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

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_…

Comments

  • Definitely wouldn't say I exploited the hell out of this one, but it's good when eating out with a few people. When at a Hungry Jacks with one of those free re fill machines, buy one drink, and then ask if they could put half coke in one cup and half fanta in another one (can use any soft drinks). Then give the other cup to your mate and fill the cups up to the top at the free refill machine. Two drinks for the price of one.

  • Loophole (or perhaps more fraud than anything).

    If you travel long distances by train, sign up for a degree, get the student card and concession card, drop the degree before census date (so you don't have to pay for a subject) and you've got 50% off for 3 years (or however long in your particular state) before you need to renew.

    At full fare I'd have to pay around $25 a day, works out at about $6,000 a year. To sign up for a degree and go through the process, works out at around $100. Student ID would save you about $8,900 before it expires.

    Ticket inspectors have requested ID, they just look at the ID and move on.

    Translink tried to overcome it by introducing a third transport concession card which expires yearly. They've since scrapped it.

    • +2

      I thought about trying this (because I'm low-income and fares are ridiculous) but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

      The reason being, it means a student who actually wants to do that course misses out on placement, and so it's a theft of their potential.
      I couldn't take a dominoes voucher from someone's letterbox, so I definitely couldn't steal an educational opportunity.

      (just to be clear, I don't hold contempt for those who do this due to inability to pay full price fare.
      Fares don't work out in my area.. 4x more expensive and 3x transit time to use transport into the city rather than drive.. then you have to deal with anxiety over reliabilty of the system, and infectious diseases of your fellow passengers.. hopefully with driverless tech and renewable energies we'll be able to transition to something better in future.

      • Yeah, reliability of service is what killed me. I now drive. Costs more, but it means I'm home earlier more often, which is a big deal when you're spending 3 hours a day commuting and were often missing putting your kids to bed.

  • +1

    Target eBay deals. Wait for a 15-20% off, buy expensive item, take item with invoice back to local target, get full refund.

    Targets refund policy is pretty easy going. Paypal/eBay eat the discount. Win.

    • Woah, be considerate and buy an expensive small item (iPod maybe?).
      Don't be the Big W eGift (7.5%) TV refund guy who got refused because he wanted to return it just to get an effective 7.5% back in cash.
      https://www.ozbargain.com.au/node/244304

    • This is a nice one! Never any drama in returning it? Does the eBay invoice list the discounted price, or just the original?

      • +1

        The invoice only shows the original price. No mention of any discount. Never had an issue returning anything, no questions asked.

  • +1

    About 5 years ago a local club my grandparents attended regularly had a promotion where every time you won $10 in the gaming area you received a ticket in a raffle with some decent prizes at the end of the month. My Grandfather worked out that if he put $5 on red & $5 on black (odds being 2/1) on the roulette wheel that more often than not he would not lose any money & gain a raffle ticket just about on every hit. There was the odd occasions where he would lose because 0 or 00 would turn up. At the end of the promotion my Grandparents had a heap of raffle tickets in the draw because of the system they had in place & ended winning a lawn mower, sound system, colour printer, pots & pans & blender. My Grandfather worked out that the total of prizes they won on that raffle was about $500 for a cost of about $50 (0 or 00 turning up on the roulette wheel).

    That promotion was never run again as we believe they worked out what my Grandparents had done.

  • +1

    I know this thread is now quite over, but have to mention the Time Out chocolate bar competition. Something like 1 in 5 bars wins another Time Out bar. The loophole I reckon was discovered at released by someone here on ozbargain. This person found that if you looked carefully you could tell if a bar was a winning bar by looking at the outside of the packet. A winning packet had a serial number printed on the inside of the packet, but it was printed/stamped in a way that you could just see it on the outside also. Needless to say that me and a friend went crazy with it. Amazing we didn't end up obese, teethless, or diabetic after this exploited promo.

  • Free burritos for the price of a sim card :)

  • about 20 years ago I put accidentally put a 10 cent piece in a poker machine, realising as I did it, and it registered as $1. I spent the night trying to change my money into 10 cent pieces, without drawing attention or losing the machine. I made about $500, the machine didnt do it again the next day - or any machine, ever again :(

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