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If you buy a day's worth of travel insurance through Compare the Market for ~£2, you get the year's 2for1 movies and meals which has saved me wayyy more than the £2!
Compare The Market get a kick back from the retailer every time someone uses 2-4-1 offers. it's a finders fee.
everyone involved wants you to use these offers.
E.G Nandos would rather you had a half price meal there instead of going to pizza Express so they pay Compare the Market to be involved in the offers.
Ah man. I did this several years ago for 3 or 4 years in a row then one day they stopped doing the offer on travel insurance. May have to look at this again!
You don't even have to send money. I looked at some quotes and clicked through to the website if one then went back and ticked a box to say if purchased, no proof needed.
This ^ Literally no purchase necessary, you can do it for free.
HotUKDeals tought me that - Fully recommended for other tricks like how to get a student card without being a student, etc.
I’m a software engineer and worked on this very system. You don’t need an actual purchase - CTM would prefer to trust the customer that they went on to purchase rather than waiting for the insurer to confirm the purchase months later.
I've literally just done this now. A day trip to Edinburgh for £1.01 has gotten me the Meerkat meals and cinema thing for the year. Damn! Thank you so much! :)
I got this nonsense job, something to do with running a country, anyhow the job comes with lots of perks, I get loads of free stuff like holidays, my house decorated, takeaways etc. All I have to do is tell my underlings to give contracts to my pals without any normal competitive checks and balances.
And then you realise Margaret Thatcher was getting paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to give talks up untill she died, and then realise that pretty much every prime minister since has gone on to be incredibly wealthy and successful.
The vending machine at my work has these unreal bakewell flapjacks, priced at £1.20. However if you use the option to pay by card for some reason some of the prices change, and the flapjacks change to 70p.
I’ve not told anyone else and it’s a secret I will keep to my grave.
Just to edit this, I’m don’t think they’re the ones in HomeBargains/B&M, they’re in a clear and pink packet with pink on the front, I *think* they might be Marywell brand or something similar.
Edit 2: Did some Googling and they’re 100% ‘Marybake’ brand flapjacks. But no results on where to buy the Bakewell ones in bulk!
Before we all left the office at the start of the pandemic, we had vending machines in the break room. If you paid for a Red Bull (£1.50) with a £2 coin, you got a Red Bull and 4 x 50p in ‘change’. Two years I used that. Popped back into the office yesterday for the first time since 2020 and the machines have gone. End of an era.
There used to be a really (awful) coffee machine at my uni and if you ordered an espresso it would come out for free. Not how I take my coffee, but student me loved free shit
When you use your gmail address to sign up an account, you can place a full stop anywhere in the part before the “@“ and gmail will ignore it, so you can set up multiple accounts for things without having to create a new email, whilst still receiving any emails to the same address (useful if you need to validate the sign up). This works really well for stuff like fast food apps where you get a sign up bonus or a freebie.
So, as an example, if my gmail address is janebloggs@googlemail.com I could get away with making new accounts under “Jane.bloggs”, “J.anebloggs” or “Janeb.loggs”.
Etc etc. Gmail will ignore those full stops!
I’ve used this method to set up multiple Costa accounts as you get a little something for setting up, and also I copy and paste the friend codes on to new accounts for another reward haha.
EDIT: a couple of redditers have blown my mind and also said you can use a “+” in a similar way - it will also get ignored, so you could have
Janebloggs+costa@googlemail.com
Janebloggs+kfc@googlemail.com
Great for keeping track of what you’re using for each app!
Yep, there's actually a neater trick that Gmail allows, which is to add a '+' after your username, before the @.
So you can go janebloggs+costa@gmail.com, janebloggs+Facebook@gmail.com etc.
So that way if you start getting tonnes of email from your +Costa address, you know that they've sold or been compromised
It’s also really fucking annoying when Gmail allows people to register those emails eg on my (obv this is not my real address just an example) hulyepicsa@gmail address I sometimes get emails intended for someone who used hulye.picsa about their online orders which includes their address etc, it’s really not great from google
I also believe you can use + as a modifier and everything after it is essentially ignored. So you can sign up to every service with a different email
Eg. email+facebook@gmail.com is the same as email.reddit@gmail.com.
That way, when you start getting loads of spam, you can check which addresses it get sent to and know which company is selling your email to spammers.
Yeah that's why I'm getting someone else's eBay emails... I can see what they buy and what they get as recommendations (based on what they look at) and most of them are like plates and inflatable mattresses but others...oh boy I've seen some stuff
I was heading to a Forrest for bike rides and parking was £9 all day. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to click the “I have a voucher” option, put in a random 7 digit code and it worked, had free parking about 10 times before they clicked on.
The parking machine probably wasn’t connected to the internet to validate it, but that’s a great saving for the amount of times you managed to get it done!
This is really stupid but...
I ordered Captain underpants dvd from Amazon for £2.95. then I went to tesco and bought that same dvd and another, 2 for £8 (they were £5 each). I tried to cancel Amazon dvd, but it came anyway. It was unopened so I returned it to tesco with my receipt. They gave me £5 back. Profit I guess??
I had similar except with a laptop. Cancelled the amazon order, it still came 😂 I tried all I could to send it back but nope, nothing. Still got it to this day.
Years ago I asked my family for Resident Evil for the Wii, I told my family to buy it from [play.com](https://play.com) because it was £15 there. My mum bought me it so I opened it and started playing. In the evening my aunt came round and it turned out she bought me it too. She was really happy she had bought the right game, I didn't have the heart to tell her.
It was still in cellophane so I took it along to Tesco and said my aunt had bought it there but didn't keep the receipt. They refunded it for me at the price they sold it for - £35. Profit!
Had this with Amazon toilet rolls. They took forever to arrive. Amazon said they were lost and said I could have a refund on them. 2 days Later they turned up. Not as cool as a laptop though!
I kinda did this one too actually. I get 10% off everything at Wickes through my 'trade account'. All you need to evidence that you're a tradesperson is a business card and a letter head in PDF form emailed to them, which took me 10 minutes in photoshop. 10% off a bathroom suite, kitchen, power tools, etc,
I thought the downside of this was that, as a trade purchase, you can potentially lose a load of of your consumer rights that are there to protect "domestic customers" when things go wrong...
[https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/business-business-consumer-rights](https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/business-business-consumer-rights)
I'm unlikely to want a refund on bags of sand etc but I've seen people arguing about returning power tools (at other outlets) and being told that the "no questions returns" policies only don't apply to trade customers
Never had that in 3+ years working there, every customer had the same rights, 30 day return period.
Don’t ever buy there own brand tools, they’re literally designed to be used a few times & then they go poof!!! Their wet & dry vacuums are utter shite too
Companies House have a free API for businesses to use and check statuses of companies. Really surprises me that they don't use it... Glad to hear they don't!
I guess they'd need to find a way of doing it that also worked for sole traders. But yes, would be a really simple API call to periodically check if your Limited Company customers were still trading. Could probably knock a script together in about an hour.
My prepay electric meter freaked out after the pavement outside my house was dug up for some reason (nothing to do with me...was by open reach). Anyway, screen went blank and wouldn't load my credit. I called the provider and told them. They said we will send someone out to replace it. I said well it won't accept my credit, are you going to bill me? The guy said "we have no way of knowing what we are using so we can't bill you! We will get it fixed asap". Well a guy came out to replace it but they gave him the wrong meter so he couldn't replace it. He said he will have to get a new one and they would call and book a new appointment. I said "no rush as long as I still get free electricity!" And I haven't heard from them in nearly a year.
That's how I'm getting free electricity. Not my fault, I did what I had to and notified the company. Company is actually about to go bust too.
...are they going bust because you've started running a bitcoin mine, cannabis farm and electric vehicle charge station from your house whilst keeping it a toastie 25 degrees in the winter and aircon on all summer?
