30 Loopholes People Did Not Hesitate To Use For As Long As They Could

You could go through life sticking to the rules, but where’s the fun in that? We know that the system we live in is flawed. It’s been designed to placate the average, but smart people know to keep an eye out for small loopholes. These glitches may not always be obvious, but for those who figure them out, they can help someone gain an advantage when they need it. 

#1

Image source: anon, Erik Mclean / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My dad figured out a good one back in the 80’s. Just like they do now, back then cable companies would give you a free weekend trial of a premium channel (HBO, Cinemax, etc) in an effort to get more people to sign up for those channels and pay more. However, our cable company’s method of giving you access to the special channel was to send a signal to your cable box which unlocked the channel. To turn off the channel at the end of the free trial, another signal was sent. My dad figured out that the signal to lock it was only sent for a short period of time, so before the end of the free weekend, he would unplug the cable box and then plug it back up the next day. Since the box never got the signal, we would have a free premium channel for a while. Usually after a month or two it would get shut off so we’d have to wait for the next free trial weekend.

#2

Image source: ZachMartin, Ari Kurniawan / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

I used to work at papa johns to pay my way through college. There was a contest we had where if you got someone to “upsize” their pizza from like a medium to a large for an extra $2, you got points towards movie tickets. A large was simply $2 extra normally anyways. Anyone that ordered a large, I simply put in a medium and “upsized” it. I won every f*****g week. My coworkers didn’t notice this obvious loophole and it didn’t cost the customer extra so I didn’t have a problem with this morally gray area. Free movie tickets every week was a huge in college.

#3

Image source: bpbucko614, Enis Yavuz / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My brother once yelled “last one to jump in the pool is gay,” and then jumped into the pool. However, I figured out that if I did not jump in then technically he would be the last one in the pool, and he is still gay to this day.

#4

Walmart ran a promotion years ago on their groceries. Find a lower advertised price, they’ll give you double the difference back. So, I’d go through the Sunday ads looking for items that end up free. For instance , items where Walmart would charge $2.99, but Albertsons had them on sale for $1.49. The difference is a buck fifty, so doubled I’d get $3 back on each one i bought. I would get tons of free items! Granola bars, yogurts, cereals, cake mixes, fancy breads, lots of things. tons of different foods. Lots went to the food bank, but I ate like a king for a year and a half.

Image source: LiftingDa

#5

Image source: kms2547, rawpixel.com / freepik (not the actual photo)

Back in the 1960s, the school district in my hometown was broken up and absorbed into the surrounding districts.
Fast forward to 2003. I’m applying to colleges. I discovered that there is a scholarship fund for people living in that old district’s area. The district is gone, but the scholarship still exists!
I applied, and got the scholarship. I don’t think there were any other applicants.

#6

My college campus had a cafe with Deli and salad bar, the deli sandwiches were way over priced, like 8$ for a standard turkey sandwich. But the salad bar was very reasonable. (Subsidized to promote healthy eating)

So I found that the Salad bar had all the same ingredients as the sandwiches, the meat was just shredded. The Deli would sale slices of bread for $0.25 each, so I would just buy the bread, load up and weigh my “salad” and grab some free mayo and mustard packets, then build my own sandwiches for under 2$. Used that trick for my last two years.

Image source: hear2fear

#7

Image source: BrushGoodDar, charlesdeluvio / Unspalsh (not the actual photo)

I didn’t find this loophole but my friend did: A few years back, an online store had this promotion where whoever spent the most money over a month would get free round trip airplane tickets to anywhere in the world. My friend (who’s a f*****g genius) found that one thing you could buy on the site was a gift certificate. So he bought a $25 gift certificate and kept spending it on another $25 gift certificate. So he ended up spending $25 on round trip tickets to Australia.

#8

Image source: TuningHammer, Ben Mullins / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was in high school I applied for a summer job with the county. As part of the “unbiased” application process, each applicant was asked to take an intelligence test.

The test consisted of about 80 questions. Each question was four or five line drawings, and you had to put an X in the box next to the one that didn’t belong. Pretty easy.

