The Best Loopholes People Actually Used

Who doesn't like a clever shortcut? Loopholes let you stay inside the rules while squeezing extra value out of life. From scoring free meals and plane tickets to doing less work while still getting paid, Reddit users shared the tricks that saved them cash and time. Read on for ideas that are sneaky, clever, and sometimes shockingly simple.

Extra Air Hockey Games For A Quarter

A kid-friendly community center had an air hockey table with a finicky coin slot. If you jimmied it just right, one quarter would buy three or four games until the coin finally settled. None of the staff cared much since the snack bar made their money back anyway. The place even handed out free watermelon to kids who couldn't pay, so it felt more like a lifesaver than a scam.

Win Prizes By Calling Early

A local radio contest awarded prizes if you called when the same artist played back to back. The station's website showed a 'now playing' and 'up next' feature, so a clever caller could ring in before the second song ever started. One Redditor's girlfriend would call ahead and clean up on concert tickets, laptops, and more. It was harmless, brilliant, and totally effective.

Make Cheap Sandwiches From The Salad Bar

On campus, deli sandwiches were outrageously priced while the salad bar was subsidized and affordable. A student noticed the salad bar had the exact same ingredients, just shredded instead of sliced. For 25 cents a slice of bread, some weighed salad, and a stash of free condiment packets, they built sandwiches for under two dollars. That trick paid for lunches through their last two years of school.

Turn Gift Cards Into Free Plane Tickets

An online store ran a promo giving round-trip tickets to whoever spent the most in a month. One friend discovered you could buy a gift certificate on the site and then use it to buy another gift certificate. By cycling a single $25 certificate, he recorded lots of 'spending' while only out $25. The result: a pair of round-trip tickets to Australia for the price of a cheap certificate.

Overtime Tactics

U/Choppstickk: "My former workplace would tell us every Monday that we had to work overtime Saturday, then often cancel overtime at the last minute. That way they didn't have to give us the minimum 24 hours notice of mandatory overtime and they could take as long as they wanted to decide if they needed us. They also got to play it off like they were doing us a favor by giving us our weekend back. It was a d--- move, but it was certainly effective."

Survey Strategy

U/Pterons: "They used to have a promotion at Wendys, probably 6 or 7 years ago, where if you filled a survey out on your receipt you could get free burger. I guess they didnt notice that you could take the survey on the receipt of the free burger and just keep getting free ones. So we would just go after school and chain 5 free burgers after we just bought one. We did that for a few days until they finally caught on and stopped accepting it."

GC Genius

U/BrushGoodDar: "I didn't find this loophole but my friend did: A few years back, an online store had this promotion where whoever spent the most money over a month would get free round trip airplane tickets to anywhere in the world. My friend (who's a f------ genius) found that one thing you could buy on the site was a gift certificate. So he bought a $25 gift certificate and kept spending it on another $25 gift certificate. So he ended up spending $25 on round trip tickets to Australia."

Third-Grade Antics

"In third grade, our teacher had to leave the room for some kind of emergency, and left one of the students in charge (the 'teacher's pet', of course). The teacher said that we were not allowed to talk, and if we did, we would have to write 100 times 'I will not talk in class when instructed not to', or something like that. Well, my friend and I were bored, so we started writing out the 'punishment', and when we were finished, proceeded to talk to each other until the teacher returned. The student left in charge wasn't sure what to do. It was hilarious."

Legacy Scholarship

U/kms2547: "Back in the 1960s, the school district in my hometown was broken up and absorbed into the surrounding districts. Fast forward to 2003. I'm applying to colleges. I discovered that there is a scholarship fund for people living in that old district's area. The district is gone, but the scholarship still exists! I applied, and got the scholarship. I don't think there were any other applicants."

Ticket Loop

U/Bigjobs69: "I used to get the train from liverpool to manchester every day. The fares were extortionate. £15 a day. Instead, I'd get a 30 day return on monday in liverpool (£20), then on the way home I'd get another 30 day return in manchester (£20). As long as the return tickets never got stamped, I'd re-use them, so I always had a valid ticket to travel. It helped that I was always on the first train, and the guard could not be bothered to check tickets, and on the way home I was on the rush hour train and they couldn't get up the train to check. It saved me thousands! This was before the barriers at most train stations now though, so probably a LOT harder to do."

Candy Claw Exploits

U/httphaimish: "Italian restaurant my family loves had a candy claw machine we played every time we went. But the trick to learn was, if the claw closed all the way it thought that meant you didn't get anything, and would let you play til you did get something. This means we would go for individual items that would fit into the claw perfectly (one sucker, one laffy taffy) so it would close all the way, instead of trying to get a big lot all at once, that way it wouldn't register the candy and we could keep going and going. We actually took so long once our parents made us leave before our turn was up and we still left with hand fulls of candy. the best part? IT ONLY COST A QUARTER! They no longer have that machine :("

Double Dose of Credit

U/joeschmoe86: "Took a 'survey' course in college, which basically amounted to a course the school was planning to offer in the future, but giving the professor an opportunity to fine-tune the curriculum before officially offering it as a class. Easy enough course, got my credit, went home happy. Next semester the course went 'live' and was offered under a different course number - but the description was identical. Signed up, never attended a class, took the final and got my credit again."

