Used to work at starbucks 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. Since I already got tons of free drinks, I would give them to homeless people and explain it was good for a free coffee. Probably gave away like 100 free drinks.

I'm still exploiting this one: Whenever I need a shoulder and neck rub, I offer one to my partner. He usually accepts, and I spend some time rubbing his shoulders while we watch TV. Then we switch and I get an awesome rub. I find that if I just ask for one he will definitely do it but loses steam after a few minutes. I think when I give him one first it loosens his muscles up so he's more relaxed, plus maybe he feels more obligated. I intend to keep on exploiting this for as long as I can.

I used to live in an apartment across the road from a casino whilst at University. They released an app where if you "check-in" you get points that go towards free food and drinks. Because I was close enough to the casino I could just check-in without going to the casino itself. Every Saturday I used to get a free burger, fries and drink and watch sport in the sports bar. They eventually scrapped the app; it was awesome considering I was a broke Uni student.

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.

Arby's used to have a "take a survey on the back of the receipt and get a free roast beef sandwich". But when I got the free one, I got a receipt then too. I bought one sandwich got literally dozens for free over the course of a year or so.

In high school, our p.e. grade was based on improvement. We took a skills test at the beginning and another at the end and your grade was based on how much you improved. So, once I learned that, I always sucked at the first test and then did miraculously better at the second, so I had a massive "improvement" and thus, a better grade.

My Aunt and Uncle were trash collectors both professionally and as a hobby. My mom had pulled one of her epic [screw] ups (again) and we ended up living with them. Most of our food came from the trash, however Dominoes had a rewards system where the boxes had blue or red tabs depending on the size of the pizza. Collect enough tabs, get free pizzas. Aunt and uncle collected thousands of those tabs. We ate pizza every weekend for months before the company caught on and they put an end to it. I was 11 at the time but I remember hearing that their address was banned for life from delivery. I'm pretty sure Dominoes also stopped the promotion shortly thereafter..... It was awesome while it lasted.

I used to work at a grocery store and we had this era of the steak discounts. Hundreds of coupons for $5 off a steak were just everywhere for some reason. I found out that if I used the self checkout and bought a steak that was less than $5 while using the coupon, the machine would give me back the difference in change. I ate dozens of free steaks and filled my change jar up nicely.

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.

Was living near & attending our local university. While working full-time in an economy in the midst of a recession I barely had enough money to pay the bills, let alone eat. Where I live is very well known for its tourist industry & casinos so I had quite a few friends who worked in it & would tell me about these MASSIVE employee luncheon cafeterias. At that time there were no id cards or lanyards to be scanned or checked, all you needed was to find it & be dressed appropriately to the employers dress code. After my friend & I did a dry run on one of those trips, in order for me to find it without getting lost I would go it alone. For almost 3 years I had lunch/ dinner for free, learning the peak service times & the dead zones. Even got along with some of the cafeteria workers and custodial crews.

Got keys to a new flat on a Friday afternoon, the place had electric but it wasn't in my name. Went to the electric company just before closing and the lady said "flat 8 you say....... Hummm we only have record of 7 flats on that building. Tell you what (glances at the clock) come back Monday with the serial number on your meter, and we'll get you all hooked up" I never went back and enjoyed free electric for over 2 years until i moved out.

At my current apartment complex, they just changed the laundry machines so you need to use this super s**tty slow app. I found out if you press start on the app and start on the machine and then back out of the app while it’s “chatting” with the machine, the machine will start but won’t charge any money.Been washing and drying for free for a few months. App name is similar to smallGS or smallPayments

The thing we clocked in on when I worked at Kmart would round to the closest quarter hour. So by clocking in 8 minutes early, and clocking out 8 minutes after my shift, I got paid for 30 minutes rather than for the 16 minutes. By exploiting this, I was paid 2.5 hours of overtime a week. Cumulatively, during my time there, this added up to about 6.5 weeks of extra pay. I wasn’t ever caught, though.

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 paid for my drinking and more for 3 months!

