'We had free pizzas weekly for years...': 30+ Loopholes that people exploited to their own betterment

Author image for Brad Dickson
Brad Dickson • Managing Editor
Dec 17, 2023 7:00 AM EST

We're all just barely getting by in this world; every day is an uphill battle with no summit in sight. It would be nice to ease that burden a little, but we honest and simple folk probably won't ever have the chance to take advantage of any egregious loopholes in order to get well ahead of everyone else—and probably wouldn't anyway, due to how unethical they are… Undoubtedly, we'd all appreciate something to make our lives a little bit easier.

Occasionally, though, a chance presents itself to exploit a small loophole—even in the smallest way—little perks, exploits, glitches, and such—the kind of thing you sometimes can't help but be enticed by like a kid at a machine that's glitched and dropping free candy. The reality is that most of these small loopholes are relatively harmless and something you're most likely to come across as a kid with the keen attention to detail that curiosity and tons of free time provide, and even something like tricking the coin slot of a machine into thinking something is a quarter feels like a huge win.

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  • 01
    "We had free pizzas weekly for years..."
    via Pablo Pacheco
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    r/AskReddit Posted by u/Aarunascut 11 hours ago What was a loophole that you found and exploited the ha out of? .
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    Otis Firefly 9 hr. ago . Not real sure it's a loophole but I'll still post it. I run a recycling center and when Mountain Dew did the win a Xbox one with codes under the soda bottle caps we got a total of 20 Xbox ones. Every worker got one that year. Also Casey's pizza had a thing going that you collect 10 tabs off the large pizza box you'd get a free pizza. We had free pizzas weekly for years till they stopped doing it. 6.3k Reply Share littlebunny10498 hr. ago You actually deserve it for doing
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    Roofbunk 10 hr. 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 1.6k Reply Share MikeHuntSmellss 9 hr. ago Bin men park up right next to where I stay for coffee every morning. Told me they just collect all the old cups and take the stickers off others haven't bothered
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    weakplay 11 hr. ago Back in the 80s we found vending machines which were not regularly serviced that would overflow the coin box and spill quarters on the floor. We used to scrape them out from under the machine with a stick. Was a good time to be a latchkey unattended minor. 3.2k Reply Share
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    driveonacid 9 hr. 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. 3.2k Reply Share ●●● wms32 7 hr. ago This just infuriates me. You shouldn't have to game the system to do your job. ↑ 1.9k ↓ Reply Share
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    Red Leader7 9 hr. ago Burger King used to have an app where you'd shake your phone and it would sometimes display a free item. Guy at work write his own app that looked identical to Burger Kings, but would only ever show a Whopper Meal. Every lunch time he'd go to Burger King and get a free meal. 1.9k Reply Share
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    Panther90 8 hr. 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 near every single day of senior year. Reply Share 308
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    MapUnitKey 10 hr. ago Older vending machines like the ones in my high school and car wash used to take golden dollars, count them as a dollar and then spit them back out. You could buy the whole machine with one golden dollar. My friends and I exploited this for 7 months senior year until they swapped all of the machines out 834 Reply Share
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    AMLT1983 9 hr. ago You used to be able to order dollar coins from the mint. Pay for it on your credit card, free delivery. Get sky miles. Take dollar coins to bank, deposit, pay off bill. Repeat. ↑ 1.1k ↓ Reply Share
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    ZealousidealSea2737 10 hr. ago From 1980s found a skiball machine at chuck e cheese that dispensed unlimited tickets but you had to manually pull them. My pops helped and we slowly pulled out 300 tickets. ↑ 1.0k ↓ Reply Share fsamuels3 9 hr. ago Always pull out an extra ticket or 2 if you can. 325 Reply Share
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    HandsomeChode 7 hr. ago Oh, I've got a good one. A well known bank offered a lucrative cashback reward points program for grocery store, gas station, and pharmacy purchases on a credit card they offered. The promotion only lasted the first six months of opening the card, but you could open multiple cards and get the same benefits again every time you opened a new one.
