What was a loophole that you found and exploited the hell out of?

L0p on 12/02/2016 - 22:12
Last edited 14/02/2016 - 15:53

Until recently I was using a coupon code for a pizza store which allowed me to get any pizza for $5.
I may be selfish but decided not to post it here for fear of it being canceled.
Until recently where one of the friends I shared this code with shared it with some friend of his who got a job at this pizza place causing the deal to "expire".

So coming to my question: What was a loophole that you found and exploited/are exploiting the hell out of?
It doesn't have to have expired if you wish to keep it a secret like me you may wish to censor the affiliated company.

If you need some inspiration/a good read

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/44tard/what_was_…

General Discussion

Comments

        • T-man on 17/02/2016 - 10:40

          @chiefbodge:

          fair enough, because I plan to get the Citibank Platinum card which has $249 annual fee (No annual fee for life: https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/123330). If I can manage to get it free of annual fee + 0% balance transfer, it would be great. Otherwise, the annual fee will eat into the profits I can earn as you mentioned above. I'll also take a look of the ANZ cards. Thanks.

        • strikerzebra on 17/02/2016 - 10:40
          +1

          @chiefbodge:

          Which cards offer cheque to self, is it just citibank?

        • chiefbodge on 17/02/2016 - 10:48
          +1

          @strikerzebra:

          Citibank is the one that people commonly mention, haven't heard any others that do.

        • strikerzebra on 17/02/2016 - 12:53

          @chiefbodge:

          I heard some credit cards if they are in credit you can do a cash advance for the total of the card for a tiny fee of $2 or something

    • niyiaw on 15/02/2016 - 14:37

      So 28 degrees definitely gives out cheque to self? I tried to do that with Citibank once and they refused to send me a cheque stating they could only reverse the payment which defeated the purpose of a BT.

      • gadgetguy on 15/02/2016 - 14:49
        +3

        Yes they do, I have $40k currently in interest free loans to myself that are earning around 3.5% interest :-)

        I did this via two balance transfers (from ANZ and Virgin money) to credit cards (28Degrees and Bankwest Platinum) that put them into credit.

        Incidentally, Bankwest actually let me transfer my credit balance anywhere I liked, electronically, with no cash advance fees or interest.

      • chiefbodge on 15/02/2016 - 14:57

        I have only done it twice (asked 28 degrees for a cheque due to my card being in credit) but so far but have had no problems and no questions asked either time. I'm really surprised that citibank refused to do it. I have heard (by other ozbargainers) that they will even give you a cheque to self directly for their 0% deals instead of making you do a balance transfer - I have never tried that myself but I definitely will when I ring up to cancel in a month or two when my current 0% period expires.

        I have only done it twice because I use my 28 degrees card alot for work so often can easily spend the amount credited pretty quickly.

        • niyiaw on 15/02/2016 - 15:19

          When Citibank offered free BTs they gave me a cheque for 80% of the limit. Then Coles had free BT which I transferred to Citibank and then the money got trapped as Citibank would only send it back to Coles instead of sending me a cheque. It all eventually worked out as I had some expenses to pay off. All good as I don't need to repay Coles until Aug this year.

        • chiefbodge on 15/02/2016 - 15:25

          @niyiaw:

          Ahh yep. That's useful information to know. 28 degrees is fine and according to gadgetguy above bankwest works too. I suspect other major banks might work easily as well as they often link the credit card with a regular bank account. It's a bummer waiting 10 days from 28 degrees and then having to go out and bank the cheque but I have heard that they will transfer to a nominated account to if you set it up and wait a week (you have to fill out some forms and sign from what they said to me).

        • gadgetguy on 15/02/2016 - 15:49

          @chiefbodge:

          28Degrees would do electronic transfer IF I faxed the request and I didn't have fax access so I took a cheque.

      • T-man on 17/02/2016 - 00:00
        +1

        Can I ask you what is cheque to self? Does it mean you apply a 0% balance transfer card and you dont transfer any owning balance from another card in? And they will send you a cheque to use and you will own them full balance of the card you are appying? Thanks.

  • musicinbed69 on 15/02/2016 - 03:35
    +6

    IDK if this has been posted yet… But if you "upgrade now" with the Windows 10 media creation tool you get a fresh new windows 10 product key from microsoft servers.

    The only thing it checks for is that your previous windows is considered 'genuine', which all the standard windows crack tools can manage to do. Although i've only tried this from windows 7.

