Ever wish there was a secret code for going through everyday life? Just something to make it all a little easier, quicker, or better? There's so many loopholes out there, just waiting to be discovered. Of course, some people already have.
People on Reddit share the loophole they discovered in their everyday lives. Content has been edited for clarity.
Might As Well Grab Some Food
“A kid from my high school was about 30 seconds late to class and the teacher refused to mark him ‘present’ and made him go sign in as ‘late’ at the office. In protest, he went and ate a sit-down breakfast and showed back up with about 5 minutes left of class with his late slip. Teacher threw a fit that he skipped class, but since he never signed in, he didn’t face any consequences.”
“I Bragged For Ages”
“When I was 10-11ish, I really loved My Little Pony. And there was an app on the app store for Equestria Girls (an My Little Pony spinoff), where you did quests and stuff. Well, to complete the quests you often needed help from My Little Pony characters. The way that you got their help was either by scanning a doll, or using gems. You had to pay for gems, and only got them for free rarely. I had no Equestria Girls dolls, so this really sucked for me.
Until I thought, Hang on, what’s stopping people from just going to the store and scanning dolls?
Which then led me to realizing that I could just look up pictures online and scan them. It ended up working, and I was so proud I bragged to my mom about it for ages.”
You Gotta Do What You Gotta Do
“My university had a one-month grace period for cancelling your parking pass (presumably for students who wound up dropping out or transferring early in the semester). I bought one, but my car died later that week, so I went back to the parking office and cancelled my pass. Theoretically, you’re supposed to bring back the sticker itself as proof for the refund, but since I had the paperwork proving that my car was totaled, I was able to talk them into giving me the refund without the sticker. Peeled that little sticker off the windshield and slapped it on my new car, boom, free parking for a year. It’s usually not in my personality to lie about stuff like that, but seriously, eff campus parking.”
“It Was Like Ocean’s Eleven”
“My friends and I used to play at Chuck E Cheese. We slowly began cheating at the games to win extra tickets. Mainly, at the games like Ski Ball while traffic was low and it was off times. After a few times of pulling that heist, we decided to cool it because we thought it might be suspicious that we’d earn the mega bonus ticket payout regularly.
We did similar things with other games but nothing paid out like Ski Ball. That’s when my buddy found out the big one.
I’m not sure if it’s like this now. Back then they used to weigh the tickets at the front in a bowl on a scale, but then they replaced them with these new machines. These machines are the ones you would feed tickets into; it would count the tickets and then present you with a slip listing how many it was worth, and you would redeem the tickets. Turns out if you were delicate and had enough finesse, you could pull the strip of tickets out and then feed them back in, it would count the tickets over and over again, even though they had unique serial numbers.
Boom, infinite tickets.
The ticket counters were in the corner of place by the front, near the registers. But a few were kind of hidden away from plain sight. We would have 2 people stand guard while my buddy worked his magic. If staff came by, we’d signal him, and he’d feed the tickets in like normal.
Instead of having a bunch of really large tickets, we’d make some moderately sized ones mixed with some big ones and spread them out a bit, I think they had dates printed on them.
We got it all, the glowing disco ball, the special edition Barbie for my friend’s girl, candy, spray foam; the sticky hands. We never got the crazy big items like the bike because we thought it’d be too suspicious. I think we could even redeem them for pizza, which we would do when we were hungry.
We never got found out. But we eventually cooled it because it was only a matter of time. It was like Ocean’s Eleven but instead it was like Chuck E’s Four.”
“My Teacher Made A Big Mistake”
“It was senior year, last semester of high school. My final finals week of high school. I ended up taking a physics class that was WAY over my head. I wasn’t a bad student, just could not wrap my head around physics.
Went into our final assignment with an F. The assignment was on buoyancy and we needed to make a boat out of cardboard that could support you and your partner in a pool.
My buddy and I built the heck out of our boat, and the day came for everyone to test the quality of their boats in my buddy’s pool (bad idea in hindsight. The pool cloudy was with glue by the end)
To get full credit, you needed to go back and forth once across the pool without sinking. Then my teacher made a big mistake. She offered 40 extra credit points for each additional length paddled before sinking.