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    You know those prepaid debit cards you can buy at grocery stores? I maxed out the credit card every day buying those babies, then used them to pay off the credit card balance and just collected the cash from the reward points. Made thousands of dollars a day doing this. It felt illegal, but it wasn't. I effectively robbed the bank legally. And since credit card reward points are considered rebates it was all tax-free.
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    This eventually became my full time job. It got more difficult to pull off over time as the grocery store employees understandably became increasingly suspicious of me and reluctant to keep selling me their cards at such a high volume. I had to start driving longer distances to new stores that didn't recognize me and work on charming store managers to dissuade them from hassling me. Still beat the out of any real job, though.
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    I rode this gravy train for a little under a year before the bank sent me a letter in the mail gently informing me that they were aware of what I was doing and kindly requested that I stop. I didn't want to find out what would happen if I pressed my luck any longer so I quit while I was ahead. The bank has since closed the loophole. It was a pretty surreal year. I grew a huge beard, was baked at least half the time, ate way too much fast food, and went to the beach almost every day. Ultimately I
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    InterestingNuggett - 9 hr. ago The campground we stayed at when I was a kid had an arcade in the lodge with an air hockey table. I figured out that if you put quarters in and pushed the plunger to start the game just until the air started - you could pull them back out and get a free game. I had that air hockey table running for HOURS. We had kids lined up around the table. We even did a little tournament - it was so much fun.
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    When my family was about to leave I told one other kid the trick. Turns out I'm a pretty good judge of character. For 3 years we met back up and ran that Air Hockey table until one of the campground attendants caught on. The 4th year the table was fixed and cost a dollar to play. The arcade was entirely dead. The thing is - kids would always play other games while they waited for air hockey. The campground decided it was better to have a dead arcade that made nothing rather than one that made a
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    Basherballgod. 9 hr. ago Years ago, my office had a Christmas party at a bar and restaurant in the city. Just dinner and drinks. The service was absolutely atrocious, forgotten orders, wrong orders, when offered a free round to apologise, they forgot to bring the free round. So we clearly complained. Management gave us a call the next morning to apologise and to come in. Myself and a colleague went in and the
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    management gave us a refund for one meal and one drink, and then gave us a voucher for $100 off the next time we were there. The issue was, this voucher wasn't numbered. It had no date on it. It had nothing to show that it was unique. So, my colleague and I did what every good person who has access to a high colour copier would do. We copied the out of it and drank there for free for nearly a year until we both got banned for life.
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    ccx941 10 hr. 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. 872 Reply Share
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    nagerjaeger 9 hr. ago College 1985. Had to take a Risk and Insurance class. The professor was terrible and I had no idea what he wanted us to learn. I was a good student and normally I'd figure out in the first week what was needed to pass with a high grade. I was worried, really worried. So I looked in the book and as I recall in the front pages a work book was available. This had helped me greatly in my accounting classes so I called the
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    publisher and ordered the book. It was page after page of multiple choice questions for each chapter with a key in back. I memorized the answer to each of those questions. And as you have likely already guessed the professor used those questions for the exams. I sailed through that class and didn't tell anyone what I'd done so I didn't mess up the curve and make the professor suspicious. 265 ↓ Reply Share
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    THULA impiousdrifter 9 hr. ago In the 80s, Coke had prizes under their bottle caps. We turned over the Sprite bottles to find the winners 132 ↓ Reply Share
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    detail_oriented_guy · 10 hr. ago Create a new amazon account by adding a "." (period) to your gmail and get another free 6 months of Amazon prime. Your order emails still comes to the same gmail as gmail is period insensitive. ↑ 1.3k ⇓ Reply Share Great British Pounds 10 hr. ago Bezos is personally going to deliver your next parcel... With care. 521 Reply Share
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    Stone_Reign 8 hr. 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. ↑ 120 ↓ Reply Share
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    kanid999 hr. ago When McDonald's first I launched their app. If you searched for food sometimes you would find a free item. One I found and was able to "buy" for months was a triple cheeseburger. Sometimes I'd get more than one. No one ever questioned it. Reply Share 112