    So this way, you can upgrade to windows 10, and choose "keep nothing" to get a clean install, and have a 'legit' license that you will never ever have problems with. and since it profiles ur hardware, you can just reinstall from disc in the future if u ever want to and itll automatically activate on it's own again.

    I find it weird that not many people figured this out because this is how microsoft has always handled upgrades, it's just that in this particular case instead of an upgrade being a discounted price, it's free.

    tl;dr free 'legit' windows 10 or 10 pro keys…

  • musicinbed69 on 15/02/2016 - 03:38
    +1

    Another loophole from a long way back, was that for some reason, the n-gage QD mobile phone could bypass all of optus's charging for GPRS.
    If you tried it in another phone, with the same APN's and all that, you get charged, but once you put it in an n-gage qd, unlimited internet and no charge.

    And I read earlier about the vodafone no-credit gprs unlimited thing too, i figured that out as well, twas great.

    The vodafone web-sms also didn't charge if you had $0 credit, so i got unlimited free sms's from that too.

    • theguyrules on 15/02/2016 - 11:11
      +1

      Oh man! I remember abusing the crap out of the Vodafone no-credit GPRS trick on my first mobile phone in 2005 or so!
      Good memories.

  • musicinbed69 on 15/02/2016 - 03:42

    Also for some reason exetel had issues switching 8192kbps line speeds down to 1536k, and accidentally kept users on 8192k profiles after they tried to downgrade their plan. So I had quite fast internet on generous 1.5mbps quotas and cheap ish pricing, the quotas were generous because they didn't expect users to be able to use that much data so easily. I was careful not to go too overboard though.

  • OzJD on 15/02/2016 - 06:37
    +4

    Telstra (late 1990s)

    Suspending a pre-paid service (lost) and then un-suspending unblocked the service even if you had $0 remaining. Because it was already $0 it did not trigger the block again (but would only last a few weeks). Eventually someone figured it out and they started barring calls instead of suspending. A girlfriend's service was free for a few years because of this.

    Also, they used to have free calls Telstra to Telstra between 9pm and 5am. One time I had my phone diverted to a Vodafone service and a mate freaked out (until he realised he still didn't get charged). We then used to divert one SIM to anywhere (diversions were free back then), and call that SIM for free calls to any network. Later, we simplified this to diverting our own number and calling ourselves (Later, Telstra blocked this)
    Bonus points if you had less than the flagfall in credit (eg $0.13) as you didn't worry about going over the 15 minutes as the call would just disconnect and you'd call back.

    Oh, and so many companies had free SMS if you used another's SMS centre number.

  • OzJD on 15/02/2016 - 06:45
    +1

    Foxtel:

    Not sure if this still works, but Foxtel used to charge for Videos on Demand (eg. Adult and Box Office) once a month or so (when the device called back to Foxtel), so I only ever plugged the phone line in when I was ordering movies and never got charged. (Thanks to the Foxtel installer for letting us know)

    If this is how it still works, it would be simple enough to use an ATA to provide dialtone, but block calls.

  • triviums on 15/02/2016 - 08:50
    +2

    A loophole I occasionally use to get free netflix for a month is to open a brand new paypal and email account. So that paypal allows me to make purchases I would then add a prepaid debit card with $0 on it to paypal. Once this is all done I would then sign up for a free netflix trial. At the end of the month I would close both the netflix and paypal accounts and repeat the process if I needed another month of netflix.

    • tumsum on 15/02/2016 - 09:19

      Yes same with spotify trial

    • aboabo on 15/02/2016 - 13:26

      If the prepaid debit card had say $100, what would happen (given that you'd closed paypal)?

      • triviums on 15/02/2016 - 14:12

        nothing would happen as long as the netflix subscription was cancelled before the end of the month.

    • wildstone on 15/02/2016 - 16:21
      +1

      Not really a loophole and not that Netflix does not know some users do this. It's just that they must have figured not too many people would be bothered to go through this every single month to get continuous service.

