What sort of everyday scams or rorts do any of you pull. I'm NOT talking about ripping off hundreds of people or anything that is highly illegal and that would most likely result in jail time.

I'm talking about the little things that people do, that might save a few bucks and gives them the satisfaction of getting one over someone, or some corporation.

I'll start the ball rolling, of one I heard recently.

My friend has one of those tags for the road tolls, but he never attaches it to the windscreen. He always drives through the toll sensor and waits for the failure notice in the mail, which normally arrives in 2-3 weeks. If he pays it immediately through his toll account there is no penalty, just the normal road toll cost.

Now here is where the "scam" is - he estimates in about 25-30% of the time he doesn't receive a notice and that's because the camera couldn't pick up his car number plate details for some reason. He thinks he saves $20-25 a month.

What sort of personal scams do any of you pull or have heard of ??

McDonalds had a promotion where if your meal took more than 60 seconds from time of order you get a free qtr pounder

I would place my order, then pay my with card and ask for $100 cash out. All cashouts of $100 required management approval, so it always took these ****ers over a minute to get a manager off their ass and to the window to approve the cash out

By the time I got to the pick up window 90 secs was gone and theyd give me the voucher for a free qtr pounder

I feel terrible.

lol

Its difficult to win a thread faster than this

Is this the corollary thread to the stingy thread?

I don't do this because I'm not a dumb, poor student anymore. At the self-checkout lanes at grocery stores I'd ring up not-bananas as bananas. It started small. "**** this, I'm not paying full price for tomatoes." The hubris went up exponentially. Before long I was ringing up the best cuts of steak as bananas. Then I was doing it more than once per trip. "Why not surf and turf for $2?" Bam, steak and lobster. Once I rung up a huge plate of like 50 tiger shrimp as bananas. For a couple months I was eating like a king.

Obv I feel bad now, and I flew a little too close to the sun, but I never got caught. The employees that lord over the six or so self-scan machines are too busy daydreaming to care about what you're doing.

get some sunglasses, slick jacket, and do your hair. walk around the mall like hot ****. some 18 year old girls will approach you. tell them you are a movie star and are appearing in the new twilight or hunger games movie. Enjoy your blowjob

wtf, do you live in an 80s music video?

at the McDonalds by my job, and I think most McDonalds in New York, they charge for sweet n sour sauce if you dont buy nuggets, (which is ridiculous because if you get a mcchicken or chicken sandwich its still chicken).

Anyway if you wait until you get to the second window ask for "ketchup and sweet n sour" they give it up without a hitch. Its weird because if you ask for sweet n sour alone they try to charge you up to 15 cents, but if you say ketchup first its free. I guess they feel like giving you crap about sweet n sour is just too much work since they are already giving you ketchup for free.

legit stuff here, not going to like that I ring up yams as regular potatoes all the time in the self checkout line. Mainly b/c the price diff. is negligible and it takes like 30sec longer to navigate to the yams button when the russet potatoes can be selected from the popular items screen

12 years ago me and a few of my broke-ass college friends dine-and-dashed a couple restaurants. One was IHOP and the other was Bennigans. This is super easy to do especially when you have a bad waiter who likes to disappear for 5 minutes at a time.

I mentioned this on 2p2 many years ago and a bunch of waiters got all butthurt about it.

This. I'm even scared to try to follow but here goes.

There was a new parking deck opened on campus a block away from the building all of my classes were in last summer. It cost $700/semester to park there, and many of the kids from my school were gladly paying it because parking is a huge bitch. I figured I just pay by the hour as I go rather than shelling out $700 the first semester in operation, but I began to notice how laxly enforced the metered parking was (at drastic odds with every other metered space on campus), so last semester I just said **** it and parked in it every day for the semester and never paid a cent. Got one parking ticket for $20 over the course of the semester, and had a better/more convenient parking spot in the deck than those who paid $700 to boot.

back in high school when we would go see movies in the theatre.... two of us would buy tickets... then two of us would go in... then one person stays in their seat and the other person walks out with both tickets and you give the other ticket to your friend... then you both walk in. then you repeat this for however many people need to get inside. so you only have to pay for 2 tickets and you can get a bunch of people inside.

this tactic obviously works for things other than movies... just as long as there are "in and out privileges" and they don't scan your tickets with one of those bar-code reader things.

and if you only want to pay for 1 ticket... you fold over the part of the ticket that gets ripped off and just flash it to the ticket collector. it will look like its already been ripped, when really it's just folded back behind the ticket and it's still in tact. so once everyone is inside, you take the two tickets (one of which is still in tact) and get the refund for the in tact ticket and use the other ticket to go back in. so you can get lots of people inside by only paying for 1 ticket.

first time I've genuinely LOL'd in a long time. That was awesome.

I go in to a supermarket and buy the most expensive bottle of wine they have (in Tesco this is about £20) then buy a cheap bottle of wine from a crap supermarket for like £2.99. I drink the expensive bottle, fill it up minus one glass with the cheap stuff then take it back and say it's off. All shops have a policy where staff are not allowed to taste stuff that customers bring back so this is fool proof. Obviously you can't do this with the same supermarket every week.

I noticed one time when I was super hungover and getting subway, I had grabbed a water out of the drink fridge and drank it while I was ordering my sandwich. By the time I got to the register, the guy asked me if I wanted chips and a drink. Out of habit I said no and didn't realize I never paid for my water until I was driving home. I tried this again and it works like 90% of the time. Subway employees are ****ing dumb, and the beautiful thing is it's usually a different person at the register than the person who saw you take a water, so if there's any kind of business in there they will be too busy to notice or care. The thing I love about it is you can take a big ole swig right in front of them as they ask you if you want chips and a drink and if you say no, it never registers with them that the water in your hand is from the store. I haven't tried it with the bottled sodas, seems like I'd be pushing my luck there.

There are a few at my work that other people do that are pretty lol like overcharging customers that are obviously tourists by a buck or something and pocketing the change. One guy invented this system where you buy a 30-ticket discount fare book, and at the end of your shift, you drop in say 10 tickets and take the discounted difference out of your take. That one I thought was really funny b/c you can only realistically make out with like 5 or 6 bucks a shift that way.

I did this one a total of 3 times a few years ago.

1. Guitar Hero guitar breaks
2. Buy one at Walmart
3. Bring home and switch out broken for good one
4. Return broken one in new box

you need to find the clinically depressed ones that have a dull glaze in their eyes as they ask you what toppings you have. I do know the type of employee you're talking about and they are the 10% where I won't even try to pull it off.

For the past 10 years (two dozen times?) I've always bought only senior tickets. The person ripping has never noticed.

I feel like "didn't care" beats "didn't notice" -- prolly some 17 year old kid making $7.75/hr and doesn't wanna cause a big fuss.

Do they not say anything when you try to buy them? While I wouldn't expect them to ID you, common sense dictates that you probably aren't a senior. This is a way bigger scam than the ticket-ripper, as that person probably rarely looks at the ticket type (and even if he did, wouldn't care).

(this argument is obv invalid if you're close to senior-age or look old)

^^^ i assume he buys them from the machine

that's an amazing idea.

i have a pair of bose headphones and the sound doesn't work out of the left side. i should get myself a working set with this scam.

Yeah, the Regal by our house has a kiosk outside.


Twice they asked me why I was returning it. I told them it was a present for my nephews birthday but he already had one. The trick is to package it back up exactly like the original, in the plastic and all.

I always take a penny and never leave a penny.

Repackaging it sounds way too much work. Just say you bought it broken and want to return it for cash.