2 Obligatory not years but I can't believe I got away with it- My mum gave me £20 to buy a big thing of a certain brand of cat food which normally costs £10.99. Now here's the thing- when I entered the store I was given a coupon for £5 off that particular brand of cat food. The store was ALSO doing £5 off the type of cat food I entered for. I got to the till and the food was priced at £5.99, I handed over my coupon and it was scanned so that the food was 0.99p. I couldn't believe my luck because normally it says "not for use in conjunction with any other offer". But here's the real kicker - the lady behind the till gave me ANOTHER COUPON so you can bet your goddamn life I went round again and left the store with £22.98 worth of cat food for £1.98, with a third coupon in my hand. The only reason I didn't keep exploiting the loophole was because I had to carry it all home on my BMX

I grew up down the street from universal studios and went there everyday after middle school. Eventually we learned to go into the VIP line for rides which nobody was ever in. When the guy stopped us and asked us for our vip tickets, we just told them a high up employee named "Rick" should've called it in. After two seconds on the radio trying to verify, every employee just gave up and let us through. We skipped lines for years with that method, and eventually ride attendants came to know us and just let us through. It was beautiful. One day we got bold though and snuck into the studio area. Guards caught us and asked us who we were with. We told him our fictional "Rick" told us we can be here. Well the guards took radio verification way more serious, and managed to get a real Rick on the line. We waited for Rick to show up, knowing we were busted. Rick showed up, turns out he was actually the backlot manager at the time and gave us a strange look. The security guard asked us if we were with him and this dude said yes! He took us aside and asked us what we were doing and we told him we just loved film and the studio atmosphere. He loved that two young kids were interested in his job and began taking us all around to the studios, allowing us to sit in on tapings of various shows and so on, giving us a free pass to come back anytime, and also....vip line access.

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.

Whole Foods used to have bacon on the Breakfast Bar. Cooked bacon weighs almost nothing! I would get a pound of cooked bacon for $8.00 It lasted almost a week! Bacon crumbles for the salad, for the turkey sandwich, and the 100 other things that you can toss bacon into! I used this method for almost a year, then they stopped putting bacon out....sigh......

My family used to go to this campground in the summer and rent a little cabin for like a week. In the main building there was a little arcade - mostly older games, and a foosball table, and an air hockey table. What most people didn't know was - the air hockey table was broke. If you put quarters in, you could push the plunger to start the machine and then get your quarters back if you did it juuuust right. A couple of years in a row were SUPER fun because me and one other kid that knew would keep air hockey going for the entire time. The arcade would be filled with kids who would often play other games while waiting their turn at air hockey. They must have found out after a few years though because one year we went back and it was fixed - the arcade was also a complete ghost town, and the campground made no money off it after that. That's when I fully realized and understood the concept of a "loss leader" at like 13 years old.

Part-time retail worker for big chain. Work gives employees a 5% discount over all purchases, increasing to 10% on store products. Gift cards are store products. So are vegetables and a lot of groceries. By paying $45 on a $50 gift card and then using said card for my shopping, I can purchase $55.55 in groceries, for an effective 19% discount on almost all my essential shopping (and 14.5% on everything else). I have on occasion bought a card online on my phone while queueing at the checkout. Four years strong and still wondering when they’ll realise they’re giving me a discount on money.

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 new address. A half-dozen times over the next few years, I went and got free stuff with all the points that I kept racking up as one of their most loyal customers.

When Lyft first came out, they were giving away free rides up to like 20-30$ if I remember correctly, all you had to do was refer a friend. So me and my college roommate just made a few email address, and somehow my free rides glitched and I just kinda had free rides for the year Edit: I remember what caused the glitch: I had lost my debit card that was linked to the account, so I had to cancel it and get a new one. For some reason, Lyft kept processing payments to my old card, but it never came out of my bank account

When I was in college they had this deal where if you signed up for a free trial of Netflix you could get a $10 giftcard code for Papa John's. They didn't even ask for a credit card back then, just an email, so I would just make new email addresses to use and would get a code every time. Not only did I get free Netflix for a while, but I also got a lot of free pizza.