  • navegante88 on 15/02/2016 - 09:11
    +1

    At uni we had take home quizes called cmls which were generated online on a weird old system. The exams would generate random numbers on the questions so that everyone had a slightly different exam..
    My frien somehow found out that if you and someone else generated the exam at exactly the same time you would get the same questions with tye same numbers.
    So we would go into the computer lab and line up 3 computer mouses on the generate button and hope we did it perfectly.. This worked 80% of the time lol

  • jacoble100 on 15/02/2016 - 10:00

    I continued to use my student ID for movies well after i graduated because they don't actually look at the ID properly

  • frondono on 15/02/2016 - 10:18
    +1

    I got free Dial Up internet for a while about 9 months back when it took 4 hours to download an album from morpheus. One day the owner of the ISP realized his mistake, and was leaving threatening messages etc. coming round trying to collect more money etc. turns out he was a junkie who was in some serious shit, the isp closed down shortly after, had to get the cops invloved.

  • betweenrows on 15/02/2016 - 10:28
    +3

    Years ago at my first part-time job they had a bundy clock for all part-time and casual employees. One day I clocked in right on the hour and the time was an hour behind. I realised the minutes would tick over from 59 to 00, but the hour took another few seconds. After that I always tried to clock in right as the minutes changed and would then get an extra hour on the time card :)

  • Gecko on 15/02/2016 - 10:53
    +5

    A few years ago, a local shopping centre ran a promotion where you had to have your smartphone up and it had these little $200 crackers appear once a day, you had to go to that spot and it'd award you $200 gift voucher for that shopping centre. There were heaps of different sized gift cards, from $10 to $200.

    Except the $200 cracker appeared on our house every single day.

    We got over $4000 worth of vouchers.

  • timmeh15 on 15/02/2016 - 11:17

    Few years back when the official Man Utd online store had a bug where you were given 50% off everything on the online store despite being in the middle of the season and well before changing suppliers over to Adidas. Bought shorts, hoodies and jackets and got it delivered at half price

  • Tripnfelt on 15/02/2016 - 11:41
    +15

    cafe gave me the police discount for being penned In-between 2 groups of police and police staff and making small talk with them looking like part of their group >___<

    • montorola on 16/02/2016 - 15:29
      +1

      Lol man, most people wouldn't do the things they do if a cop was present, but you involve the cops in your tricks!

      That's on a whole new level haha

  • Maki on 15/02/2016 - 11:55
    +11

    I don't think this is a loophole but we had exploit the benefit from an IKEA promotion. IKEA used to run the "Eat your armchair" promotions where you can use the receipt from the restaurant and credit them to your purchase of IKEA products. We joined that every time. When we were moving house, we needed to get a shelving unit which costs around $300. I checked that they have plenty of stocks and invited a dozen of friends for dinner at the IKEA restaurant. I told them everyone got about $30 credit to eat free, and I grabed extra Daim chocolates as well as bottle of cokes to make it $300. End up I paid a few bucks for the shelving unit. The operator at the cashier was shocked when she saw the receipt. She asked for the supervisor but they still had to credit that. Since then, IKEA stopped the promotion.

    • bargaino on 15/02/2016 - 22:44
      +1

      I hope you remembered to stock up on chocolate bars at the till.

    • WhatWouldBiggieDo on 16/02/2016 - 15:24

      I don't understand how you did this? You still had to pay $300 for the food, right? So you essentially just fed all of your friends and family for free (still a good deal, just making sure I understand).

      • montorola on 16/02/2016 - 15:31
        +3

        I guess it's more along the lines of, if they were going to pay $300 for the shelf, then might as well eat $300 worth of food to make the most of it

      • Maki on 16/02/2016 - 15:31
        +1

        Yes, was shouting dinner for a dozen of family and friends and grabbed free chocolates & bottles of coke while I purchased the shelving unit.

  • lainey13 on 15/02/2016 - 12:05
    +1

    Get 5 stamps on a Baker's Delight card (get a stamp everytime you spend $6 or more). Show card to redeem free loaf. Take back card while they slice the bread. Say 'thank you' when they hand you the bread and walk off. Got quite a few free loaves that way… the younger the staff are the more likely they will forget to stamp the free loaf section of the card :)

    • JimmyF on 17/02/2016 - 15:12

      Must try this!!!

      Also depends on the store, I've seen a few stores 'stamp' the card for a single load ie under $6 purchase.

  • Succulent Synth on 15/02/2016 - 12:35
    +19

    HN once kind of exploited a loophole for me about 15 years ago.

    My parents were looking to get a basic computer for typing letters, playing solitaire etc. I saw ex Government refurbished PCs on sale at HN for $99 including monitor, keyboard, mouse etc. I set it up and it was perfect for what my parents needed.

