35 Loopholes People Exploited Before Someone Found Out

‘I got $5,000 worth of sandwiches and nuggets before they banned me’
35 Loopholes People Exploited Before Someone Found Out

There’s nothing like discovering a loophole and exploiting the hell out of it. Case in point: One guy remembers when you could use your credit card to buy $1 coins from the U.S. Treasury, go to the bank, deposit the coins and then pay your credit card off. He used the loophole to earn points on his card that could be turned into airline miles — all without actually buying anything. Of course, the Treasury stopped doing this, but our guy certainly had fun while it lasted. 

To that end, Redditors have fondly remembered the loopholes they cashed in on before they closed up for good, and these stories may inspire you to start looking for a few loopholes of your own.

Roofbunk 7mo ago I used to abuse the McDonald's coffee stickers scheme for a couple of years, you needed to purchase 6 cups of coffee and get 7th free. You could just buy the stickers of eBay and stick them on the redemption cards, worked out 5 pence a coffee. Then they came out with the app 3K ...
Futureman16 22d ago Screenshot a coupon during Covid lockdown for a free Wendy's Breakfast Baconator with any purchase and used it 3 or 4 times a week until last August. 4 Reply ...
old-nomad2020 7mo ago Buying oak molding at Home Depot. It was supposed to be $3.50/ foot and one store insisted it was $3.50/each sixteen footer so I bought all of it. When I finished the project I took back the extra and they gave me $3.50/foot about a month later. I think I made about $5k more on the returns than the actual project. 449 ...
Odd-Aerie-2554 7mo ago There used to be a grocery store whose policy was don't ask people if they want a seniors discount, but if THEY ask, they can have the discount. The policy was not dependant on age whatsoever. My friend at 15 would go buy snacks and ask for the seniors discount and get it every time. 144 ...
apexvdub 7mo ago When Kmart was big they were running a promotion where if you spent $50, you'd immediately get a $10 gift card for free. I figured out that you could keep purchasing the same gift cards with other gift cards and each transaction would get you a free $10 GC reward. The only catch was that you couldn't directly buy a $50 GC with a $50 GC. Instead, you had to buy a card with a slightly higher value (+$1) each time but they let you pay for the transaction with 2 GCs. So by the end of
ccx941 7mo ago My GF worked at a gas station that had points cards that gave a discount. if the customer didn't have one she'd scan hers for them to get an item discount and we got the points for discount gas. Never paid over $1/gal the entire time she worked there. 1.5K ...
thisisinput в 7mo ago If you're a Hilton Honors member and stay at a hotel where you get the $15 food and beverage credit, make sure you reserve as two guests even if it is just you. You will get $30. 739 ...
4y ago Jack in the box used to have a Get 2 free tacos with any purchase coupon on the bottom of their recipes. A group of my friends found out that we would buy the cheapest item which was a slice of cheese we could get 2 free tacos everyday for 20¢. 208 ...
Panther90 7mo ago My senior year of high school a Chick Fil A opened in our town and to advertise the grand opening they put a free chicken sandwich coupon in the yellow pages of the phone book. No purchase, no stipulations. For whatever reason there was like 1,000 phone books stored in a storeroom off the gym. Me and my buddies ate a chicken sandwich damn near every single day of senior year. 2.4K ...
driveonacid 7mo ago During my first year teaching, teachers were each allowed 1500 photocopies a month. I had 150 students. That wasn't enough. One day, a coworker announced that she was leaving for a different opportunity. I asked her for her copier code. They never deleted her code, so I had 3000 copies per month for the last 5 months of the school year. 8.6K ...
Stone_Reign 7mo ago When Pizza Hut first started online ordering they gave me a code for a free pizza for ordering online for the first time. Turns out the code also worked if you just ordered as guest and kept working. 1.7K ...
7mo ago My bank thinks the vending machine at work is an ATM and refunds my atm fee automatically.. chase bank if anyone wondered I noticed I was always getting like $1.50 returned to my account here and there and then I realized what it was 1.4K ...
kafriedr 4y ago There used to be a third party warranty you could get at Newegg that was called replacement or refund. It was for laptops that were under $500. The warranty cost like $75 for two years. At the end of two years, I would file a claim for whatever small thing was wrong with the laptop (headphone jack, card reader, bad key, etc), I would send it to them, and they would refund me the full $500. Then I would just buy a different laptop and get the warranty again. I rolled the same $500 for three different
MermaidRumspringa . 4y ago Arby's used to have a take a survey on the back of the recipt and get a free roast beef sandwich. But when I got the free one, I got a recipt then too. I bought one sandwich got literally dozens for free over the course of a year or so. 31K ...