Not intentional, but once I found out I didn't stop. Years ago I used my card to pay for Xbox live during a period before I could pick up a manual 1yr subscription, but when I tried to remove my card details it wouldn't let me and said I had to call MS directly. Being lazy but smart, I decided to just change the security numbers that were saved so it wouldn't process any future payments. And it never did. But somehow I still kept getting Xbox Live access. This went on for about a year and a half before it stopped. I was never contacted about paying anything for what I'd used either.

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.

The McDonald's app used to have an entry in the order book for "garlic parmesan fries" that you only found through the search option. It cost $0.00. Every time I ordered it I got free regular fries. Also you can set the drink option on happy meals to coffee, which is not really a loop hole but handy.

I used to buy books on Amazon Kindle with a debit card that had no money on it. The transaction would take a little time but you could download immediately. The problem was if you payment bounced they would remove the book from your device, so if you downloaded the book then turned your wifi off on your device you could read for free.

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

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.

On the original Kindle, you could purchase a book with an expired card and Amazon would send you the book. A minute later, you'd receive a notification saying the payment didn't go through. You had to select something stating you were aware of this, and then they would take the book back. If you hit the home button, it took you out of the notification and you could continue reading the book, 'unaware' that the payment didn't go through. I did this once a month my junior year in high school. The summer before Senior year, I could not do it anymore. Coincidentally, my passion for reading died around that time.

Two from college, not exactly loopholes but playing the system. Pizza chain had coupons printed on their larger boxes, with 10 coupons you could get a free cheese carryout pizza. Used to raid every single trashcan of their pizza boxes in the dorms, or offer to throw away someone's box for the coupons. Rarely paid for a pizza, but got plenty of cheese carryouts for free. Campus paper printed a coupon for two free game tokens in the bowling alley/arcade in the student union, limit one coupon per day. I got a stack of coupons (free campus paper), twice a week I had to go through the student union for class and was usually with a friend. She was a good sport, and the two of us cashing in coupons meant four game tokens a day, eight per week. I made her a pair of earrings out of two game tokens for being a good sport.

I have always lived in a different city/town than where I work. I’ve also always worked in an industry that gives preference to my coworkers who are parents. I learned early on that when asking for time off, if I listed ‘going out of town’ as a reasoning there would be no question or hesitation to grant the time off. I’m rarely ever traveling as that label suggests.... I’m merely at my home... in another town. I have one coworker I have told but the vast majority have yet to ever figure out my system.

Printers at the university had a flaw that let you print out any number of pages while just paying for a single page. I told too many people about it and they eventually fixed the problem but I was able to print for really cheap and save a ton on printing. I normally am not the kind of person to do this, but our professor made us print out 20 page state diagrams instead of just submitting them electronically, and I wasn't going to pay for that.

One week the local Chick-fil-a put a coupon in a local coupon magazine flyer which was Buy 1, Get 1 Free, any item on the menu. Next to that coupon they had a 50% off any menu item. I carefully checked, and neither coupon mentioned "Cannot be combined with any other offer" anywhere on it. So I ran out to the local grocery store and grabbed a stack of these flyers. Sure enough the next week the offer was gone, but it was too late to stop me. I spent almost 2 years as a grad student living almost exclusively off of 128-count nugget platters that I would get for 25% of the cost (1st half off, 2nd free). Place went under new management and they put up a sign saying they would no longer be accepting those coupons. Not entirely sure if that was due solely to me or if anyone else was pulling the same thing. I had about 20 coupon pairs left when they shut it down.

There is an app for a local burger chain where it allows you to "roll the dice" to get a code for a free double-patty burger upgrade. It was designed so you could only try it once per day and it even shows the date of the roll on the code so the cashier could verify it. However, I found out that you can just change the date on your phone and try again immediately. If you got nothing, change it again and just keep going until you get the code. Then, when you got the code, you change the date back to current date and the app updates the code so it looks like you rolled it today. I got free burger upgrades for years until they finally got rid of the feature alltogether. I don't know if anyone ever figured out this exploit, they removed it for other reasons.

It was only once. Bought a game (license) on steam for a game which was on a different launcher. Tried out the game, didnt enjoy it and refunded it. Later i checked the alternate launcher and while steam gave me my money back, they never canceled the license at the other company. Got a game with it's newest expansion (€70,-) for free.