In Australia most retailers discount specific items for “members”. Being a member is free but you need to sign up with your contact details. They will give you a card but no one carries a million cards so cashier’s just ask for your phone number.

The Australian Communications and Media Authority administers phone numbers in Australia and they publish a list of phone numbers which may not be used by telco’s and are reserved for the exclusive use in TV shows, films, and creative works.

I made a note of one of the numbers in my phone, and provide that when asked. Loads of other people are doing this so the number is always registered at every shop.

The conversation usually goes:

• cashier: are you a club member?
• me: yes.
• cashier: what’s your number ?
• me: <ACMA number>
• cashier: oh. wow. there seems to be hundreds of people with this number. what’s your name?
• me: oh really? who’s there?
• cashier: uh, nigel, john, luke…
• me: I’m Luke.

I’ve been doing this on a weekly basis since reading about it in another thread (on reddit) a few years ago. I’ve never encountered a problem and I’ve received thousands of dollars in discounts. I would’ve gotten those discounts anyway but would’ve had to sign up with my personal number in order to receive them.

Many years back, at a caravan park games-room they had ping-pong, pinballs, pool, and a cocktail table Space Invaders.

I had little money for the videogames and pinball.

Some older kids had figured out that going to Space Invaders and flicking the wall power switch off, for a tenth of a second, would sometimes give an odd-number of free credits.

We played 7, 21, and then maxed out the registers at 99 credits.

Everyone played in rotation all day and turned it off with about 20 left.

My typing class had early computers that graded on speed but not accuracy. So you mashed the keys and got 140 keys per second, and an A in the class. So now I’m a 50-something year old who types like a 13 year old. Somehow the rest of the class didnt figure this out.

I went to Catholic school, so probably the poophole loophole

There was a big freeway running over our city with a few exits which always backed up with traffic and didn’t go where I wanted. One of the exits led into a convention centre pay carpark, with ridiculous costs per hour.

I realised I could pull in there and if you left within ten minutes they didn’t charge you.

It was my personal freeway off ramp for years.

There was a time when Discover would give you checks that you could use to transfer debt from other cards or accounts, which had a promotional rate of 0% for the life of that debt. I deposited one check into my checking account that filled up my discover card credit limit, then used that money to pay off my higher rate Discover Card debt. Then I did that a few more times until my entire Discover Card balance was 0%. This made my credit spending look amazing, because I had such a huge amount coming in and going out each month, and I soon started getting offers for much better card rates. Then I paid off my other credit cards while that debt sat there accruing no interest penalty.

Also, the way the accounts worked was higher debt would be paid off first, so until I fully paid off that account, there was always some 0% debt below all the higher % debt.

TL;DR: Discover Card let me my entire credit card debt through my checking account, making my credit score look wonderful and at the same time dropping my interest rate to 0%.

Aglet

When I was in high school my friends and I were always finding creative ways to skip school and instead go out and do stuff. But, there was a limit of X days that you could be absent throughout the year, or else you’d have to make up the time by attending summer school.

In a conversation with some school admin staff I discovered that if you attend just one class during the day, any absence for the rest of the day was counted as 0.5 days in the attendance system.

So, we effectively doubled the number of days we could skip school by showing up for the first hour and then getting out to e.g. attend a dentist appointment.

I had a pager that I didn’t want to pay the bill on when I went out of the country. I called them to turn the service off while I was gone. Instead of turning it off they just quit charging me. I realized that when I got back and had a bunch of pages. That continues for several years until I traded it away, still working, still not costing anything.

Jury nullification.

If you get married the tradition is for one partner to change their last name to match so both have the same last name.

We didn’t do that, so we have different last names.

So when you sign up for services that offer (x) months free or discounted cost per unique household, you use one name, cancel, and sign up under the other name. They don’t know you’re married, don’t know if it’s a rental, or don’t know if it’s a roommate thing. So when we were poor AF we could save a lot of $ on services at least for a few months or so. Usually cable tv that offered a 6-month discount.

Back in the day they were “selling” dollar coins through tv. It was legal tender so banks had to accept any deposit of it. The U.S. mint offered free shipping in the continental U.S.A.

Some smart folks started buying them with their credit card that offered air travel miles as a reward. Then they took all the coins and depositing them in their bank and paid off their CC. Rinse and repeat.

Yes they were out no money and had thousands of dollars worth airline miles.

I remember there was a time when you could use the self-serve kiosk at McDonald’s, order a bunch of plain cheeseburgers and remove everything so it was just a bun and it would credit back enough money that you could get a whole meal (plus a bunch of empty buns) for free.

You can’t cancel your reservation within 24 hours. You can rebook it. Okay, rebook it for one week out. Call back a day later, cancel.

My brother-in-law didn’t want to carry his jacket around at Disney World, and he didn’t want to get a locker for it, so he had his dad turn it in to lost and found. At the end of the day, before leaving the park, he picked it back up.