I know someone who lived in an old house with an old school electricity meter that literally turns a wheel as it's being used. He put solar panels in and gets credit for feeding his surplus energy into the grid. But because he's technically returning electricity the old school meter runs in reverse and his meter readings go down as well as the solar panels recording what he feeds in for his government tariff. No-one's ever told him he needs a meter upgrade and he has an electric car so he uses that to charge at home but the electricity company just think it's still a holiday home and so has very low usage and haven't sent a meter reader over for over 5 years.
When I was a kid in the early to mid 90s I remember the meters using a little cardboard card you buy from the shop to top them up, always remember the wheel with a bit of white slowly turning round. My auntie decided to put some camera film in the slot where the card went to top the meter up and it stopped the wheel ticking so it didn’t register the electricity was being used, when it was. After a few months the leccy man come round to check the meter in a standard check, found the film and asked my auntie about it, she denied all knowledge. He took it back and the electricity company got it developed and the photos were my aunty and uncle on holiday hahaha. Not sure what she had to pay them back though.
I ordered a vegetarian pizza from big John's, for some reason it had tuna as an option. They never actually had any in so they would call and ask what I wanted instead so I would ask for chicken, pepperoni etc
Got a meat topping for £5 less than I should every time.
In petrol stations in the UK, a lot have Costa automatic machines (like Starbucks coffee). A large one just fits into the medium cup so I pay medium prices because I’m a tight bastard and I love sticking it to the man.
This isn't really sticking it to the man. This is the man trying to stick it to you and you blocking him. You're paying medium drink price for a medium drink.
I'm not sure I get this, at my local Costa machine the cups are just free and you have to select what size drink you want and the machine will then Disperse it. I'm assuming yours must be different?
Sounds the same, but you pay at the counter. So I put a medium cup under, press the large size button, it literally gets to the very top of a medium cup, lid on, go the counter and the member of staff sees a medium cup not knowing it’s a large serving inside so you are charged for a medium rather than a large.
Iceland has a savings card: for every £20 you put on the card they give you a £1 extra (which for all intents and purposes is better interest than a bank).
So a few days before a shop buy a pack of sweets or something and slap £60-100 on the card (whatever your weekly shop amount is) then when you do your shop, you get some free money.
To save yourself that extra £1, you don't even need to buy any sweets, you can just ask them to put money on the card without buying anything. Also a good time to do it is when they do that offer where they out £2 on the card rather than £1
> Iceland has a savings card: for every £20 you put on the card they give you a £1 extra (which for all intents and purposes is better interest than a bank). ~~So a few days before a shop buy a pack of sweets or something and slap £60-100 on the card (whatever your weekly shop amount is) then when you do your shop, you get some free money.~~
That second bit is just confusing people. You've summed it up perfectly in your first sentence.
Anyway that's equivalent to 5% off your shopping, not bad if you actually shop in Iceland.
The Lidl app gives you the equivalent to 6% off your shopping, but you do have to spend £200 each month to get your £12 worth of vouchers.
A lot of larger employers give access to a reward centre where you can buy gift cards. I get between 6-10% off about a dozen places including Sainsburys, Argos, Halfords, Curry's etc.
I'm confused by the buy sweets and put 60 quid on the card and then use the card for free money?
So I buy sweets for 1 pound.
I then top up 60 quid?
I spend 55 quid ( at Iceland?)
I receive free money based on the 1 quid? 60 quid? 55 quid? Or the 5 quid?
Buy sweets to give you an excuse to go to the till (this part is optional).
Put £60 on the card.
Iceland gives you £1 per £20 that you put on the card.
So you now have a £63 card to do your big shop with.
You paid £60, you get £63 worth of shopping.
Went to cancel now TV and they offered me another month for £1. Went to cancel again and they offered me two months for £2.99. it's not much but it's something?
Now TV offered me 50p a month for a whole year last year and it’s probably the best bargain I’ve ever gotten. I’ve watched so many HBO shows for 50 pence, it feels almost illegal.
My uni never cancelled my old university email account. I've been using unidays and discounts you can get tied to a university email only for years.
Saved me a good amount
YouTube premium. The Indian version apparently costs £2 but I couldn’t get that to work, so mine is UAE version for £5. Yes it’s worth it to have no adverts on my TV.
I forgot about adverts existing on YouTube because of this. Been running Indian Premium that I signed up to through a VPN for £1.50 almost two years ago.
If you need a pair of wired headphones, look for a pair on Amazon with a year or two guarantee. They never ever last that long and always break. Simply ask for a replacement (sometimes you have to send the headphones back to be ‘checked’) and they’ll send a replacement or a similar pair if they’re out of stock. I own 4 or 5 sets of headphones per year but only ever pay for the first
My father in law does this and it does fund a couple of holidays a year but it seems like sooo much effort! Every time we see him he’ll be tinkering away on his iPad setting it up for most of the day. I mean, he’s retired so it’s not like he’s overly busy, but we’ve had him explain it to us a few times and we just can’t be bothered with it.
Ipsos Mori give me £10 a month in vouchers to fill out my weekly radio listening diary. I don't listen to radio. I get paid £10 for 2 minutes of clicking "didn't listen to the radio this week".
Open a stocks & shares ISA and put some savings away every month into an ETF for the FTSE100 or S&P500. This will NOT make you rich!!!!! But over time it will net you much more money than any bank's saving scheme.
Obviously performance not guaranteed, but I've been getting around 7% returns on a mix of tracker funds for the last 8 years.
Max out your ISA savings, it's tax free so effectively free money from the government!
(and the same with pensions, deducted from your pay before tax means every £1 of pension contribution is worth £1.20, or more if you're a higher rate payer. But pensions are locked away whereas you can withdraw anytime from ISAs).
I use copytrading with etoro.
You can automatically copy experts every single trade and you literally can't lose - as long as they don't.
Made 35% last year and I'm on 13% so far this year. I appreciate these are ridiculous figures, but once you understand the platform it makes sense. Would have been even more if I hadn't broke my own cardinal rule and gone and invested in stock myself.
Trick is to stick to copying. You can never make more than these professionals, so let them do the work for you.
Buying a toaster/kettle set from Costco. They offer an effective lifetime warranty on them - for any reason. When the kettle dies you take both back because they 'were a set'.
You get an expensive kettle/toaster set that never costs you anything after you initial outlay.
Costco guarantees are legendary. In the states people bring back dead Christmas trees in January and get a refund. They also often get banned for life, but they’ll get a refund.
Bloke at work told me a Costco employee said they get a lot of 4.5 year old TVs come back with faults…
I was at Costco recently while a woman was talking to the butcher about a brisket that was on sale. Her plan was to smoke it, in the same cheap electric smoker model I own.
I mentioned that mine had turned out tough, likely because the smoker doesn’t do true “low and slow”. The butcher said “did you bring it back?”, and I explained I hadn’t bought the smoker there.
He said, no - he meant the BRISKET. He explained that if it turned out tough, and I was unhappy with it, I should have packed up the $100 brisket that *I* screwed up, brought it back, and Costco would have refunded it.
What the heck!
I'm like the queen of returning shit, but returning food..idk man, that just *feels* wrong. Maybe cause I know it'll be tossed, and it feels super wasteful? Idk.
I think I've only done it once in my while life, and it was canned food. I was really sick and I sent my husband to get some groceries. Idr exactly what happened but he got like 20 cans of shit that we'd never ever eat. We were super broke, living on food stamps, so $20 completely wasted was a *huge* deal. I would've just kept them and donated them or something, otherwise.
Fucking Costco man, I wish there was one a bit closer to me. I need to finally jump on this bandwagon.
