don't engage in activities that will get you a ticket! It's even cheaper than paying fines or hiring lawyers.
Joshua David 1 month ago
In all reality we know some fool will use this advice 😆
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DeoManus Argentem 1 month ago
Must depend on where you live - as a stupid kid in high-school with a high performance sports car I got tons of speeding tickets - cheapest was around $300, worst I can't remember. But all were dismissed by paying an attorney each time for $89 (I used the same guy because it always worked, lol). Also, even if the cost was higher you avoid getting points on your license that you'd get by paying the fine (admitting guilt). Get enough points means getting your license suspended or worse. Florida, US.
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Cindy Brick 1 month ago
My Denver lawyer charged a heck of a lot more than that...it was much cheaper just to go to court and plead my own case.
Beth H 1 month ago
This person was obviously in the HOV lane as those tickets are 586 dollars in Seattle.
Anyone-for-tea? 1 month ago
Or use chat gpt to put all the information in, ask it to find a gap, ask it to back it up with case law, and then do it yourself, and to be out of pocket at all.
Melissa Hollowell 1 month ago
I was ticketed for an expired registration. I got a court date, got the inspection and threw myself on the mercy of the court. Ticket dismissed. Honestly they could not have been nicer and more accomodating.
Data1001 1 month ago
Can't remember where I read this, and I'm not sure of the details, so don't quote me, lol - but someone said that just challenging the ticket in court may get it thrown out because the cops who write the tickets have to be there (not sure if that's true?), and so there's a good chance they just won't bother to show up, which will get it dismissed.
#20
Depending on your job, if you walk around with a clipboard, you can do pretty much nothing at work.
#21
If you are visiting european country and dont know beers that are good there and want to get a beer at bar, just ask for "beer please" you will get the most popular beer.
Jaya 1 month ago
I don't know about other countries, but here this will get you the regular cheap beer, which definitely isn't one of the better beers. I'd just ask the waiter which beers they recommend, or which beers they specifically recommend for someone who hasn't visited that country before.
#22
If you're parking in a multi-level garage, go in the level that has the "FULL" light on. Someone's always leaving, and there are a lot fewer idiots driving around looking for a spot. I'm looking at you, Mall of America.
#23
If you're white, between the ages of 25-49, and reasonably well-dressed, you can do almost anything without being questioned.
Cindy Brick 1 month ago
Add 'male' to that and 'act like you know what you're doing/where you're going.' Then I MIGHT agree with this statement.
#24
During telethons and PBS fund-raising things, the organization will offer little gifts if you donate a certain amount...like, "...and when you donate $100 we will send you this DVD of PBS' best scenes..." This is a loophole intended to make your donation a contract. If you call in and say "I'm going to give you $10,000" but later change your mind, you don't have to give it to them because it is a gift. But if you call in and say that and they respond with, "great! We will send you this $1 DVD" then that is now a contract, and you are bound to give them $10,000.
What do you think ?
Agfox 1 month ago
Maybe I'm cynical/bored/dumb or a combination thereof, but most of these seem a bit lame
Ace 1 month ago
I'm all for recycling, but most of these were dead and buried 20+ years ago even if they ever worked.
Glenn Cuneo 1 month ago
I always assume that someone wrote Bored Panda "Hey I got a list of 25 things, blah blah blah- 500 words, and 25 slides premade"--- ok sam, here's $25 for your story. Anything that mentions "Hack" "Lifeskills" "shortcuts" are generally fluff "Hey Martha" things that even the writer knows is b******t.
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kansasmagic 1 month ago
The original Reddit is 12 years old. This is digging pretty deep. Well, you still got my eyeballs for 5 minutes, but I'm avoiding getting ready for work.
Agfox 1 month ago
Maybe I'm cynical/bored/dumb or a combination thereof, but most of these seem a bit lame
Ace 1 month ago
I'm all for recycling, but most of these were dead and buried 20+ years ago even if they ever worked.
Glenn Cuneo 1 month ago
I always assume that someone wrote Bored Panda "Hey I got a list of 25 things, blah blah blah- 500 words, and 25 slides premade"--- ok sam, here's $25 for your story. Anything that mentions "Hack" "Lifeskills" "shortcuts" are generally fluff "Hey Martha" things that even the writer knows is b******t.
Load More Replies... kansasmagic 1 month ago
The original Reddit is 12 years old. This is digging pretty deep. Well, you still got my eyeballs for 5 minutes, but I'm avoiding getting ready for work.
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