EarlyBirdTheNig... 4y ago Edited 4y ago At my old job we had a vending machine in the basement that gave change back when you bought something. Sometimes it gave more than you paid. No one used this machine as the basement was being reconstructed but it was regularly filled. Edit : someone asked this. It went on for about a year and half and I don't know what happened to the machine it was just gone one day someone could've caught on or it could've been because construction was finished. I probably made $500-$700 in cash back. And at one point I
Solo_is_dead . 4y ago Circa Late 80s. You could make a long distance collect call from a pay phone, and charge it to a private number. The operator would call the other number to confirm. We'd ask the operator to call the number of another pay phone nearby, , and have a friend authorize the call. Free long distance for almost a year. 34K ...
Shooterdude34 4y ago BI My old job i worked at a pretty large gym (gold level, like the 3rd highest level). Monthly fee was $79 for the gold membership but employees got a free diamond membership. Worked there for a year and a half before i quit, but my account was never deactivated. Been going there for a while completely free, still not found out. Diamond membership is like $200 a month 12K ...
OlmecDonald 4y ago Local casino issued a $20 free play coupon in the newspaper with no expiration date. I talked to the newspaper delivery guy and asked him about that copy and he told me he's got 100's of them in the van as they were a few days old now. I got all of them, clipped out the coupons and proceeded to make $19.50 every day after work for around 500 or so days. Not quite years, but pretty damn close. The casino never printed a coupon without expiration/one per customer rules ever since. 28K ...
bacchus8408 3mo ago 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
mammoth200 4y ago Worked out how to get the jackpot every time on a Connect 4 fruit machine in a pub I used to drink in. It would cost about £5-£10 before you'd get into the bonus round, then when you did, you'd play a connect 4 game against the machine. You place the first counter, and then after the machine places the next counter, you mirror the machines move. Every game ends in a draw, and you win the jackpot, which was £50. The pub landlord removed the machine after around 3 months as it was regularly empty, basically
lanni957 4y ago Edited 8mo ago Used to work at REDACTED like 7 years ago and they used to print these receipts where if you filled out a survey it would give you a 6 digit code which you could then exchange for a free drink. However when you gave in the receipt with the code we would just toss it in the garbage and then give the free drink. So over a shift I would just keep all the survey receipts when people didn't want them, write random numbers on them, then keep a wallet full of free coffee.
pierrekrahn 4y ago parking meters took credit cards. But they weren't actually connected to a live network at all times. The machine just confirmed the card number was valid and was not expired, then spit out a valid pass. So when my card number got stolen and replaced, I kept my old, cancelled card. Of course when the system tried to run the card later it would be declined. My car and I were long gone by then. Sadly they wised up and now it charges your card before giving you a pass. 9.3K ...
otternoses 4y ago Edited 4y ago I went to a sporting goods store and they asked me for my phone number when I was paying. I was in a bad mood and didn't want to fight with the clerk so I told them our local area code + 555-1212 (which is the old number for directory assistance), clerk accepted it and I left. When I checked my receipt I had a huge number of loyalty points - because apparently a ton of other people did the same thing. I called the office the next day and switched the account to my
btpn-425 4y ago When I was a kid there was a pay phone down the street that if you put your quarter in made a call but no one answered it would give you back two quarters. Went there all the time and called home when I knew no one was there to answer. 22K ...
NegMech 3mo ago Free sandwiches from CFA based on location. Used gps spoofer and got tons of free sandwiches a week on multiple accts. I think I got about $5000 worth of sandwiches and nuggets before they banned me. 710 Reply ...
thebollard 4y ago Edited 4y ago My friend used to restock condom machines in pubs and collect the money from them. The machines would always break and get jammed all the time but because it was condoms no one would ever tell someone that the machine ate their money. Не would just count how many condoms were gone and give that amount of money to the company and pocket the rest. Edit: I meant to also say he moved onto another job. Apparently the next person that did it collected all the money correctly and threw all their figures out.
sretep66 3mo ago Edited 3то ago 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. 1.4K Reply ...
aftenbladet 3то ago 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 2.5K Reply ...
Ackmiral_Adbar 3mo ago 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. 1.9K Reply ...
bunnygang 3то ago 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. 2K Reply ...
defroach84 3mo ago 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. 4.2K Reply ...
3mo ago 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. 2.2K Reply ...
HuuffingLav... 3mo ago Edited 3то ago I learned before my USAF 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. 2.4K Reply ...
Aken42 3mo ago 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. 2K Reply ...
Scrappy_Larue 9y ago 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. 4.5K ...

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