    About 3 years later my parents received a letter from HN saying that due to an ACCC ruling they had to replace the PC as it was 'not as advertised'. I don't know what this meant as I had checked all the specs against the PC. Anyway they took it in with the letter and were given a brand new HP PC with LCD monitor. I checked the price and HN were selling them for $1800. Not a bad trade for a $99 second hand PC bought 3 years earlier!

  • JohnHowardsEyebrows on 15/02/2016 - 12:43
    +17

    I needed a new computer (opted for MacBook Air).
    Amex had a spend $200 at DJs, get $40 credit promo at the same time. Wasn't meant to apply to gift cards, but we all know how well they catch those transactions…

    • Buy 5 x $200 gift cards on separate Amex cards ($200 saving)
    • Buy Macbook Air for $1394 (fortuitous 10% off sale on day I bought it online - saving $155 off RRP), using 6th Amex card (further $40 saving).
    • Take Macbook to tax refund on overseas holiday ($127 refund). They didn't ask for it back when I returned (and declared it).

    So that's a saving of $522 so far.

    But…

    David Jones also had 10 Qantas points per dollar late last year. Like Amex credits, points are not meant to be awarded for gift cards (or Apple products, for that matter), but again their system couldn't pick it up.

    • $1000 gift cards X 10 points = 10,000 FF points
    • $1394 Macbook x 10 points = 13,940 FF points

    At a value of 1c per point, that makes my savings a further $239.40

    So a $1549 computer ended up costing me less than $790. Boo yeah. :D

    • JimmyF on 17/02/2016 - 15:13
      -1

      you have 6 amex cards? Sad….

      • JohnHowardsEyebrows on 17/02/2016 - 15:21
        +1

        Not all mine…and I get supps to take advantage of ShopSmall… if you don't like making hundreds of bucks for hardly any work, why are you on here? :)

        • 18 on 20/02/2016 - 15:05

          How can you make supp accounts with different card numbers? All of my supp cards have the same numbers. :\

        • JohnHowardsEyebrows on 20/02/2016 - 16:39

          @18: Amex supps are all different.

  • gadgetguy on 15/02/2016 - 14:15
    +5

    Years ago in the UK, Tesco (large supermarket chain) had a pricing policy whereby if you were not charged what was on the shelf or on the item (either higher or lower, didn't matter) they would refund you AND you got to keep the item. This even worked for things where the price per kilo was incorrect and also multi-buy discounts - it didn't matter.

    I was not working at the time so made it my business to take full advantage. A thread was started in a bargain forum highlighting all pricing mistakes that had been found across the country. I would take a list and then trawl one or more Tesco's and check the pricing in the individual store against the price scanner.

    I would stroll through the store, filling my trolley including some legit purchases. I would also check a lot of the CDs and DVDs myself and often came across previously un-posted misprices. I would get through the checkout them immediately stroll to customer service where I would innocently say, "oh I think I may have been charged incorrectly for X - can you please check?"

    Over several months I got every type of item could think of. Lots of DVDs and CD's, clothing, food, drink, you name it. My star freebies were an
    XBOX worth several hundred pounds (the original one - that's how long ago this was) and some huge joints of beef.

    I sold lots of DVDs and CDs on eBay but most of the stuff I kept (or ate!)

    Happy days :-)

    • 0p on 15/02/2016 - 14:40
      +5

      Believe it or not-
      Coles/Woolies/Kmart… Still have this "loophole" where if the price doesn't match on the shelf as it scans the item is free…

      • Bad-Wolf on 15/02/2016 - 15:05

        I wasn't sure about whether it still existed. I usually just get my price adjusted and don't bother asking if I can get the refund and item promo from fear of quoting a v. old policy :-/

      • argonide on 15/02/2016 - 16:42

        Kmart wont give you the item for free but will give your the reduced price.
        Coles and Woolworths will give the first item free and the rest at the reduced price.

      • ronnknee on 15/02/2016 - 16:56

        I know it applies to Coles and Woolies. Can you confirm if it really does apply at Kmart as well?

      • LurvinOZB on 15/02/2016 - 22:22
        -1

        Coles yes but not woolies

        • illumination on 17/02/2016 - 18:37

          Both coles and woolies still have it.