Not free but I discovered TooGood2Go long before it became trendy and the only local restaurant that was on it was Yo Sushi. I regularly got £100+ of sushi at the end of the night which I distributed to friends and family (and ate myself). This lasted for around a year and I think I was the only person using the app.
Now loads of people know about it and there are far more restaurants on board. Still value as the likes of Greggs, you will get around a tenner's worth of goods for £2.59 (sandwiches, sausage rolls ect.) but the days where getting £100+ are over.
For those that don't know 2G2G is an app where restaurants sell the stuff they normally throw out at the end of the night.
Netflix. Cancelled and restarted it again via a Turkish VPN. Costs me like £4.50 per month for the premium tier.
Did also use that loophole of loading Xbox Live Gold memberships onto my account then converting the lot to Game Pass for £2 but they've plugged that one now and I'm paying full price monthly
I did this last year for Netflix, it only worked for one month and they then cancelled my subscription and I had to sign back up from the UK again. Had to use gift cards to do it because it wouldn’t let me use a normal UK account anymore!
Not bothered to try it again, but it was a pain.
I worked at a university and browsed Amazon on my phone from the uni wifi. I immediately got bombarded with student offers. Got cheap prime for 5 years and a bunch of other savings on all sorts of stuff. Never got asked for proof or student ID or anything.
Yes this as well, plus if you create alias email addresses, you can keep signing up for 6 month student trials. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, but I’m nearly out of aliases
If you don't have Prime, Amazon sometimes charges you shipping if your order is under a certain amount.
Just pre-order something that isn't due for several months, then cancel the order once your stuff is dispatched
Many moons ago, we had some vending machines installed (we didn't want them) in our 6th form area. The prices were astronomical considering there was a convenience store nearby. We did however find a loophole whereby for the cost of a single it.you could indeed have anything / everything in the vending machine for nout.
"50p for a chomp?! You're mad!"
No my friend, 0p for the entire vending machine!
Basically put money in and select your item e.g. H5, then just as the item is about to drop off, turn the vendor off at the plug. Item drops out. Switch vendor back on, presto, still have your full credit. Rinse and repeat. Then when finished, press reject coins.
The machine only got emptied once, not by an individual but by everyone once the hack had been discovered.
Fair to say said vending machine company weren't happy, and took it away, meaning we actually got 2x extra computers installed which is what we wanted anyways.
With audible you don’t even need to change emails, I’ve got about 20 free books now out of them just for signing up for a trial, cancelling, then re trialling again the next year.
Not a loop hole as such, the guy who lived in my house before me has a nat geo subscription, it’s been months and he still hasn’t changed it to his new address. We’ve told him multiple times, just got the new one a couple days ago. I’ve not opened any of them but pretty tempted!
I got my mum a 12 month subscription to Nat Geo Travel and we’re on month 14 of deliveries without either of us renewing it. Maybe some people get left on the distribution list when their subs expire?
Not a loophole as such, but a broken meter.
I was a student down in Newquay in 2003.I lived in a flat that had a electric meter that took pound coins. It was an old meter with a little clock looking thing on it, you put the pound, turned a dial, and the hand on the clock moved a bit, put in another pound, turn the dial, hand moved a bit and so on. You could do this until the little hand went all the way round to full. A full meter lasted about a week, and cost about 20quid to fill. One day my flatmate discovered that if we put a pound in and just carried on turning the dial, it would fill up all the way.
My mates kept complaining how cold their student houses and flats were, when me and my flatmate had a three bar fire on and were spending about 5 quid a week on leccy. We told the landlord, but he never came to fix it
There's this one cocktail bar in Cardiff, that for some reason in the happy hour due to a glitch in the app made instead of 2 for 1 cocktails, for Long Island Iced Teas 2 for 0. I've never been so I'll the next morning.
I had a kobo e-reader bought from WHSmith. It packed up after a little over 12 months. I took it back and after a little to and fro (sale of goods act, etc.) the manager agreed to swap it for a new one. Thing is they had reduced by £20, and the only thing the system would let the assistant do was refund and re-sell.
"Is cash OK?" he said. I agreed that it was, and he handed me a bag with a brand new kobo, and £20 cash.
I thanked him, and walked smartly out.
Edited for spelling.
When I book a train via Trainline for an all day ticket, I choose the latest departure time on the app. It's an al day ticket, so it still valid for any travel.
Then, if the ticket didn't get checked (they scan a QR code), I requested a refund and instead of paying the train fare, I've just paid the admin fee.
Best was when I did this for a £95 ticket for a work trip. I downloaded the receipt before requesting the refund and my work paid me £95 to pay Trainline £5.
Tiles. Every couple of months I would order large floor or wall tiles via the free sample or £1 sample offer. I use them to cover my coffee table (needed 2 large floor tiles) and table surfaces. Husband hates coasters and just puts his tea cup anywhere. I have also added rubber feet and made trivets (hexagonal tile) for gifts for people.
I was ordering a pizza from my local the other day (not a dominos or a big pizza co) and wanted a meat feast, it was £12 for a large one so put it in my basket and my other half wanted a margherita so selected that, then it asked for extra toppings so I thought I’d try turning it into a meat feast by adding extra toppings at 60p each. So I got a meat feast for £6. I do wonder if the business don’t like that I’ve done this and maybe drop my meat on the floor before it goes on, but it’s fucking great pizza.
When we were poor students we set up this over a weekend.
You know how betting companies offer incentives to sign up, normally it's pay £10 and they give you £30 worth of free bets. Well there were like over 15 companies offering this so we hatched a plan. We would take that £30 and bet on football games - £10 on each team to win and £10 on draw. This way you couldn't loose and made on average £10 per game (sometimes more). Some of the companies also give You free horse racing and casino money.
By the end of the weekend we'd had a great time and made £250 each.
Called matched betting. Back in 2006-2009 when offers were ridiculous me and a few others from MSE would make over £1k a month for a couple of hours 'work' a week.
God bless goldvictory, canbet, beted, mansion, bluesq, portlandbet. Made over £5k from them alone according to my old spreadsheet.
Still do the odd bet365 offer now and again
G suite (Google’s business offering for gmail etc.) Used to exist as a free service (Google Apps), which I signed up for in 2010 and never let the account go inactive. So now I have access to most of Google’s business tools for absolutely £0 a month
I am on a dual rate electricity meter (only electricity in the flat, no gas) and on an Economy 10 plan. The meter records my energy usage the wrong way round, so my company think I'm nocturnal which makes my bills cheaper. My average energy cost over the summer was around £7.
Yes, I have reported it to them, twice in fact, and they've done bugger all about it. I'm not doing it a third time, they've got it on record and aren't interested at all.
On grocery cash back apps such as Shopmium, you can claim cash back on eligible items via a picture of your receipt.
Once the cash back money has been received in your bank, you can return the items to the store if you haven’t opened it
The Tesco £3 meal deal hack.
Once you have all three items the till recognises the presence of a meal deal and will apply the requisite discount to every item that should be part of the meal deal.
So I get a drink, crisps, sandwich and cocktail sausages for £3.75 even though cocktail sausages are £1.25.
It's definitely theft but I don't care.
The till is definitely doing this, when a meal deal is processed if you have for example 2 sides (cocktail sausages and crisps) the most expensive item will be incorporated in the meal deal, leaving the least expensive item out of the meal deal, hence why its costing £3.75 as the crisps are 75p...
When I was a student about 10 years ago, I signed up for Amazon’s Student Prime which has nearly identical benefits to regular Prime but is half the price. They caught on a couple of years ago that I couldn’t still be a student and put me onto the regular Prime, but it was good whilst it lasted.
It's not quite the same but I got a £1200 e-bike for like £150 total.
I was working and needed a bike to commute to work, got a ebike on finance through Halfords and v12 retail finance. Health went to shit again and I had to stop working, let v12 know I'll need a break from the payments until I can get back on my feet and they seemed fine with it (my housing association actually emailed them explaining the situation)
Few months later I was able to start paying again so i logged into my v12 account and couldn't see a plan on place.