Prom Triumph

U/meinherzbrennt42: "My high school had a stupid rule that banned you from attending prom if you went to a saturday detention that semester. I got in trouble and was assigned to Sat. D-Hall, but my girlfriend really wanted to go to prom. I just kept skipping it and they kept adding more until they rolled it into a day of actual suspension. They had no rule barring you from prom for an out-of-school suspension so I got a day off and took my girl to prom."

QR Jackpot

U/mtg-Moonkeeper: "For awhile McDonalds had a promo where, when you walked in, you could scan a QR code and possibly get free food. However, different locations and different cutouts had different codes. I took pics of as many unique codes I could find, put them all on a handy pdf, and scanned them all using an android device and an IOS device before lunch. I got free extra value meals regularly. In fact, I still had a couple free ones left over when they stopped the promotion."

Clock Advantage

U/Macabalony: "Old job had a loophole about time. It worked as such. If you were scheduled for 8am shift you had 7 minutes to arrive and be on time. If you arrived past the 7 minutes you were considered 15 minutes late. Loophole: it worked the same for clocking out. If you stayed and helped for an extra 7 minutes and clocked out. You got an extra 15 minutes of pay. During my tenure there, I would always ask if people needed extra help and make sure I stayed past the 7 minutes. This went on for a full year. Got probably close to an extra 24 hours of pay."

Sweet Refund

U/Water_Meat: "Our local Tesco accidentally had 2 offers for Terry's Chocolate Orange at once, so if you bought 4 (or a multiple of 4) they GAVE you 50p. Tried not to abuse it since if they noticed they change it, but bought 4 chocolate oranges with other stuff through the self checkout every day for almost 2 weeks before they corrected it. I planned to save them for Christmas presents but Christmas was 4 months away, and you know how delicious Terry's Chocolate Oranges are."

From Trash to Riches

U/Artanthos: "I was working maintenance at McDonald's when they did a Best Buy bucks promotion. Large sodas and large fries had a scratch off that was worth at least $1 at Best Buy. I would go through the trash daily, pulling out all the discarded scratch offs. I got a free computer that year for Christmas. I also had the poor cashier at Best Buy in tears. She had to manually scan each scratch off and verify the dollar amount."

Pizza Upsize Points

U/ZachMartin: "I used to work at papa johns to pay my way through college. There was a contest we had where if you got someone to 'upsize' their pizza from like a medium to a large for an extra $2, you got points towards movie tickets. A large was simply $2 extra normally anyways. Anyone that ordered a large, I simply put in a medium and 'upsized' it. I won every f------ week. My coworkers didn't notice this obvious loophole and it didn't cost the customer extra so I didn't have a problem with this morally gray area. Free movie tickets every week was a huge in college."

Standing Still Victory

U/machomoose: "When I was a kid my town had a 'slow bike race' tournament. So the objective was to cross the finish line in last place, the key is to keep your balance. Well the rules stated that each time your foot hit the ground you would have 5 seconds subtracted from your time. But it didn't say anything about keeping your foot planted on the ground. So once the race started I just stood there and waited until everyone else finished, waited a good 5 seconds after that, then just rode across the finish line. Ultimately they didn't let me win which I think is horse s--- because they wrote s----- rules and a 12 year old found a loophole."

Long Story Short

These stories are all the same basic thing: people spotting a sloppy rule and squeezing it for what it's worth. From U/operarose's air hockey trick to U/BrushGoodDar's gift-card loop, the wins are small but satisfying. A few quarters, a receipt survey, or a clever read of a promotion can feel like beating the system without breaking it. And yes, sometimes it is just kids being clever and having fun.

Why Loopholes Stick Around

Most of these gaps exist because rules get messy and people write them fast. Companies rush promos, staff assume customers will behave, and tech features get overlooked. That mix makes a playground for creative folks, whether they are scanning QR codes at McDonalds or finding survey answers on a radio station site. The result is a steady stream of small, repeatable wins until someone notices and fixes it.

When It Gets Morally Gray

Some tricks are harmless fun, others tip into mean. Grabbing discarded scratch-offs from trash like U/Artanthos did helped one person get a computer but put extra work on store staff. Reusing train returns saved money but relied on lax checks. The line is personal: ask if your hack hurts employees or just gaming a sloppy promo.

Patterns You Start To See

Read enough of these and a few patterns emerge. People exploit repeatable promos until they are patched, they reuse small loopholes for steady gains, and they trade low-risk rules for big cumulative benefits. The Redditors here reused receipts, surveys, and timing quirks, and most stopped when the loopholes closed. That habit of testing the edges is what turns a one-off trick into a regular hack.

Takeaway: Be Clever, Not A Jerk

Loopholes reward curiosity. They also test your ethics. If you can enjoy the win without making someone else worse off, it feels fine. If it costs jobs, adds hidden work, or is flat-out theft, skip it. Use your head, have fun, and remember most loopholes don't last long.