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Cheat Code For Life: 18 Times People Found Insane Loopholes And Took Full Advantage Of Them
Article created by: Kotryna Br
A loophole is a technicality that allows a person (or a company) to avoid a law or some other restriction without directly violating it
When most of us hear the term, we probably think of greedy businessmen and their tax issues, or ethically corrupt politicians trying to avoid legal procedures.
But when Reddit user Ninjalord5 made a post on the platform asking, "What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?" many regular people shared their schemes too.
- Read More: Cheat Code For Life: 30 Times People Found Insane Loopholes And Took Full Advantage Of Them
This post may include affiliate links.
#1
Back in college we found a loophole with coupons at Kroger for General Mills cereal. If you bought 4 boxes of cereal each box was a dollar. But if you did the self checkout you would be printed out a coupon for $4 off your next purchase. We used the loophole to buy about 300 boxes of cereal. We only spent $12 on all of it. We would've spent less but we had to go to another Kroger once the manager got wind of us. We kept around 20 boxes for ourselves and donated the rest to the local food bank. They were so excited when we showed up with three vehicles full of cereal. Totally worth the $12 and all the time it took.
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#2
One of my professors let us use one side of a 8.5x11 sheet of paper as a test "cheat sheet", so I cut it and made a mobius strip with it so I could use "both" sides.
#3
My college didn't put any dates on our Student IDs. No graduation year, no expiration date, nothing. As a result, I kept using it to get student discounts for YEARS after I graduated, mostly the 15% off J. Crew discount.
#4
I'm not sure if this still works or not, but there used to be a 1-800 number on the bottom of a Wendy's receipt, and if you called it and took a survey they'd give you a free cheeseburger.
The thing is, when you got the free cheeseburger, they'd give you a receipt for the transaction. And at the bottom of that receipt... you guessed it.
#5
I was once the only person to show up to a Microsoft CRM event, since I was the only person to attend I automatically won the door prize of a Xbox 360 with a Kinect.
The downside of this loophole was 3 long hours of talking with MS product evangelists who were very disheartened and desperate to make a sale.
#6
In elementary school we had the Accelerated Reading (AR) program. You would read a book, take a test on the computer, and be awarded points based on how well you did. At the end of the year you could buy things at the book store with the points you accumulated. I had just finished reading Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and got a perfect score on the test. The computer was only supposed to allow you to take the test once but I figured out you could take that specific Harry Potter book unlimited times. I racked up so many points and was never found out.
#7
I worked at a sandwich shop when I was a young lass. We were allowed one free sandwich for the entirety of our employment there. Being an endless pit of hunger 16-year-olds are, I was determined to get as many free sandwiches as possible. If someone called in a phone order and never picked it up, the sandwich was fair game for employees after an hour. So I would text my friends to call in the sandwich I wanted and then never pick it up. Every day I got free sandwiches. It was amazing. If I didn't eat it, I would bring it to school the next day and sell it.
#8
I lived down the street from a rare book store that didn't have a website. I would go in, take pictures of really expensive books, list them on eBay with a reserve of the cost of the book +$50 sometimes they would sell for $500 to $1000 over the price of the book.
#9
My son attends speech and occupational therapy every week. Usually, it is a $35 copay for each therapy, but if I do them on the same day I only have to pay the copay once. Saves me about $140 a month!
#10
My friend works for a company where he spends the entire week traveling and staying in hotels and he can expense any hotel. Because of this my roommate and I listed our air mattress on Airbnb for $150 and he's the only one that ever stays there. He's only even in town once every couple weeks but whenever he is we have a small house party entirely on the company's dime!
#11
I worked in a call center during college. Our main performance measure was the number of donations solicited PER CONTACT. If the person didn't answer or hung up immediately, it didn't count against you.
I discovered a bug where, if I blew into the microphone just as the phone started to ring, it would register in the computer system as a no-answer and dial the next number. I rode this out for several months before I got tired of blowing my microphone for 8 hours a day and quit.
#12
I used to play a lot of backgammon in Yahoo Games - and some people were real jerks when losing. Most commonly they'd stall the game by taking the maximum 5 minutes per move, hoping I'd resign. I learned a way to boot these people off Yahoo for as long as I wanted, by trying to log into their account. When I used the wrong password ten times, the account was locked for 24 hours. They couldn't log in again until I chose to allow it.
#13
At my local movie theater, you could get a small drink for $2.50 or a large drink for $3.50, and large gets unlimited refills. Or you could get a SoBe tea for $2.50. But they didn't give you the SoBe bottle because they wanted to avoid any broken glass incidents. So they poured the SoBe into the large cup. Boom: unlimited large drink refills.
I saved several dollars that way.
#14
By accident I found a gumball machine if you turned the dial really slow it would drop the gumball, then you could dial it back just enough so the next gumball would drop into the tumbler bits, then slowly dial forward again until it drops, etc. Got about 20 of them and stopped when I realized that I really didn't want to chew that much cheap gum...
#15
When I Was younger (12-13) I had one of those stupid timers on the computer that would only let me use the computer 2 hours a day before I got kicked.
Found out that if you minimize the screen alerting you that you have ran out of time, you never run out of time. Best summer ever.
#16
I live in the UK and train prices are a joke. They are so expensive. The best way around this is to split your journey. Say you are going from London to Birmingham; would normally cost around £40+, instead find a stop that the train you want to get stops at and do a journey of London to Milton Keynes and then Milton Keynes to Birmingham for example.
This saves you so much money, and is completely legal. You just have to make sure you stay on the same train when doing it, so double check all the timings. It annoys the rail companies as well as I believe they tried to shutdown a website which did this for you.
#17
When vending machines first started accepting credit cards you could swipe your card, select a drink and when the little drink pod starts moving to collect your drink hit cancel. The cancel button would stop the card transaction but not the machine so you could get free drinks.
Was a sad day when it stopped working.
#18
There was a Papa Johns coupon for 50% off if the official PJ twitter retweeted you.
I found the code looking through their website.
I got half off pizza for a year and a half.
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