          Woolies call it the "Price Scanning Policy" or something similar

      • 0p on 16/02/2016 - 00:09

        I'm not sure about other stores but at my local shopping centre both Coles and woollies have this "offer"
        And it has scored me a mini coke LOL worth only $4 I didn't even know about it the manager just pointed it out to a dude in training… Maybe it was a lesson for him?
        I haven't checked Kmart

      • T-man on 17/02/2016 - 00:14

        It's not free, the staff usually asks for $2 or $5

    • JIMB0 on 16/02/2016 - 18:29

      I've had this happen several times at my local Woolies. They just gave me a refund in cash, even though I paid with a giftcard.

      • curryblender on 12/07/2016 - 14:52

        I had this happened about 1 yr ago at woolies. I bought hair colour which was priced at $14.96 on Special, So went to the counter and it came up as $19.XX. I paid for rest of the items and she handed me the refund saying it's on the house.

        I got my partner to go on within 15 minutes and she got it for free as well.

        • JIMB0 on 13/07/2016 - 09:04
          +1

          Normally they go and pull down the incorrect price when processing the refund. Your lucky you got it twice.

  • stratbargain on 15/02/2016 - 14:18
    +8

    Got a Nexus 6P for $230 from Optus.. (well actually two Nexus 6P's for $230 each).
    When they first listed the 6P business plan they had it listed with no handset repayments and a maximum exit fee of $490. Confirmed over chat that I would be able to keep the phone if I cancelled. So bought two for the wife and I.

    Cancelled them the day after they arrived. The loophole had already been fixed and they tried to charge the full amount but showed them the chat and the screenshots of the terms from when I signed up and they agreed to let me have them for $490 each. But the phones also came with first 3 months free (via credit), which came off the $490 bringing them down to $230 each.

    Pretty happy with that :)

    • Bunnyburger on 15/02/2016 - 14:53

      Did they try to guilt you into paying the full amount?

      • stratbargain on 15/02/2016 - 15:13

        Not really. The guy who was assigned my case was actually really cool to deal with. At first they said I'd have to pay the full amount (even though there was nothing in anything I'd agreed to that indicated that was the amount), but as soon as I gave them the chat transcript they escalated it and agreed that I would only have to pay the amount that was advertised at the time of sign up.

    • VeganJerky on 22/02/2016 - 21:35

      Holy crap, so jealous!

  • georgedn on 15/02/2016 - 15:02
    +3

    Around 1999 you could stick a straw just above the coin return cover on Telstra payphones so that the coins would be counted but then just drop straight through to the return chute. Free phone calls! At the time I just wished I had more friends to call! Eventually they cottoned on and had to redesign the coin return chute cover and replace it on each and every payphone.

    More stealing than a loophole, but I get nostalgic thinking about it.. aaah the 90s.

  • kusama on 15/02/2016 - 15:43
    +2

    Some sites you can sign up to get a first purchase discount. I usually do that again each time I buy.

  • Jaskie on 15/02/2016 - 15:46
    +2

    Does anyone remember "tixeachitem" on event cinemas/greater union? Saved quite a lot of money on that. If I recall, once it went up on OB, event cinemas took it down. A lot of us benefited from that :)

  • baybaboy on 15/02/2016 - 16:03

    3yrs ago my simcard had no credit but the internet and sms still works.
    lasted for about 6months till they disconnected my simcard.
    was really good.

    • T-man on 17/02/2016 - 00:16

      Haha, I got the same simcard long time ago and only worked on Gprs till they disconnected

  • Usher9387 on 15/02/2016 - 16:41
    +1

    Subscribed weekly magazine and paid twice mistakenly thru Paypal. Called paypal to adjust the amount and i sent mail to Magazine company about my mistake but paypal as well as weekly magazines also refunded money and got free subscription

  • OptimisticPessimist on 15/02/2016 - 18:24
    +3

    Not sure if this counts as a loophole per se, but a few years back, the train station near where I lived had no facilities to purchases tickets at all (no machine or ticket booth). The station was complete barebones, no elevator to cross over to other platform, no staff, no tickets and no security cameras.

    As such, this prompted me to read Cityrail's policy regarding commuter's who were unable to purchase tickets.
    It basically stated that should there be no ticket vending machines, or a faulty machine, or no staff selling tickets; the commuter was able to board the train to their destination and purchase a ticket from there.

    Suffice to say I was able to travel free (one way) for quite some time (during my Uni studies), as my destination was usually unstaffed, thus no one to check me for a ticket; and if questioned by train guards/police I would explain that my starting station had no means to purchase a ticket, which they would then note down my details and later verify. I did, of course purchase a ticket on my return trip.