I happened to notice, though, that the test paper was two part, which is two sheets of paper that are attached together back-to-back with a sheet of carbon paper in between. I could peel the sheets apart and look inside: the second sheet just had a bunch of boxes printed on it, and I could see from the first few questions that I’d answered that the Xs I’d marked ended up in the printed boxes on the second sheet thanks to the carbon paper.

So, I did all of the questions with obvious answers, and if I was unsure, I just peeled the paper apart, noted where the box was printed on the second sheet, and made sure I got it right.

Of course, I got 100%. I figure that if you can cheat on an intelligence test, you’re pretty smart.

#9

Image source: mahck, DC Studio / freepik (not the actual photo)

Local radio station had a contest where you call in when they play same artist back to back to win a prize. Turns out they had a “now playing” and “up next” feature on their web site. My girlfriend at the time would start calling in before the second song even came on. Won tons of prizes ranging from concert tickets to a laptop.

#10

Image source: taylor1288, Zoshua Colah / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

Not very impressive but at my highschool we had to wear a buttondown and a tie to class every day. One of the kids realized that they never specified what kind of buttondown it had to be so he wore a hawaiian shirt to class with a tie. Technically it met the dress code so it stuck.

Pretty soon most of the school started wearing hawaiian shirts with ties to class. We looked like a bunch of ridiculous Jimmy-Buffet-goes-Mormon types but it was worth it to spite the system. They changed the rule to ban hawaiian shirts a week later.

#11

Image source: mstibbs13, pvproductions / freepik (not the actual photo)

There was a drink machine in college that was $.75 for a juice. If you put a dollar in it gave you 5 quarters in change. I got a juice everyday for months before they finally fixed it.

#12

Image source: machomoose, freepik (not the actual photo)

When I was a kid my town had a “slow bike race” tournament. So the objective was to cross the finish line in last place, the key is to keep your balance. Well the rules stated that each time your foot hit the ground you would have 5 seconds subtracted from your time. But it didn’t say anything about keeping your foot planted on the ground. So once the race started I just stood there and waited until everyone else finished, waited a good 5 seconds after that, then just rode across the finish line.

Ultimately they didn’t let me win which I think is horse s**t because they wrote s****y rules and a 12 year old found a loophole.

#13

Image source: tdasnowman, Behnam Norouzi / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

Free internet access during the early days of the internet. Aol if you signed up for that free month, call to cancel they would give you a free month or two. Cancel at the end of that period then sign back up with a diffrent checking or savings account. Same process, by that time the original account would fall off their list of known accounts so you could go back to that one. I got 2 years of free internet that way, and got my mom permabanned from AOL.

#14

Image source: Macabalony, Arlington Research / Unspalsh (not the actual photo)

Old job had a loophole about time. It worked as such. If you were scheduled for 8am shift you had 7 minutes to arrive and be on time. If you arrived past the 7 minutes you were considered 15 minutes late.

Loophole: it worked the same for clocking out. If you stayed and helped for an extra 7 minutes and clocked out. You got an extra 15 minutes of pay. During my tenure there, I would always ask if people needed extra help and make sure I stayed past the 7 minutes. This went on for a full year. Got probably close to an extra 24 hours of pay.

#15

Image source: anon, Long Truong / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My high school had a stupid rule that banned you from attending prom if you went to a saturday detention that semester. I got in trouble and was assigned to Sat. D-Hall, but my girlfriend really wanted to go to prom. I just kept skipping it and they kept adding more until they rolled it into a day of actual suspension. They had no rule barring you from prom for an out-of-school suspension so I got a day off and took my girl to prom.

#16

Math lesson

Teacher: For this project you will work in groups of less than seven.
Me: Sir, one is less than seven.
…
Teacher: Ok, fine. Do it all yourself then.

I got 70% on this assignment, highest mark I ever got in group work.

Image source: CatTatze

#17

Back in 2016 Chick-fil-a launched their mobile app with a promotion that gave you a QR code for a free sandwich (or some other options) when the app was first downloaded. For the first few months you didn’t need to include an email address to register so you could just delete the app and re-download it to get another code for a free sandwich.