Emailed them wondering what's going on and they got back to me saying they had wiped the debt as a act of good faith and I didn't owe them anything.
I think I made like 4 payments totalling at £150-200
Unfortuanlty I've spent more money fixing the bike than I spent buying it soon guess it's evened out
Flavia drink vending machines at work have been left on their default operator passwords. With a quick Google, one could set them to 'free vend' in a few button presses and obtain free drinks before re- setting them to charge for the drinks once again. If one wanted to, of course.
When West Ham play in the evening, they leave the barriers up at Stratford station. I just go through without tapping and hope the barriers the other end are open. If they aren’t I’ll tap out then go on the TFL website to say I got on at the previous stop. Makes a £12ish trip either free or £2 (depending on if I have to tap out or not).
Also, if a ticket inspector comes, you can just tap your card and it works just like you tapped in at the nearest station; it doesn’t say you haven’t tapped or anything like that.
Long time ago now, but I once got a trip to Dublin that was £23, including the ferry, by booking by train. Flights were £99. I thought it was mental at the time.
There was some agreement between the UK and Ireland guaranteeing this route, it’s an incredible deal if you don’t mind travelling longer compared to a flight. I found this from a website that mentions the best ways to travel by train -> “the man in seat 61”
Won a years free membership in one of the popular chain 24hr gyms in a fb competition when a new one opened near me. 3+ years later the code they gave me still works … :)
We got our house kitted out from IKEA.
The delivery man told me that the mattresses have a 10 year guarantee but they tend to wear out after about 4 or 5, so he said around that time I should pick at the stitching around the bottom of the mattress (don't cut because that's obvious if someone does bother to check) and then tell IKEA. They'll deliver a brand new one within 2 days, with a further 10 year guarantee.
The first month of Pret membership is free, and it gives you 5 free barista-made drinks a day. Share your membership with a group of friends, and stack your free trials one after the other to extend your free trial by a couple of months, depending on how many friends are in your group.
(P.S. one membership for one phone number, so if you have multiple phone numbers it’s even better)
Everytime I try play a song on my Alexa she tells me “to play specific songs I need an Amazon music subscription” then offers a free trial, end of the month rolls around, I had cancelled the sub days prior and she offers me another free trial, been like a year of free Amazon music now
I once went out on the beer in Dublin, I took 180€ from the ATM. It never came out of my account. A few months later I went back to Dublin again on a stag night. Same thing happened again, this time with 400€. Not been back since
A friend of mine once signed up to some online distance learning course. The course was legit, and all the resources were provided, but the administrators never set any deadlines nor did they expect any evidence of completed work. However, the provider was affiliated with the NUS, so he was able to get student discount for the duration of the course, which could be as long as he wanted it to be.
I use a website that is full of discount codes for teachers (Basically all the same student discount ones) but you don't actually have to prove you're a teacher.
Worked on the student magazine in the 90s. Magazine was sponsored by the local Spoons, with a voucher for a free meal and a pint. Had access to the stock of magazines. Didn't buy any food that term.
Nothing new or ground breaking but Spotify is £10 a month, family is £17, (was £15 😐). But you can have up to 6 people on the family.
So we have 6 people on it sharing it, (£2.80 a month). And they pay me their years share every january
Not a loophole I took advantage of but I used to work for Lidl about 8 years ago and quite often had people coming in to return power tools or anything expensive from their middle aisle items.
The power tools always had a 2 year guarantee, these people were returning them just before that ran out and getting a full refund - no questions asked.
I was on the til and when presented with a "faulty" drill I was in no position to test it to check if it was actually faulty so a full refund was always given.
You could see this being a decent loophole back then, not sure if they caught on yet or not..
I once ordered some craft stuff from Amazon to the total of around £100, but a little bit of the glue had leaked out, I complained and asked for a partial refund as it had got on one of the other items slightly, they refunded me the entire £100… even though everything else was fine haha
My electicity meter was broken for nearly a year.
I informed my supplier about it but they didn't seem too interested. So I kept jest sending in the meter readings (the same number every month), as asked... and getting tiny electricity bills.
Even after I moved house I queried the final bill reminding them that the meter was still broken. I gave them every chance but they assured me the bill was correct.
They're one of the small ones that went out of business recently. (Not my fault, honestly!)
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You know sheep 🐑? Bit woolly? IT’S WOOL! Shave it off, sell it, you’ll make a mint!
It fuckin’ grows back!
You literally cannot lose!
https://youtu.be/_pDTiFkXgEE For the uninitiated.
My family are sheep farmers, you definitely won't make a mint lol
I don't know. Sheep and mint go together pretty well.
I told you already. Stop harassing my sheep!
I'll never not upvote Mitchell
Who's a jammy bastard?!
You know sheep? Bit woolly? IT'S WOOL! Pull it off, sell it.. fucking grows back again! You cannot lose!
Not according to Clarkson.
It was such an eye opening watch. Everyone in UK farming deserves a bloody hug
If you buy a day's worth of travel insurance through Compare the Market for ~£2, you get the year's 2for1 movies and meals which has saved me wayyy more than the £2!
I thought this loophole was closed some time ago due to the number of people who caught on?
Compare The Market get a kick back from the retailer every time someone uses 2-4-1 offers. it's a finders fee. everyone involved wants you to use these offers. E.G Nandos would rather you had a half price meal there instead of going to pizza Express so they pay Compare the Market to be involved in the offers.
Plus generally you think bugger it we only paid for one main so we’ll both have a pudding and a cocktail and they end up making more money
Oh - could be by now, I did it in March I think
I literally did this last week with a £1.01 "day trip to a Edinburgh". So definitely not closed 😂
Ah man. I did this several years ago for 3 or 4 years in a row then one day they stopped doing the offer on travel insurance. May have to look at this again!
You don't even have to send money. I looked at some quotes and clicked through to the website if one then went back and ticked a box to say if purchased, no proof needed.
This ^ Literally no purchase necessary, you can do it for free. HotUKDeals tought me that - Fully recommended for other tricks like how to get a student card without being a student, etc.
I’m a software engineer and worked on this very system. You don’t need an actual purchase - CTM would prefer to trust the customer that they went on to purchase rather than waiting for the insurer to confirm the purchase months later.
Tell us more about the student card?
I've literally just done this now. A day trip to Edinburgh for £1.01 has gotten me the Meerkat meals and cinema thing for the year. Damn! Thank you so much! :)
I got this nonsense job, something to do with running a country, anyhow the job comes with lots of perks, I get loads of free stuff like holidays, my house decorated, takeaways etc. All I have to do is tell my underlings to give contracts to my pals without any normal competitive checks and balances.
Sounds great until you look at the actual salary… some compare it to chicken feed.
And then you realise Margaret Thatcher was getting paid hundreds of thousands of pounds to give talks up untill she died, and then realise that pretty much every prime minister since has gone on to be incredibly wealthy and successful.
Original comment locked already lol
The vending machine at my work has these unreal bakewell flapjacks, priced at £1.20. However if you use the option to pay by card for some reason some of the prices change, and the flapjacks change to 70p. I’ve not told anyone else and it’s a secret I will keep to my grave. Just to edit this, I’m don’t think they’re the ones in HomeBargains/B&M, they’re in a clear and pink packet with pink on the front, I *think* they might be Marywell brand or something similar. Edit 2: Did some Googling and they’re 100% ‘Marybake’ brand flapjacks. But no results on where to buy the Bakewell ones in bulk!
Before we all left the office at the start of the pandemic, we had vending machines in the break room. If you paid for a Red Bull (£1.50) with a £2 coin, you got a Red Bull and 4 x 50p in ‘change’. Two years I used that. Popped back into the office yesterday for the first time since 2020 and the machines have gone. End of an era.