    Of course, once a machine was eventually installed, I accepted that the 'opportunity' had ended, that and a $200 fine wasn't worth it.

    • first in line on 16/02/2016 - 09:14
      +3

      Casula Station?

      • OptimisticPessimist on 16/02/2016 - 12:38
        +2

        Err….. Ummm….Ahhh, Nooo.1

        1. Yes, it is. Lucky guess or you've been to Casula station? ↩

    • illumination on 17/02/2016 - 18:40

      Haha nice one. How long ago was this?

  • 50cent on 15/02/2016 - 22:14
    +1

    Recently 7-Eleven had a promotion where you would get a free crispy cream donut when you download the Slurpee app. I found out that if you simply logged out and registered another account you could easily generate a new voucher, hence getting unlimited Krispy Kreme donuts. Told a few friends about it too and we ended up getting heaps of free donuts at the 7-Eleven's all over Melbourne until they finally end of the promotion.

  • Ghogger on 15/02/2016 - 22:32
    +3

    I used to work at a certain liquor store and there were a few interesting loop holes ripe for the taking.

    My favourite was when there would be a newspaper or magazine coupon with a generic bar-code for something like '$10 off any of these cases of beers' or 'buy one get one free wine' so I would just keep the voucher under the counter and give a bonus $10 discount or a free bottle of wine to all of my regular customers who were polite.

    Another one was when checking the expiry dates: Anything close to expiry become 50% discount (sweet!) or if it was past the expiry date (or slightly damaged etc.), well.. it was 'supposed' to go in the bin.

    I also remember once that Brown Brothers were having a 'win a case of wine' competition - there were neck tags on all of the bottles. I took just one tag when the store was quiet and punched in the numbers on the website to see if I would win.. and behold, I won! Then they said they couldn't send the case and just sent the money instead as a cheque ($130 or so from memory).

    • Maki on 16/02/2016 - 09:16
      -2

      I thought you were getting $10 from the cashier while applying the voucher on yor customer's purchases.

  • lowndes8 on 15/02/2016 - 22:51
    +2

    Few years back found a atm machine giving out wrong money. If you wanted $80 (four 20s) it would instead give you four 50s

    Lasted a few days was going back 5 to 6 times a day getting 80 out

    • JohnHowardsEyebrows on 15/02/2016 - 22:56
      +1

      Didn't the bank catch up with you?

      • lowndes8 on 16/02/2016 - 09:00

        Nope

        • ninetyNineCents on 16/02/2016 - 10:36

          Banks don't want news like this becoming public because it makes them sound completely incompetent and how can they possibly prove when the mistake started ?

        • JohnHowardsEyebrows on 16/02/2016 - 10:51

          @ninetyNineCents: Presuming the wrong piles of cash were loaded into the wrong slots, and records were kept (which they would have to be), this isn't too hard to solve.

          What's more, they'd possibly have needed to compensate people if $20 notes were coming out instead of $50 notes, so they'd have to get to the bottom of it.

          As for looking incompetent - if they fixed the problem soon enough, maybe they'd let it fly, but I think when the banks have to choose between image and profit, it's not image they care about.

        • ninetyNineCents on 16/02/2016 - 13:50
          +1

          @JohnHowardsEyebrows:

          Your assuming that the pile of $20 comes from one source pile, which they dont actually know. Im guessing the person takes a several chunks of the pile and as they load the machine. Im guessing if it was the other way around the $50 pile had $20, they would simply pay each person that complained or they could compute and pay everybody as if they had been paid out $20s instead of $50s.

          Banks have hidden for years skimmers and the losses they get from that even though the public is to blame for not noticing the big chunky plastic skimmer on the outside. They want people to remain confident with them and have everyone think they do everything well. If people think some bank always mixes up the piles of notes and you get $10s instead of $20s, poeople wont go to that bank and they willlose customers. Of course eerything is about money but image or a bad image stops the customers..

        • Donaldhump on 19/02/2016 - 00:59

          @ninetyNineCents: this happened to my mum the banks, fixed this electronically tho, so surprised they didnt do this

        • ninetyNineCents on 19/02/2016 - 11:20

          @MoMoney:

          Very interesting, but my observation is different simply because they don't know who got 50s instead of 20s. They don't know if the 20s pile was all fifties or how many were because they don't have any evidence of when and where the machine stopped with the twenties and started with fifties.