There were too many times that my buddies and I would just go through the drive through get free sandwiches, delete and re-download the app, and then go into the store for another free sandwich.

Image source: full-sends

#18

I still use the loophole of jumping on a shuttle bus out of LAX to a parking garage(/or hotel, yes) and then calling an Uber/Lyft from there to avoid the airport prices. Brings the ride home down to $10 from $40.

Image source: spacerock_rider

 

#19

Image source: Artanthos, Visual Karsa / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

I was working maintenance at McDonald’s when they did a Best Buy bucks promotion. Large sodas and large fries had a scratch off that was worth at least $1 at Best Buy.

I would go through the trash daily, pulling out all the discarded scratch offs.

I got a free computer that year for Christmas. I also had the poor cashier at Best Buy in tears. She had to manually scan each scratch off and verify the dollar amount.

#20

Image source: anon, hayato togashi / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

When I was a freshman in Highschool my geology teacher told us we had to make a presentation about igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic types of rock. He explicitly said he didn’t care how we did our presentation, but it needed a visual. I asked him to specify how much he doesn’t care about the content of the presentation and what is allowed to be up for interpretation. He clarified that you could do a song and dance for your presentation if it was relevant to igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic.

I did an interpretive dance.

Relatively no effort, a sprinkle of shame, and a reluctant A-.

#21

Back in the day, two 5 piece chicken nuggets at Burger King cost less than a single 8 piece chicken nuggets.

Me and those 2 extra nuggets were laughing all the way to the piggy bank.

Image source: Gerreth_Gobulcoque

#22

Image source: Vlaed, Scott Graham / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

An agreement I had with an employer on school reimbursement with additional pay.

I had to agree to remain at the company until X date and they would pay for my schooling + additional pay for various things. If I left, I had to pay the money back. (Edit for context – I received reimbursement + bonus at the end of every quarter based on completion of a class + a certain grade. I had already received ~$20k at this point) The parent company of my division changed after the agreement was signed and time came for me to get the cash owed to me. Head of HR refused to pay. I went to him and asked why I wasn’t getting the check we agreed to. He stated that the agreement was with the previous parent company and therefore was no longer valid. He had this smug look on his face, but then he noticed I had a big smile on my face. I could tell he couldn’t figure out why. I asked him again if there were refusing to pay and he said yes.

I then stated that I no longer have anything binding me here, because the contract stated “if I willing leave the company, I have to repay the money.” He agreed and asked what my point was. I then stated that if the parent company did change then I did leave said company, but I did not ***willingly*** leave. Therefore, I did not owe any money if I left this company as it was not the company I signed the agreement with. The expression on his face changed. I continued on with, “If I, hypothetically, put my two weeks notice in now, I would be able to leave without owing any money.”

It didn’t take him long. He realized by stating that the agreement was longer valid because the company changed that he gave me the information I needed to get out of the contract. He agreed to pay me the money. Spoiler alert, he was fired a few weeks later for various reasons. He was one of the worst HR directors I have ever seen.

#23

Image source: SpidurMun, Luke Chesser / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

My university was trying to encourage people to walk so if we download a specific health tracker that’s connected to our account, it would convert steps into points. The points would get you stuff like free coffee, mugs, discounts for stuff and the most expensive prize: a university hoodie which costs about £30.

Now, the health tracking app is pretty basic, it won’t let you log your steps manually however it does let you connect with other health apps. I found a health app that would let me add in the steps and I logged in an equivalent of 50 km a day and in a few days of logging manually, I would get myself a hoodie or two and I didn’t get caught.

However, I told my friend about it, and he really perfected the method of getting more steps a day, because apparently there was a hidden physical limit to how far a person can walk in a day, but he managed to trick it by setting his height to be 1 cm and because the shorter you are, the more steps you need to take to cover the same distance.