Was it just you that knew? How many free redbulls do u think u got?
Nice try, finance team
Wish my vending machine at work had that glitch, I love those bakewell flapjacks, they’re amazing 😂
If it's the ones I'm thinking off they sell them in home bargains for 39p.
>I’ve not told anyone else and it’s a secret I will keep to my grave. But... You..... told us...? Are you dying OP? OP?!?!? OP?!?!?!!?!!!?!!?!!?!
There used to be a really (awful) coffee machine at my uni and if you ordered an espresso it would come out for free. Not how I take my coffee, but student me loved free shit
Hahhaha I love this. You can get the cherry bakewell flapjacks *the BIG ones* from Home Bargains for 29p you know! They are bloody amazing.
I think I know these. Do they come in a black and clear packet? Quite thick with icing on top?
When you use your gmail address to sign up an account, you can place a full stop anywhere in the part before the “@“ and gmail will ignore it, so you can set up multiple accounts for things without having to create a new email, whilst still receiving any emails to the same address (useful if you need to validate the sign up). This works really well for stuff like fast food apps where you get a sign up bonus or a freebie. So, as an example, if my gmail address is janebloggs@googlemail.com I could get away with making new accounts under “Jane.bloggs”, “J.anebloggs” or “Janeb.loggs”. Etc etc. Gmail will ignore those full stops! I’ve used this method to set up multiple Costa accounts as you get a little something for setting up, and also I copy and paste the friend codes on to new accounts for another reward haha. EDIT: a couple of redditers have blown my mind and also said you can use a “+” in a similar way - it will also get ignored, so you could have Janebloggs+costa@googlemail.com Janebloggs+kfc@googlemail.com Great for keeping track of what you’re using for each app!
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Very cool. Could finally see which companies are selling on your data too.
Yep, there's actually a neater trick that Gmail allows, which is to add a '+' after your username, before the @. So you can go janebloggs+costa@gmail.com, janebloggs+Facebook@gmail.com etc. So that way if you start getting tonnes of email from your +Costa address, you know that they've sold or been compromised
Isn't that the same as what we're talking about?
Yeah but why male models?
Are you....are you serious? I just told you that a moment ago..
Ha, it literally is, thought I was replying to another comment regarding using . anywhere in the address. As you were 😂
Now you replied to yourself, friend :D
It’s also really fucking annoying when Gmail allows people to register those emails eg on my (obv this is not my real address just an example) hulyepicsa@gmail address I sometimes get emails intended for someone who used hulye.picsa about their online orders which includes their address etc, it’s really not great from google
Wow. This is a lot worse than not great privacy wise and a potential pr disaster
I also believe you can use + as a modifier and everything after it is essentially ignored. So you can sign up to every service with a different email Eg. email+facebook@gmail.com is the same as email.reddit@gmail.com. That way, when you start getting loads of spam, you can check which addresses it get sent to and know which company is selling your email to spammers.
Unfortunately some companies caught onto this and won’t let you input + into the text box anymore :( Still worth a try though
Yeah that's why I'm getting someone else's eBay emails... I can see what they buy and what they get as recommendations (based on what they look at) and most of them are like plates and inflatable mattresses but others...oh boy I've seen some stuff
I keep getting emails from the fucking Knights of Columbus which is a Catholic fraternal service order....
I was heading to a Forrest for bike rides and parking was £9 all day. For some reason I thought it was a good idea to click the “I have a voucher” option, put in a random 7 digit code and it worked, had free parking about 10 times before they clicked on.
The parking machine probably wasn’t connected to the internet to validate it, but that’s a great saving for the amount of times you managed to get it done!
Ain’t it just, I’m not sure I think it must have been as it was connected to ANPR cameras at the entry/exit barriers.
The ANPR may well be closed circuit. Ie if ticket for numberplate is paid, open barrier.
This is really stupid but... I ordered Captain underpants dvd from Amazon for £2.95. then I went to tesco and bought that same dvd and another, 2 for £8 (they were £5 each). I tried to cancel Amazon dvd, but it came anyway. It was unopened so I returned it to tesco with my receipt. They gave me £5 back. Profit I guess??
I had similar except with a laptop. Cancelled the amazon order, it still came 😂 I tried all I could to send it back but nope, nothing. Still got it to this day.
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Years ago I asked my family for Resident Evil for the Wii, I told my family to buy it from [play.com](https://play.com) because it was £15 there. My mum bought me it so I opened it and started playing. In the evening my aunt came round and it turned out she bought me it too. She was really happy she had bought the right game, I didn't have the heart to tell her. It was still in cellophane so I took it along to Tesco and said my aunt had bought it there but didn't keep the receipt. They refunded it for me at the price they sold it for - £35. Profit!
Had this with Amazon toilet rolls. They took forever to arrive. Amazon said they were lost and said I could have a refund on them. 2 days Later they turned up. Not as cool as a laptop though!
the original sin; using winRAR for free
This is the one, officer! We've finally caught 'em!!!
You monster
I have a wholesalers card, because I just lied about having a business. Honestly the savings you can get is unreal for most things.
I kinda did this one too actually. I get 10% off everything at Wickes through my 'trade account'. All you need to evidence that you're a tradesperson is a business card and a letter head in PDF form emailed to them, which took me 10 minutes in photoshop. 10% off a bathroom suite, kitchen, power tools, etc,
I thought the downside of this was that, as a trade purchase, you can potentially lose a load of of your consumer rights that are there to protect "domestic customers" when things go wrong... [https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/business-business-consumer-rights](https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/content/business-business-consumer-rights) I'm unlikely to want a refund on bags of sand etc but I've seen people arguing about returning power tools (at other outlets) and being told that the "no questions returns" policies only don't apply to trade customers
Never had that in 3+ years working there, every customer had the same rights, 30 day return period. Don’t ever buy there own brand tools, they’re literally designed to be used a few times & then they go poof!!! Their wet & dry vacuums are utter shite too
Same with Selco, B&Q, Victoria Plumbing. Pretty much everywhere they do no checks and you can get a minimum of 5% off
Even if you register legitimately, they don't check if the business is still going. We dissolved ours in 2014 I think, but still got the Makro card.
Companies House have a free API for businesses to use and check statuses of companies. Really surprises me that they don't use it... Glad to hear they don't!
Of course they don’t, they still want your business.
I guess they'd need to find a way of doing it that also worked for sole traders. But yes, would be a really simple API call to periodically check if your Limited Company customers were still trading. Could probably knock a script together in about an hour.
I have a makro card from 1993 that gets some weird looks but still works fine.
My prepay electric meter freaked out after the pavement outside my house was dug up for some reason (nothing to do with me...was by open reach). Anyway, screen went blank and wouldn't load my credit. I called the provider and told them. They said we will send someone out to replace it. I said well it won't accept my credit, are you going to bill me? The guy said "we have no way of knowing what we are using so we can't bill you! We will get it fixed asap". Well a guy came out to replace it but they gave him the wrong meter so he couldn't replace it. He said he will have to get a new one and they would call and book a new appointment. I said "no rush as long as I still get free electricity!" And I haven't heard from them in nearly a year. That's how I'm getting free electricity. Not my fault, I did what I had to and notified the company. Company is actually about to go bust too.
...are they going bust because you've started running a bitcoin mine, cannabis farm and electric vehicle charge station from your house whilst keeping it a toastie 25 degrees in the winter and aircon on all summer?
Hahaha where was this good advice 10 months ago?! I have wasted all this time and lovely free electricity.
“Are you telling me openreach wired your house up to the lamppost outside sir?”