  • first in line on 15/02/2016 - 23:08
    +3

    Back when ozbargain was in its infancy, there wasn't a rule about advertising referral links. I ended up signing up around 50 ozbargainers using my referral link to the website Brandsexclusive. Every few weeks or so when a new member made their first purchase, I would get an email telling me that $10 credit has been applied to my account. Ended up with about $150 worth of store credits :D

    EDIT: Actually found the original thread, my username was thomas1987
    https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/19593

  • Yang331 on 15/02/2016 - 23:40
    +2

    Those little "Gatchpon" machines you find around most supermarkets that spit out random orbs filled with Pokemon/game characters etc for about $2 a pop.
    I would tear up old metcards (Melbourne bus tickets until myki was introduced) into smaller pieces and fold them into the rough size of a $2 coin and put it into the coin slot. The machine would recognise it as currency and spit out an orb. Reused it at hundreds of places. Amassed quite a collection of stuff and all it cost was a few used up bus tickets

  • aw13 on 16/02/2016 - 00:15
    +2

    Years and years ago when I was on prepaid, Vodafone had what was likely a bug in voicemail where you'd basically be able to dial any normal number in Australia and it wouldn't use your credit. I used it for a few months as a young teen until they patched it up. Unlimited calls and being employed doesn't make it an issue now haha.

    Also used an online SMS site a few years back that had a web-accessible, insecure internal page that would let you text any number and set any sender number. Used it to send texts to a friend from another friend at school and it'd trip them out!

    • easternculture on 16/02/2016 - 00:31

      Years back i found a bug on a mobile network that gave you unlimited data via an unregistered sim when using a particular mobile phone make and model.

      Got free data for 6+ months until they fixed the bug.

      I probably used over 500GB of data

  • tcme on 16/02/2016 - 02:01
    +4

    Back in the days when the Hungry Jack's Shake 'n' Win app would sometimes show the "50%" off prize, I simply snapshotted it the one time I saw it and used it for 12 months without question. For good measure, as I was driving up to the windows I would shake my phone and pretend to get all excited if I had people in the car, knowing the whole time it was merely a snapshot.

    Close call once, a manager wanted to see the phone. I handed it to her, and even though the countdown timer was obviously stuck, she processed the discount LOL.

    • SupeNintendoChalmers on 17/02/2016 - 11:19

      I would've made a video out of it lol

      • Tayabchinyoty on 17/02/2016 - 12:35

        Know a friend who took the snap shot and shared it through whatsapp

    • JimmyF on 17/02/2016 - 15:20
      +1

      snapshotted? Oh my…. its come to this now.

  • j5ive on 16/02/2016 - 08:15
    +23

    When I was 15 working at the local supermarket we had scan rate goals to work towards on the checkout. I though it would be interesting to try hitting total button every spare second to see if this paused the timer. So If I was turning to put up new bags, or unload a bag, or even wait for more items to go on the belt- I would hit total.

    That month I got a record scan rate and was employee of the month. They quickly worked out what I was doing when they watched me serve someone. I wasn't employee of the month anymore.

    • username999 on 19/02/2016 - 23:56

      "I wasn't employee of the month anymore."

      LOL! Don't know why but it made me crack up so badly. Thanks!

  • Kempe on 16/02/2016 - 10:29

    Not really a loop hole but got possession of a painters account at a paint store just when I was planning to paint my home.

    Went in and ordered 10 litres and it worked great got charged about half price, went back later in the week and got all the rest in the one hit…BINGO.

    • tinx on 20/03/2016 - 17:37

      just wondering what's price difference with normal price ?

  • Donaldhump on 16/02/2016 - 10:45
    +2

    two vending machines at my work

    1.) drinks
    2.) food

    1 didnt take 5c pieces, but #2 did and if you put two 5c in it, and hit coin return it spat out a 10c piece…

    the bloke who owned #2 could not work out why is machine was stocked full of 5c pieces every time he collected.

    • Maki on 16/02/2016 - 11:01
      +1

      And I bet he couldn't also work out why is machine #1 full of 10c pieces

    • illumination on 17/02/2016 - 18:46

      Hang on how's that a loophole? 5c * 2 is 10c and you got a 10c coin.

      Or do you mean this was how you could use your 5c in machine #1?

      • hahaboy on 18/02/2016 - 20:08

        Yes.

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