We've all heard the saying that the best judge of character is how a person behaves when they believe they are not being watched.
But perhaps another smart measure would be what people are willing to do if they have the opportunity to take advantage of a loophole, and just how much they will exploit it.
Curious about what others had done, Redditor 8BitPiratePegLeg asked:
"What's the biggest loophole you've ever exploited?"
The Order Is Lava!
"When lava cakes first rolled out on the Dominos app, rather than selling them only in two packs as they do now, there was a drop down picklist where you could select the specific number of cakes you wanted. For whatever reason, if you selected 1 cake only, it was added to your cart with no price ($0.00). You could then go into the cart and change the quantity of that $0 lava cake to whatever number you wanted."
"I was worried at first that I'd get found out so I would only order one. Then I got bold and ordered two, and they came just as they do now, two in a pack. No charge. I decided to push it one time and ordered 8 lava cakes with just two medium pizzas. Total bill was $16."
"I thought for sure someone at the store would realize something was wrong sending out two pizzas and eight cakes for $16. Nope, minimum wage employees don't give a f**k, they just see the order and fill it."
"After that, I was like the Don of crunch cakes, you want a crunch cake? You GOT one. I must have gotten hundreds of those things over the course of three to four months. Eventually I knew it would come to an end. I was going to write to Dominoes in hopes they'd like give me a gift card or something for exposing the glitch, but my girlfriend at the time was like dude, don't blow your cover, they'll just fix it and not give you anything, so I didn't."
"Less than a month later they patched the problem, and I still regret not being the whistleblower and maybe getting some free pizza."
"As a totally random button on this story, years later I was helping my company develop their website, and I flew to Detroit to work directly with the developer. At lunch on the first day we were talking shop, and the dev told me one of their claims to fame was developing the Dominoes pizza tracker."
"I was like, wait, did you just do the tracker or the whole site? Turns out they did the whole site, the app, and tracker! I mentioned my lava cake scheme and the dev almost fell out of his chair, he was like, 'I totally remember that issue and patching it!' He was floored I had the inside scoop on that site glitch he assumed nobody knew about."
- Cutty2K
Conveniently Free Parking
"I used to bartend and would have to pay for parking, either on the street (which was a pain since I would have to re-up in the middle of my shift and often forgot), or in a paid parking lot."
"I found a parking garage that used a ticket machine on the way in, but had you pay a person on the way out. 90% of the time there would be no one working late night when I left work, so I scored free parking for a few years."
- kit_kat_barcalounger
Californian Convenience
"This loophole I learned from someone else on Reddit, but I’ll share it for those who may not know: If you have a Planet Fitness plan and can’t cancel it online, change your home gym to a random one in California. Then you can cancel it online!"
- Afraid_Assumption_20
"You're correct, and it's not just Planet Fitness. It's anything you've signed up for. CA law requires that any business who allows you to subscribe online, must also allow you to cancel online."
"You're welcome, America."
- jaimeinsd
Free For A Year
"When I was in high school, I accidentally found a soda machine that dispensed free grape soda. I hit the button randomly while passing by, and a grape soda came out."
"I did it again the next day just to see and more free grape soda. It must have been busted or some sort of strange glitch."
"For the entire school year, I would pass by and hit grape on my way home and get a free grape soda. I wasn't stupid about it either. I kept that to myself. I wasn't about to ruin my free grape soda by telling everyone."
- HumpieDouglass
Extra Storage
"Dropbox free tier was like five gigs but offered extra storage for referrals. I spent maybe five dollars on Google ads containing my referral link. Maxed out my account at 20 gigs, which I haven't had to pay for, for like a decade and a half now."
- Irregular_Person
Quite The Happy Birthday
"I had found out and abused the fact that Bed Bath & Beyond's had a birthday reward loophole."
"I essentially had created multiple BBB accounts, set the birthday to the next day, and had $5 birthday giftcard rewards roll in on the next day. It also turned out you were able to stack them together into one account, so I cashed out about $600 worth of them to buy my mom expensive kitchen appliances. Ninja Creami and Ninja Smart Foodi, great products, use them almost everyday."
- Idionare
The College IDs
"I used my college ID nearly until my 40s for discounts. A few years back, a cashier at a local hardware store gave me a 'Really?' look that cut right to my soul which made me stop using it."
- fullthrottlejazzhands
"I brought my college report cards to Chuck E Cheese a few times. They’d always pause, then realize their policy only said, 'Bring in your report card and get free tokens for A’s and B’s,' but there was nothing about age limits. And then give me a bunch of free tokens, lol (laughing out loud)."
- the_real_dairy_queen
Last-Minute Credits
"Signed up for a free trial on Audible, when I went to cancel it offered me a free credit to stay. Took the free credit, went to cancel again, and offered another free credit to stay. Got about 25 credits in one day before I chickened out and officially canceled."