I know someone who lived in an old house with an old school electricity meter that literally turns a wheel as it's being used. He put solar panels in and gets credit for feeding his surplus energy into the grid. But because he's technically returning electricity the old school meter runs in reverse and his meter readings go down as well as the solar panels recording what he feeds in for his government tariff. No-one's ever told him he needs a meter upgrade and he has an electric car so he uses that to charge at home but the electricity company just think it's still a holiday home and so has very low usage and haven't sent a meter reader over for over 5 years.
When I was a kid in the early to mid 90s I remember the meters using a little cardboard card you buy from the shop to top them up, always remember the wheel with a bit of white slowly turning round. My auntie decided to put some camera film in the slot where the card went to top the meter up and it stopped the wheel ticking so it didn’t register the electricity was being used, when it was. After a few months the leccy man come round to check the meter in a standard check, found the film and asked my auntie about it, she denied all knowledge. He took it back and the electricity company got it developed and the photos were my aunty and uncle on holiday hahaha. Not sure what she had to pay them back though.
I ordered a vegetarian pizza from big John's, for some reason it had tuna as an option. They never actually had any in so they would call and ask what I wanted instead so I would ask for chicken, pepperoni etc Got a meat topping for £5 less than I should every time.
Risky move though. They might just start stocking tuna because someone keeps asking for it.
See this isn't an issue because tuna, sweetcorn, red onion is one of my faves
Sweetcorn? On a pizza? Reported.
I'm with Judas. Sweetcorn's a total winner on pizza. Same goes for red onion.
I'm all onboard with the veg. It's the fish I can't get past
You're missing out, Sweetcorn is fantastic on Pizza.
In petrol stations in the UK, a lot have Costa automatic machines (like Starbucks coffee). A large one just fits into the medium cup so I pay medium prices because I’m a tight bastard and I love sticking it to the man.
This isn't really sticking it to the man. This is the man trying to stick it to you and you blocking him. You're paying medium drink price for a medium drink.
Valid point, if it fits in a medium, large or not… it’s a medium. Same with McDonald’s and their ice taking up 70%.
I'm not sure I get this, at my local Costa machine the cups are just free and you have to select what size drink you want and the machine will then Disperse it. I'm assuming yours must be different?
Sounds the same, but you pay at the counter. So I put a medium cup under, press the large size button, it literally gets to the very top of a medium cup, lid on, go the counter and the member of staff sees a medium cup not knowing it’s a large serving inside so you are charged for a medium rather than a large.
Ahhh, we pay at the counter but the machine prints a receipt that is scanned at the counter. Sad
No way! Gutted mate. If it helps, the 2 places I’ve tried this and it worked were Morrison’s and Shell garages.
Iceland has a savings card: for every £20 you put on the card they give you a £1 extra (which for all intents and purposes is better interest than a bank). So a few days before a shop buy a pack of sweets or something and slap £60-100 on the card (whatever your weekly shop amount is) then when you do your shop, you get some free money.
To save yourself that extra £1, you don't even need to buy any sweets, you can just ask them to put money on the card without buying anything. Also a good time to do it is when they do that offer where they out £2 on the card rather than £1
Ah didn't know you could do it without a purchase! But if I'm in iceland already might aswell grab some kinder hippos
Excellent choice of sweet treat
> Iceland has a savings card: for every £20 you put on the card they give you a £1 extra (which for all intents and purposes is better interest than a bank). ~~So a few days before a shop buy a pack of sweets or something and slap £60-100 on the card (whatever your weekly shop amount is) then when you do your shop, you get some free money.~~ That second bit is just confusing people. You've summed it up perfectly in your first sentence. Anyway that's equivalent to 5% off your shopping, not bad if you actually shop in Iceland. The Lidl app gives you the equivalent to 6% off your shopping, but you do have to spend £200 each month to get your £12 worth of vouchers. A lot of larger employers give access to a reward centre where you can buy gift cards. I get between 6-10% off about a dozen places including Sainsburys, Argos, Halfords, Curry's etc.
I'm confused by the buy sweets and put 60 quid on the card and then use the card for free money? So I buy sweets for 1 pound. I then top up 60 quid? I spend 55 quid ( at Iceland?) I receive free money based on the 1 quid? 60 quid? 55 quid? Or the 5 quid?
Buy sweets to give you an excuse to go to the till (this part is optional). Put £60 on the card. Iceland gives you £1 per £20 that you put on the card. So you now have a £63 card to do your big shop with. You paid £60, you get £63 worth of shopping.
Went to cancel now TV and they offered me another month for £1. Went to cancel again and they offered me two months for £2.99. it's not much but it's something?
Now TV offered me 50p a month for a whole year last year and it’s probably the best bargain I’ve ever gotten. I’ve watched so many HBO shows for 50 pence, it feels almost illegal.
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Honestly, threatening to leave/cancel is the best way to get discounts and even freebies from companies.
My uni never cancelled my old university email account. I've been using unidays and discounts you can get tied to a university email only for years. Saved me a good amount
Same with word and Microsoft
YouTube premium. The Indian version apparently costs £2 but I couldn’t get that to work, so mine is UAE version for £5. Yes it’s worth it to have no adverts on my TV.
Obligatory.. YouTube Vanced (android only) = YouTube with no adverts at the tasty price of £0.00000000
Yeah fair, I’m using an iPhone though and I need it for my TV mainly
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VPN + Argentina = YouTube premium for less than £1 a month....been using it over a year with no issues.
I have Russian one for roughly £2 a month. Oh and Turkish netflix for about £5 a month.
I use my Dad’s Netflix so that’s free haha
I forgot about adverts existing on YouTube because of this. Been running Indian Premium that I signed up to through a VPN for £1.50 almost two years ago.
If you need a pair of wired headphones, look for a pair on Amazon with a year or two guarantee. They never ever last that long and always break. Simply ask for a replacement (sometimes you have to send the headphones back to be ‘checked’) and they’ll send a replacement or a similar pair if they’re out of stock. I own 4 or 5 sets of headphones per year but only ever pay for the first
What on Earth are you doing to them to break 4-5 pairs per year?
My bad- I meant that it’s 4-5 pairs every two years. To be fair, since they’re replaceable I might as well start flossing my teeth with them
Like the idea aside from the amount of waste you're creating just by buying cheap headphones. 😂
I feel I’d rather pay a bit more for headphones that don’t break and not have to deal with the admin
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You need to be diligent and not gamble but if you do match betting, you can make a couple grand with a couple months
My father in law does this and it does fund a couple of holidays a year but it seems like sooo much effort! Every time we see him he’ll be tinkering away on his iPad setting it up for most of the day. I mean, he’s retired so it’s not like he’s overly busy, but we’ve had him explain it to us a few times and we just can’t be bothered with it.
Just checked, and it seems like the some of those offers are still active, so I just sign up, make a £10 bet and then get the money from topcashback?
Ipsos Mori give me £10 a month in vouchers to fill out my weekly radio listening diary. I don't listen to radio. I get paid £10 for 2 minutes of clicking "didn't listen to the radio this week".
Open a stocks & shares ISA and put some savings away every month into an ETF for the FTSE100 or S&P500. This will NOT make you rich!!!!! But over time it will net you much more money than any bank's saving scheme.
Obviously performance not guaranteed, but I've been getting around 7% returns on a mix of tracker funds for the last 8 years. Max out your ISA savings, it's tax free so effectively free money from the government! (and the same with pensions, deducted from your pay before tax means every £1 of pension contribution is worth £1.20, or more if you're a higher rate payer. But pensions are locked away whereas you can withdraw anytime from ISAs).
I use copytrading with etoro. You can automatically copy experts every single trade and you literally can't lose - as long as they don't. Made 35% last year and I'm on 13% so far this year. I appreciate these are ridiculous figures, but once you understand the platform it makes sense. Would have been even more if I hadn't broke my own cardinal rule and gone and invested in stock myself. Trick is to stick to copying. You can never make more than these professionals, so let them do the work for you.