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    Robineggblue84 · 10 hr. ago · edited 8 hr. ago Enroll in a college class, get the student ID and e-mail address, then drop the class. Usually if you drop in the first week and you don't have to pay for it. Then you have a valid student ID and email for all the discounts you could get. I got a a lot of VERY cheap software back in the day. In my defense I was in college at the time. But a few semesters after I graduated I did this just to get a few more things I needed but couldn't afford. ETA: it
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    alarming 9 hr. ago Back in the day before cell phones we discovered this 1-800 number that if you call it, and hit the pound button twice you would get a dial tone and be able to call any number you want without putting money in the pay phone. We abused the out of it for years until cell phones became a thing. Saved me innumerable quarters. ↑ 86 ↓ ♡ Reply Share
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    Historical-Yam7902 · 10 hr. ago edited 8 hr. ago When me and my boyfriend (now husband) moved in together at 18 we joined a very expensive and nice gym. They told us they had a special deal for married couples that was pretty much two for the price of one. We just had to bring in our marriage license as proof. We never brought one in (obviously bc not married) and any time they'd ask we'd just say we forgot it and we'd bring it next time. Stayed there for almost two years with that fake married
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    apexvdub 7 hr. 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
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    thaillest1 7 hr. ago If you put a bunch of product in an online shopping cart and then don't complete the transaction, usually within a few hours, you'll get an email with an offer code. Usually save anywhere from 20-40% for waiting a few hours for product I was going to buy anyways. ↑ 45 ↓ Reply Share
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    old-nomad2020.7 hr. 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. ↑ 153 Reply Share
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    Aviator506 6 hr. ago I worked a job where we would have to book clients very expensive last minute hotel rooms if their flights were cancelled. My coworker would book the hotels using his personal rewards account with the hotel. One particularly bad week, he racked up about $15k worth of Marriot reward points. Yes, in one week. ↑ 45 ↓ Reply Share
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    mariojlanza 22 hr. ago I basically grew up in video arcades in the 80s and I used to have something I called the Dragon's Lair scam. Dragon's Lair was the first arcade game that cost 50 cents instead of 25 cents, and it was a huge shock to kids at the time (especially little kids) who had never played anything that cost anything more than a quarter. So I'd just stand by the Dragon's Lair machine and I'd wait for some dumb little kid to put in a quarter and expect it to work.
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    They'd put a quarter in, and they'd hit the 1P button, and nothing would happen. And then they'd get mad because it appeared that the game didn't work. So I'd say something like yeah I tried earlier, I don't think it works. And then they'd storm off to go tell their parents or go tell a manager. And the minute they were gone, I'd just put the second quarter in and now I could play Dragon's Lair for 25 cents. I pulled that trick off hundreds of times, unless the kid was really smart it was easy t
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    Point_Br 7 hr. ago 6th grade, I discovered the standardized math quizzes we took daily, had the answers in the footer of the page in one line in a simple "code." After a few days, I had enough info to decipher the key to the code, and I got 100s every day with no effort for the rest of the year. Reply Share 60 Grombrindal18.5 hr. ago I guess they figured that whoever could crack the code deserved an A in 6th grade math. ↑ 28 ↓ Reply Share
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    crackeddagger - 11 hr. ago You're not actually required to get married or have children. You are totally just allowed to spend that time however you would like. ↑ 827 ↓ Reply Share
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  • 38
    tampontea2 20 hr. ago When I went to college I would have to pay for parking. Someone learned that with specific parking machines used in certain lots you could press the top button, then the bottom button, top button, then bottom button again and it would prompt you to enter a password. If you entered the lot number it would grant you admin access. You could then press a print option that would print out the list of all stalls that were paid for the day. You simply had to find an empty stall th
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  • 39
    Venomous1471 · 20 hr. ago Not sure if it's a loophole, but one day at the local car wash, the credit card machine charged my card for the wash, but the doors never opened. So I called the number on the sign and the owner gave me a code to use on the other automatic bay. I used that code at least 300 times over the next couple years until he sold the wash to someone else. ↑ 30 ↓ Reply Share
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