In the end he claimed about 10+ hoodies and he would just get them for anyone who asks. The uni found it suspicious, so he received an email telling that the activity had to stop unless he could provide evidence that he walked that much.

Another friend had a different method. You get points just by being friends with them on the university health website. He also found that he could access a list of everyone who had an account in that website. So he made a python script that would automatically send a request to everyone, earning him points.

#24

Image source: Water_Meat, Samuel Regan-Asante / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

Our local Tesco accidentally had 2 offers for Terry’s Chocolate Orange at once, so if you bought 4 (or a multiple of 4) they GAVE you 50p.

Tried not to a***e it since if they noticed they change it, but bought 4 chocolate oranges with other stuff through the self checkout every day for almost 2 weeks before they corrected it.

I planned to save them for Christmas presents but Christmas was 4 months away, and you know how delicious Terry’s Chocolate Oranges are.

EDIT: To all non-Brits out there since apparently they’re not sold elsewhere: they’re f*****g delicious. If you ever come to England do yourself a favour and buy one, or find a “foreign confectionery” shop and hope they sell them there.

#25

Image source: httphaimish, Harry Borrett / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

Italian restaurant my family loves had a candy claw machine we played every time we went. But the trick to learn was, if the claw closed all the way it thought that meant you didn’t get anything, and would let you play til you did get something. This means we would go for individual items that would fit into the claw perfectly (one sucker, one laffy taffy) so it would close all the way, instead of trying to get a big lot all at once, that way it wouldn’t register the candy and we could keep going and going. We actually took so long once our parents made us leave before our turn was up and we still left with hand fulls of candy. the best part? IT ONLY COST A QUARTER! They no longer have that machine :(.

#26

There’s a Chinese place my dad and I used to go eat at often. Buffet, before 3:30 it was about $8, after 330 it jumped to around $14 or so and they brought out the frog legs and seafood and stuff. So what we did was show up at around 3:15 and since I’m allergic to shell fish I would just get my regular fried rice and pepper steak. He would get a small plate of whatever, then when the frog legs come out, he would devour them. So basically we paid minimal price for the evening food.

Image source: R34CTz

#27

Image source: anon, Getty Images / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

Went to a catholic school with uniforms. We got “jeans day” passes to wear. They were always different colors, including white. I took one white pass, took it to a copier copied enough to fit one page, printed one full page of passes then printed mass stacks of pages. I made a lot of money selling them out.

#28

In third grade, our teacher had to leave the room for some kind of emergency, and left one of the students in charge (the “teacher’s pet”, of course). The teacher said that we were not allowed to talk, and if we did, we would have to write 100 times “I will not talk in class when instructed not to”, or something like that. Well, my friend and I were bored, so we started writing out the “punishment”, and when we were finished, proceeded to talk to each other until the teacher returned. The student left in charge wasn’t sure what to do. It was hilarious.

Image source: genital_furbies

#29

Image source: Pterons, Sean Lin / Unsplash (not the actual photo)

They used to have a promotion at Wendys, probably 6 or 7 years ago, where if you filled a survey out on your receipt you could get free burger.

I guess they didnt notice that you could take the survey on the receipt of the free burger and just keep getting free ones. So we would just go after school and chain 5 free burgers after we just bought one.

We did that for a few days until they finally caught on and stopped accepting it.

#30

In high school our science class had one of those projects where you had to drop an egg and build something to not have it break. The assignment sheet said “fall six feet without breaking.” This particular teacher was a stickler for following instructions, often taking points off for little things like not putting the date in the preferred format on stuff.

Come the day of the project, one of the kids who has no obvious egg catching contraption walks up to the front of the class where the measurer thingy was, lifts his egg up about a half a foot above the six foot marker and drops his egg. It splatters all over the floor and the teacher tells him he’s getting an F.

That smug legend replies “Why? The egg fell six feet without breaking.” I wish we had camera phones back then because the look of realization on the teacher’s face was epic. The teacher tried to tell him that isn’t what he meant but we all reminded him about “Always Following Instructions.” He gave him an A and the next year the instructions were much more precise.

Image source: Kraagenskul