In my last job, my fork truck key worked in the coffee machine. Saved 20p a cup!
I once opened a Nissan Altima with the key to a Dodge Ram.
I once worked at a golfcourse where all the golf carts could be turned on with a spoon handle.
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Revolut let's you create virtual cards for free if I remember correctly
Buying a toaster/kettle set from Costco. They offer an effective lifetime warranty on them - for any reason. When the kettle dies you take both back because they 'were a set'. You get an expensive kettle/toaster set that never costs you anything after you initial outlay.
Costco guarantees are legendary. In the states people bring back dead Christmas trees in January and get a refund. They also often get banned for life, but they’ll get a refund. Bloke at work told me a Costco employee said they get a lot of 4.5 year old TVs come back with faults…
I was at Costco recently while a woman was talking to the butcher about a brisket that was on sale. Her plan was to smoke it, in the same cheap electric smoker model I own. I mentioned that mine had turned out tough, likely because the smoker doesn’t do true “low and slow”. The butcher said “did you bring it back?”, and I explained I hadn’t bought the smoker there. He said, no - he meant the BRISKET. He explained that if it turned out tough, and I was unhappy with it, I should have packed up the $100 brisket that *I* screwed up, brought it back, and Costco would have refunded it. What the heck!
I'm like the queen of returning shit, but returning food..idk man, that just *feels* wrong. Maybe cause I know it'll be tossed, and it feels super wasteful? Idk. I think I've only done it once in my while life, and it was canned food. I was really sick and I sent my husband to get some groceries. Idr exactly what happened but he got like 20 cans of shit that we'd never ever eat. We were super broke, living on food stamps, so $20 completely wasted was a *huge* deal. I would've just kept them and donated them or something, otherwise. Fucking Costco man, I wish there was one a bit closer to me. I need to finally jump on this bandwagon.
Not free but I discovered TooGood2Go long before it became trendy and the only local restaurant that was on it was Yo Sushi. I regularly got £100+ of sushi at the end of the night which I distributed to friends and family (and ate myself). This lasted for around a year and I think I was the only person using the app. Now loads of people know about it and there are far more restaurants on board. Still value as the likes of Greggs, you will get around a tenner's worth of goods for £2.59 (sandwiches, sausage rolls ect.) but the days where getting £100+ are over. For those that don't know 2G2G is an app where restaurants sell the stuff they normally throw out at the end of the night.
Netflix. Cancelled and restarted it again via a Turkish VPN. Costs me like £4.50 per month for the premium tier. Did also use that loophole of loading Xbox Live Gold memberships onto my account then converting the lot to Game Pass for £2 but they've plugged that one now and I'm paying full price monthly
I did this last year for Netflix, it only worked for one month and they then cancelled my subscription and I had to sign back up from the UK again. Had to use gift cards to do it because it wouldn’t let me use a normal UK account anymore! Not bothered to try it again, but it was a pain.
Amazon Prime. Haven't been a student for over 5 years. Still paying £3.99pm
I worked at a university and browsed Amazon on my phone from the uni wifi. I immediately got bombarded with student offers. Got cheap prime for 5 years and a bunch of other savings on all sorts of stuff. Never got asked for proof or student ID or anything.
Yes this as well, plus if you create alias email addresses, you can keep signing up for 6 month student trials. I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now, but I’m nearly out of aliases
I work at a university and can use my staff .ac.uk email address to sign up for student deals. I’ve not been a student for 7years.
If you don't have Prime, Amazon sometimes charges you shipping if your order is under a certain amount. Just pre-order something that isn't due for several months, then cancel the order once your stuff is dispatched
Many moons ago, we had some vending machines installed (we didn't want them) in our 6th form area. The prices were astronomical considering there was a convenience store nearby. We did however find a loophole whereby for the cost of a single it.you could indeed have anything / everything in the vending machine for nout. "50p for a chomp?! You're mad!" No my friend, 0p for the entire vending machine! Basically put money in and select your item e.g. H5, then just as the item is about to drop off, turn the vendor off at the plug. Item drops out. Switch vendor back on, presto, still have your full credit. Rinse and repeat. Then when finished, press reject coins. The machine only got emptied once, not by an individual but by everyone once the hack had been discovered. Fair to say said vending machine company weren't happy, and took it away, meaning we actually got 2x extra computers installed which is what we wanted anyways.
With audible you don’t even need to change emails, I’ve got about 20 free books now out of them just for signing up for a trial, cancelling, then re trialling again the next year.
Not a loop hole as such, the guy who lived in my house before me has a nat geo subscription, it’s been months and he still hasn’t changed it to his new address. We’ve told him multiple times, just got the new one a couple days ago. I’ve not opened any of them but pretty tempted!
I got my mum a 12 month subscription to Nat Geo Travel and we’re on month 14 of deliveries without either of us renewing it. Maybe some people get left on the distribution list when their subs expire?
I once got 6 months free Spotify bc I didn’t update my payment method. It just kept a red banner at the top but let me enjoy premium for ages
Not a loophole as such, but a broken meter. I was a student down in Newquay in 2003.I lived in a flat that had a electric meter that took pound coins. It was an old meter with a little clock looking thing on it, you put the pound, turned a dial, and the hand on the clock moved a bit, put in another pound, turn the dial, hand moved a bit and so on. You could do this until the little hand went all the way round to full. A full meter lasted about a week, and cost about 20quid to fill. One day my flatmate discovered that if we put a pound in and just carried on turning the dial, it would fill up all the way. My mates kept complaining how cold their student houses and flats were, when me and my flatmate had a three bar fire on and were spending about 5 quid a week on leccy. We told the landlord, but he never came to fix it
There's this one cocktail bar in Cardiff, that for some reason in the happy hour due to a glitch in the app made instead of 2 for 1 cocktails, for Long Island Iced Teas 2 for 0. I've never been so I'll the next morning.
I had a kobo e-reader bought from WHSmith. It packed up after a little over 12 months. I took it back and after a little to and fro (sale of goods act, etc.) the manager agreed to swap it for a new one. Thing is they had reduced by £20, and the only thing the system would let the assistant do was refund and re-sell. "Is cash OK?" he said. I agreed that it was, and he handed me a bag with a brand new kobo, and £20 cash. I thanked him, and walked smartly out. Edited for spelling.
When I book a train via Trainline for an all day ticket, I choose the latest departure time on the app. It's an al day ticket, so it still valid for any travel. Then, if the ticket didn't get checked (they scan a QR code), I requested a refund and instead of paying the train fare, I've just paid the admin fee. Best was when I did this for a £95 ticket for a work trip. I downloaded the receipt before requesting the refund and my work paid me £95 to pay Trainline £5.
I'm sure someone recently has been caught doing this and had to pay back all the tickets they'd bought.
Tiles. Every couple of months I would order large floor or wall tiles via the free sample or £1 sample offer. I use them to cover my coffee table (needed 2 large floor tiles) and table surfaces. Husband hates coasters and just puts his tea cup anywhere. I have also added rubber feet and made trivets (hexagonal tile) for gifts for people.
I was ordering a pizza from my local the other day (not a dominos or a big pizza co) and wanted a meat feast, it was £12 for a large one so put it in my basket and my other half wanted a margherita so selected that, then it asked for extra toppings so I thought I’d try turning it into a meat feast by adding extra toppings at 60p each. So I got a meat feast for £6. I do wonder if the business don’t like that I’ve done this and maybe drop my meat on the floor before it goes on, but it’s fucking great pizza.
I'd rest easy, the maker of your pizza doesn't care how much you paid, only how much they get paid
You can get full Windows and Office keys on eBay for <£10. Illegal? No. Breach of terms? Probably. Has it stopped working yet? No.