A bunch of groups went and most people made it across once before sinking. One team made it ten times. Amazing! Then it was our turn. We were the final group. My buddy and I get in and paddle back and forth. Nice! Then another length. And another. And another. And another…
We went back and forth SIXTY TIMES. Finally our teacher made us stop. We weren’t even close to sinking. I got 2,400 extra credit points on my last final in high school and went from an F to an A-. Greatest redemption story of my life. Our teacher was awesome and totally honored what she said. Good times!”
They Tried To Walk Back
“When the original XBox was out for a few months, they decided to drop the price to boost sales.
This price drop wasn’t immediate, so they announced that anyone who bought an XBox between the announcement and the price drop would get 2 free games (I can’t recall what, but they were both decent) and a control pad – a retail value of $150.
My local Comet store had a system that if you bought an item and found it cheaper in a store under 10 miles away within 7 days, you’d get 110% of the difference back.
I checked with Microsoft and they advised that they would accept a photocopy of the original receipt, so I bought the XBox 6 days before the price drop and applied for the free games and controller.
When the price dropped, I went back into the store to get my $120 back – they tried to get out of it by advising me of the free game and controller offer, but as their offer didn’t have any exclusions, I told them ‘No’ and insisted that they paid up.
After a call to their head office for advice, the manager came over and gave me the $120.
So, in the end, I got the XBox, 2 games and a controller for $120 less than than an XBox by itself would have cost me at the time and $10 less than the XBox would have cost me after the price drop.”
He Got Lucky
“It was my senior year of undergrad as a business major. I think it was during my junior year my school added an additional one credit class needed for graduation. It was pretty much a joke class added to help prepare students for a test that didn’t really matter anyway.
Anyway, I had registered for the class but because it didn’t start until a month into the last term, I completely forgot about it and didn’t do the first two assignments in time. The professor running the class was a major stickler for the rules and wouldn’t let me turn the assignments late. That meant that I’d have to take the class online, pay for an extra term, and wouldn’t get my diploma for a few more months (However, he generously offered to let me walk during the spring commencement ceremony!).
I ended up being saved because when I originally registered for college, before my freshman year, I declared my major and minor and luckily never changed them. I even still had my original course catalog that listed out all the necessary courses for each major. Because I registered under that catalog, the new course didn’t apply to me, and I was allowed to graduate without taking it.”
“How Does It Know I Jumped?”
“There’s a place near me that’s like Chuck E Cheese, games for tickets, tickets for prizes. Most of the games give out between 5 and 30 tickets, because they’re based mostly on luck. But there’s one that gives out between 0 and 100 tickets, because it’s based on skill (supposedly).
The game works like this. There’s a giant oval with a light that travels around it. The light represents a skip rope. When the light gets to the bottom, you’re supposed to jump to avoid it. The longer you play, the faster it goes, until it’s literally too fast to avoid. Average win is 20 tickets or so.
I did it once and failed miserably, but then I wondered, How does it know I jumped?
I look around and see no lasers, so I assume it’s a pressure plate on the gamepad. I do some testing and that’s it.
Well, there’s no way for that pressure plate to distinguish between a ‘jump’ and a ‘tap.’ So I’d start up the game, kneel down, and just slap the pressure plate with my hand whenever the light got close. THAT is a lot easier to do than jumping. I was able to rack up a thousand tickets in no time and bought some baller stuff for my friend’s birthday (We were there for her party).”
Quite The Businessmen
“In the summer of 2009, a new water park, Aquatica, opened up in Florida. My cousin and I went nearly every single day, from open to close, for two months. It’s my favorite out of all the water parks I’ve visited with many awesome rides and attractions.
See, the park had lockers where people could store their stuff: small, and large lockers. Smalls were $5, large were $10; but if you brought the key for the large lockers back, you’d get back $5. There were also three restaurants in the park: one was a buffet, one had great chicken tenders and fries, and another had awesome burgers. Luckily for my cousin and I, there was a pass you could get that let you eat unlimited at all three restaurants for the entire day.