- PolishGazelle
"Did something similar with an NYT digital subscription. It's supposed to be $20/mo, I started my subscription at a fee of $10/mo and when it expired a year later, they offered what I think they meant to be half off full price, but instead gave me half off my current price. That happens every year, I'm somehow still at four dollars per month???"
- FoxieLady128
Extra Grocery Points
"I worked for an organization that ordered large amounts of groceries every week for their group activities from a major supermarket."
"There was a place to put in your loyalty card number so I just used mine."
"Not only did I get heaps of points to use in shopping there, no one noticed it until about five years after I left."
"I wasn't a supermarket employee or other insider exploiting my employer. We were a totally unrelated business who bought from them. For years I also kept getting calls from various suppliers who somehow still had my mobile number - I kept redirecting them to the office and telling them I didn't work there any more. It hasn't happened for a while now."
- shunrata
The Night of Six Free Pizzas
"Let me tell you about The Night of Six Free Pizzas."
"It was Pittsburgh. 1982. 2:00 AM on a cold winter night. Studying in my dorm common room with friends. Pizza was inevitable."
"Back then Domino's was pretty hardcore on their delivery guarantee, especially in college towns. If they were one second past 30 minutes, the pizza is free and your next pizza is free."
"So we order a large pizza and start the timer. Go down to the lobby and Domino's guy comes huffing and puffing in, but too late. He's at 31 minutes. Free pizza, and free next pizza. So we start with two. free. pizzas."
"Back upstairs and open box... wrong toppings. Call Dominos and complain, they'll send out another pizza and another free one."
"Then we get a call from the lobby like a minute later. Domino's is here for us, but way too fast. We go down and get the pizza, from a different driver, but gives it to us for free, and a coupon for another free pizza. Now four. free. pizzas."
"Back up to room, it has the right toppings this time. We dig in, and get another call. Domino's is here again, but it is the first driver coming back, with another pizza and another free pizza coupon. Six. free. pizzas."
"Pretty sure we first got somebody else's pizza by mistake, which is what triggered the event chain."
- gizmo78
Educational Licenses
"Back in university when Windows 10 was new they offered free licenses for students. They used a third-party website that didn't have actual limits and even had a dropdown menu to select the amount of licenses you wanted. I think I got 10 licenses that way but If I wanted I could've gotten hundreds."
"And they were legit Windows 10 education license codes and not tied to any account."
- Mriamsosmrt1
Chaotic Good
"When I worked at Petco, I hooked people up for free treats. There was a two-dollar bag of sample treats with a coupon off for two dollars (supposed to be off your next large bag)."
"One day I accidentally scanned it as the UPC and coupon were side by side. I started doing that more and gave away treats, lol (laughing out loud)."
- Outrageous-Serve-964
An Endless Supply Of Sandwiches
"Back in the days when Groupon was new and so there were real deals to be had, I purchased a one-for-a-free sub from a big sandwich chain."
"The process for redemption was to order your sandwich in line like normal, and at the point where you'd pay you held up your phone and the employee at the register would click the redeeem button on your phone, then comp the sandwich."
"I would pull up the Groupon, turn off cellular data and then let the employee 'redeem' the Groupon."
"As soon as they had done so and I walked out with my food, I would uninstall and reinstall the Groupon app. This prevented it from simply relaying the redemption the next time data was available."
"I did this nearly every day until the Groupon expired. Usually for a couple weeks. I bought the Groupon every time it showed up, usually every other month."
"Probably over a hundred free subs. Such times, the late naughts."
- knabe4k
A College Heist
"In college, I was dating this girl who worked at the bookstore, which had an ATM."
"She texted me informing me the ATM was giving out $20 bills instead of $5s, so if you withdrew $15 it’d give you $60."
"I and my friends and like 7 other people who happened to find out made quite a bit of money that day. I only made a few hundred because I was broke at the time and only had so much to withdraw."
"Some people were there for a long time though. Everyone was super respectful about it, they’d withdraw, get their $60, and then move to the back of the line and do it again. Not one argument about hurrying up or anyone trying to double withdraw."
"Just broke college kids living in harmony, stealing from a bank. Was beautiful."
"No one got in trouble. We were bugging for a while. The machine was completely cleaned out of $20s by the time the ATM people came. Girl I was dating said she heard them say it was well over 10k."
- ihopethisworksfornow
Advanced Academics
"When my son was in high school, he went to one that was connected to the community college. Starting in 10th grade, he could take college classes, so he chose classes whose credits would apply to both high school graduation and an associate degree."
"He also favored accelerated seven-week courses. He graduated high school with an associate degree and transferred 49 credits to his four-year university."
- pnjtony
While some of these would be considered to be stealing, some of these uses of rewards programs and discounts were genius.
Plus, if you're a broke college student or a parent just starting out, a little extra help never hurt.