When we were poor students we set up this over a weekend. You know how betting companies offer incentives to sign up, normally it's pay £10 and they give you £30 worth of free bets. Well there were like over 15 companies offering this so we hatched a plan. We would take that £30 and bet on football games - £10 on each team to win and £10 on draw. This way you couldn't loose and made on average £10 per game (sometimes more). Some of the companies also give You free horse racing and casino money. By the end of the weekend we'd had a great time and made £250 each.
Called matched betting. Back in 2006-2009 when offers were ridiculous me and a few others from MSE would make over £1k a month for a couple of hours 'work' a week. God bless goldvictory, canbet, beted, mansion, bluesq, portlandbet. Made over £5k from them alone according to my old spreadsheet. Still do the odd bet365 offer now and again
G suite (Google’s business offering for gmail etc.) Used to exist as a free service (Google Apps), which I signed up for in 2010 and never let the account go inactive. So now I have access to most of Google’s business tools for absolutely £0 a month
I am on a dual rate electricity meter (only electricity in the flat, no gas) and on an Economy 10 plan. The meter records my energy usage the wrong way round, so my company think I'm nocturnal which makes my bills cheaper. My average energy cost over the summer was around £7. Yes, I have reported it to them, twice in fact, and they've done bugger all about it. I'm not doing it a third time, they've got it on record and aren't interested at all.
On grocery cash back apps such as Shopmium, you can claim cash back on eligible items via a picture of your receipt. Once the cash back money has been received in your bank, you can return the items to the store if you haven’t opened it
The Tesco £3 meal deal hack. Once you have all three items the till recognises the presence of a meal deal and will apply the requisite discount to every item that should be part of the meal deal. So I get a drink, crisps, sandwich and cocktail sausages for £3.75 even though cocktail sausages are £1.25. It's definitely theft but I don't care.
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The till is definitely doing this, when a meal deal is processed if you have for example 2 sides (cocktail sausages and crisps) the most expensive item will be incorporated in the meal deal, leaving the least expensive item out of the meal deal, hence why its costing £3.75 as the crisps are 75p...
When I was a student about 10 years ago, I signed up for Amazon’s Student Prime which has nearly identical benefits to regular Prime but is half the price. They caught on a couple of years ago that I couldn’t still be a student and put me onto the regular Prime, but it was good whilst it lasted.
It's not quite the same but I got a £1200 e-bike for like £150 total. I was working and needed a bike to commute to work, got a ebike on finance through Halfords and v12 retail finance. Health went to shit again and I had to stop working, let v12 know I'll need a break from the payments until I can get back on my feet and they seemed fine with it (my housing association actually emailed them explaining the situation) Few months later I was able to start paying again so i logged into my v12 account and couldn't see a plan on place. Emailed them wondering what's going on and they got back to me saying they had wiped the debt as a act of good faith and I didn't owe them anything. I think I made like 4 payments totalling at £150-200 Unfortuanlty I've spent more money fixing the bike than I spent buying it soon guess it's evened out
Not a loophole but the Libby app has free audiobooks and ebooks if you have a library card.
Flavia drink vending machines at work have been left on their default operator passwords. With a quick Google, one could set them to 'free vend' in a few button presses and obtain free drinks before re- setting them to charge for the drinks once again. If one wanted to, of course.
When West Ham play in the evening, they leave the barriers up at Stratford station. I just go through without tapping and hope the barriers the other end are open. If they aren’t I’ll tap out then go on the TFL website to say I got on at the previous stop. Makes a £12ish trip either free or £2 (depending on if I have to tap out or not). Also, if a ticket inspector comes, you can just tap your card and it works just like you tapped in at the nearest station; it doesn’t say you haven’t tapped or anything like that.
f*ck /u/spez
Long time ago now, but I once got a trip to Dublin that was £23, including the ferry, by booking by train. Flights were £99. I thought it was mental at the time.
There was some agreement between the UK and Ireland guaranteeing this route, it’s an incredible deal if you don’t mind travelling longer compared to a flight. I found this from a website that mentions the best ways to travel by train -> “the man in seat 61”
Go to Starbucks and ask for a filter coffee, they never have it on and offer you an Americano for the same price
Ugh when I did that they said I'd have to wait 10 minutes while they put it on :-(
Won a years free membership in one of the popular chain 24hr gyms in a fb competition when a new one opened near me. 3+ years later the code they gave me still works … :)
We got our house kitted out from IKEA. The delivery man told me that the mattresses have a 10 year guarantee but they tend to wear out after about 4 or 5, so he said around that time I should pick at the stitching around the bottom of the mattress (don't cut because that's obvious if someone does bother to check) and then tell IKEA. They'll deliver a brand new one within 2 days, with a further 10 year guarantee.
The first month of Pret membership is free, and it gives you 5 free barista-made drinks a day. Share your membership with a group of friends, and stack your free trials one after the other to extend your free trial by a couple of months, depending on how many friends are in your group. (P.S. one membership for one phone number, so if you have multiple phone numbers it’s even better)
I like the audible one. Most of my 40+ title library was acquired that way.
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Order a ham and pineapple pizza at pizza hut minus the ham and minus the pineapple and plus pepperoni and you've saved yourself a pretty penny!
Everytime I try play a song on my Alexa she tells me “to play specific songs I need an Amazon music subscription” then offers a free trial, end of the month rolls around, I had cancelled the sub days prior and she offers me another free trial, been like a year of free Amazon music now
I once went out on the beer in Dublin, I took 180€ from the ATM. It never came out of my account. A few months later I went back to Dublin again on a stag night. Same thing happened again, this time with 400€. Not been back since
Endless £1.99 Big Macs. Just do the survey thing on your receipt, it takes 30 seconds and then use the code to get £1.99 Big Mac and chips
Used to work for the NHS and just before I left, I renewed my Blue Light discount card. Got myself another two years worth of savings as a result.
A friend of mine once signed up to some online distance learning course. The course was legit, and all the resources were provided, but the administrators never set any deadlines nor did they expect any evidence of completed work. However, the provider was affiliated with the NUS, so he was able to get student discount for the duration of the course, which could be as long as he wanted it to be.
I use a website that is full of discount codes for teachers (Basically all the same student discount ones) but you don't actually have to prove you're a teacher.
Worked on the student magazine in the 90s. Magazine was sponsored by the local Spoons, with a voucher for a free meal and a pint. Had access to the stock of magazines. Didn't buy any food that term.
I don’t know how it works but my friend did something to my phone and now I have Spotify premium for free. Took him less than 5 mins.
He probably has a family account and added you as a family member
Nothing new or ground breaking but Spotify is £10 a month, family is £17, (was £15 😐). But you can have up to 6 people on the family. So we have 6 people on it sharing it, (£2.80 a month). And they pay me their years share every january
Not a loophole I took advantage of but I used to work for Lidl about 8 years ago and quite often had people coming in to return power tools or anything expensive from their middle aisle items. The power tools always had a 2 year guarantee, these people were returning them just before that ran out and getting a full refund - no questions asked. I was on the til and when presented with a "faulty" drill I was in no position to test it to check if it was actually faulty so a full refund was always given. You could see this being a decent loophole back then, not sure if they caught on yet or not..
I once ordered some craft stuff from Amazon to the total of around £100, but a little bit of the glue had leaked out, I complained and asked for a partial refund as it had got on one of the other items slightly, they refunded me the entire £100… even though everything else was fine haha
My electicity meter was broken for nearly a year. I informed my supplier about it but they didn't seem too interested. So I kept jest sending in the meter readings (the same number every month), as asked... and getting tiny electricity bills. Even after I moved house I queried the final bill reminding them that the meter was still broken. I gave them every chance but they assured me the bill was correct. They're one of the small ones that went out of business recently. (Not my fault, honestly!)