Now, the keys did come with a wrist strap so you could always have your key on you and not lose it, but most people would stick the key in their pockets and go into the river. They would not realizing that it wasn’t the typical lazy river and, in fact, had some pretty powerful jets under the water to keep things moving. Even full grown men can have trouble standing in the middle of the river, due to how fast it was going.
Well, my cousin and I figured out within the first couple of days that people were just losing their keys and loose change all over that river. We could’ve done the responsible thing, which was to turn in the lost keys and pocket the change, but we were teenagers and arseholes.
So what we did instead was turn in the keys, yes, but as if it was our own key, and we’d pocket the $5. We would alternate who would turn in a key, as well as time it. Each time we did turn in a key, it was with someone brand new, further lowering the chances of getting caught. We’d turn in an average of about 10 keys every single day. We’d then use that money, plus whatever change we’d gathered to buy the eating pass, and pig out. Add into that the fact that my dad was actually giving us money so we could buy the food pass, and we were turning quite a bit of profit that summer.
He spent his money on hair stuff, and I spent mine on video games.
Best summer ever.”
“I Laughed When I Swiped My Card”
“I was sitting at home on my computer looking for a new router on Amazon. I had finally settled on one but wasn’t ready to pull the trigger. I was following it for a few days, both at home and mobile, and then boom, the sale dropped off. I was kind of bummed and kicked myself, however; I thought that Best Buy might have it on sale so I drove over and looked around.
I got to Best Buy, found the router, and it was full price there too. In one last attempt for the lower price, I opened the Amazon app on my phone and saw that it hadn’t refreshed! I quickly took it up to the counter, allowed the cashier to scroll through the page (hoping that he wouldn’t click on anything) and got it for the sale price. I literally laughed when I swiped my card and walked out with a huge grin on my face.”
“Getting A Perfect Score Was Easy”
“So at my high school, we had a packet system in place as a kind of safety net for failing students. If you failed a class, they’d let you do a packet to earn a better grade, with a final test at the end. Pretty simple, right? I discovered this by accident, when I saw another student working on a packet, and asked a few questions.
Turns out, the packets were easy. It was a safety net, after all. To a failing student, they’d pose a serious challenge, but to a clever kid like me who was always bored with the level of my classes, it was a breeze. I discovered I could finish an entire packet, with the essay at the end included, in under 2 hours. And the packets were never graded. Your final grade depended on your score on the last test, which you could take any time. The test was an absolute joke. 20 questions, super straightforward, and you were actually allowed to use the packet for reference. Naturally getting a perfect score was easy.
Here’s the best part though. It wasn’t just a system to give you a credit, it actually replaced your failing grade on the records to an A. Indistinguishable from any other hardworking honor student.
I stopped attending classes that bored me, except for tests and review days. (I could learn the material quickly, so just the reviews were as valuable to me as an entire term of slow, boring learning speeds.) For two years, I only attended classes I enjoyed, like ceramics and creative writing, failed most of my classes, and then ‘fixed’ the grades within a single week. Straight As, practically zero effort. Thanks to review days, I still had a solid grasp of each subject by the end. And my school never fixed the loophole.”
They Never Had To Buy Clothes Again
“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 30 miles 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. 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 university 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.”
Quite A Big Gamble There
“Some cruises will reward you for booking with onboard credit, sometimes easily $100/person. Being a family of four, that’s $400 that you can only apply to purchases onboard in the overpriced stores, restaurant upsells (premium steaks etc). The kicker also was the places limited you to how much you can buy with credit. For example in order to apply $40 onboard credit, you had to purchase something at least $120. This pretty much means you’re still paying the cost of the item.
The loophole occurs because the credit is on your cabin’s spending account. Onboard, everything is charged to your cabin, including… casino loans/markers!
I went to the onboard casino, asked for a $400 marker (which is charged to your room and deducted from the credit), played a few $10 hands and cashed out. The bonus was I didn’t lose many hands and had a win streak at the blackjack table. Ended turning my $400 onboard credit into $750 cash. Do not attempt if you’re susceptible to gambling addiction. While I actually stayed to play a few hands, you can definitely just play one and get up and cash out your $400.
Voila!”
“I Couldn’t Make This Part Up”
“Home Depot, in Canada, used to have a ‘We’ll match any offer, and beat it by 10%’ promise. In about 1997, when the internet was relatively new, I got an ad off the internet from an American discount dealer. Things were WAY cheaper in the United States. Home Depot in Canada had not excluded, internet or foreign ads in their promotion, and there was no way for them to convert the American dollars to Canadian money. So if a Bosch table saw was US $220 at some going out of business shop in North Carolina, and Canada $500 in Canada, I argued, and won, that I should pay CDN $220.
A shift manager freaked out on me and said ‘This little loophole will be closed by the end of the week….this is so stupid.’
I told my dad about my scam the next day, he lent me $2,500, and I bought every tool I would ever need.
I couldn’t make this part up…the manager had to be physically restrained from me when I rented one of their vans for 90 minutes, to make a few trips in taking all my stuff home.”
Be Careful What You Write
“I had a lawyer friend who leased a car from a dealer that had a really poorly written contract. Depending on how a car lease is written (and maybe depending on what state you’re in), the dealer either continues to hold title to the car while it’s leased to you (with the contract giving you right of possession) OR you hold title to the car while the dealership has a lien on the title so that ownership returns to the dealer at the end of the lease.
This contract gave the dealer the lien, rather than the title, BUT the way it was written, the entire contract expired at the end of the lease term, including the provision that returned the title to the dealer. So essentially, the contract disappears, my friend is left with both the car and the title to the car, the dealer has no legal rights to the car.
The dealership called her and asked when she would be returning the car, she says ‘I’m not.’
They said, ‘Oh, you’re buying the car?’
She says, ‘No, I’m just gonna keep it, thanks.’
The dealer sued her, then once they looked closer they realized they messed up the contract, and offered to settle. Since she wasn’t completely confident that a judge wouldn’t just find a way to justify giving the car back to the dealer, she settled but the settlement ended up being her buying the car for like 20% of its value.”
“I Annoyed The Heck Out Of The Cashier”
“My current bank has a promotion where they make a special savings account for you that makes 4% yearly interest. However, you can only put money into it through doing rewards programs, like credit card cash back, or in my case a debit card program where they’ll round all card purchases up to the next dollar, and put the change in the special account. So if you bought something for $19.49, your account would be debited $20 and the extra $.51 would go into the special account.
The key here is for the first 30 days of enabling the change-saver, they’ll match whatever you put into the special savings account up to about $100.
I found out my college bookstore sold the vending machine sized bags of chips for only 95 cents. I could then buy a Tootsie Pop alongside it for 25 cents for a total cost of $1.20. That’s 80c in change, which when doubled through the match funds, is $1.60 put into the special account. I was literally getting paid to buy these chips.
I basically sat there every Tuesday and Thursday for a few weeks, when they got shipments, and cleaned their chips and suckers out through a bunch of individual transactions. I annoyed the heck out of the cashier. But I basically made $50 for nothing but a little bit of a time, and now it’s happily making 4% yearly interest for me.”
Not Too Shabby Of An Evening
“When I was in the service, one of our stops was in Japan for a four day port visit. I decided on the last night there I’d play it low key and just hang around at the Enlisted Club on base. At this particular club, they had Vegas style slot machines that took/dispensed US dollars, so I decided to try my luck with a few pulls. When you play slot machines, you either win a little something every now and then or you get lucky with a medium or large size payout, but inevitably you lose. One of the features the machines had was an option to ‘cash out’ on any of your wins (or losses). If you decided to not cash out, the amount you won would be added to a tally which you could use to play some more. Normally you would cash out when you were leaving by either taking what you won or what you had left.
After playing around with the ‘cash out’ feature a few times, I found that if you cashed out instead of leaving the money you did have in the machine on EVERY SINGLE play, it would seem to ‘reset’ as if a new player was there and the times of winning increased. I had several hours to burn, but in the matter of one evening starting out with $40, I ended my night with about $6,500 between the four machines they had there.
About two months later, we pulled back into the same port and I immediately made my way to the E-Club. Needless to say, someone must not have liked me discovering this little trick because all four of the machines were replaced with newer ones.”
