[Offers] Mostly legal and mostly pikey ways you have saved money

[looney]

Waitrose for a coffee (and newspaper if spending over a tenner)

60p gets demi baguette and free coffee,

 

[maffew]

This was a great scam used by a mate of mine years ago, but might not work any more. If he was hungry, he'd find the number of the local Macdonalds and ring them up saying he had just bought a MaccyD meal but the person serving him had put the drink in the bag which had spilled and ruined it, so could he get a replacement? Normally he'd be put on to the manager who, keen on maintaining good customer service, would sort it. So my mate would just walk up to the counter, tell them his name, and a free meal would be waiting for him.

We use to do this at Maccy D's, eat half a big Mac and fries, pull out a bit of hair and place inside the remaining Big Mac, instant free burger until they started making us open our burgers at the counter

 

[looney]

Having a good moan to companies customer services by e=mail can get you all kinds of freebies eg £10 worth of Patak discount vouchers.

will be e-mailing Nescafe later for a good moan I wonder what that will get me.

 

[Norman Potting]

60p gets demi baguette and free coffee,

15p gingerbread man from the bakery counter

 

[maffew]

I still use a couple of little savers, but one I will divulge is now defunct. Back in the dial up era NTL offered a 5p per min internet service via an 0345 number. I managed to find a way to access the same gateway via a free 0800 number and got free Internet access for a good while until broadband came out. (so did a lot of those close to me)

* Not sure this was strictly legal

I did the same kind of with a BT engineers charge card number 4564548870007 (I can still here the bleeps of dialling that number 27 years on. The number had a daily 30 quid limit on it which we used most days from a payphone at school phoning 0898 sex lines. On payphones as well if you finished your call before the coin had dropped, hold the follow on call button and punch it hard on the right hand side. Voila your 10p or 20p back in the day came straight back out. We didnt have a phone at home so to save money in payphones I knew all the numbers over the road and would arrange for mate to call me on one at x oçlock

The same payphones had a crisp packet stuck up where the coins dropped and were visited on a daily basis Oh and a Tekken3 arcade machine where I worked, took about 1-200 GBP per day. One day mysteriously whilst cleaning the machines in the morning, it was noted that the back had fallen off said machine and a tray had been played between the coin mechanism, and the bit at the bottom which collects the money, therefore catching the money. It still made a hefty profit where the money was distributed between whoever was scamming it

 

[StonehamPark]

Definitely a bit naughty.

15+ years ago I'd find video games 'on sale' at one retailer in town, buy it, take all the stickers off and go to a different shop that sells it for a higher price.
I'd say I'd lost the receipt, and depending who was serving me, I'd either get a cash refund or a voucher, both being more than the original price I bought the game for.

 

[Kazenga <3]

This was a great scam used by a mate of mine years ago, but might not work any more. If he was hungry, he'd find the number of the local Macdonalds and ring them up saying he had just bought a MaccyD meal but the person serving him had put the drink in the bag which had spilled and ruined it, so could he get a replacement? Normally he'd be put on to the manager who, keen on maintaining good customer service, would sort it. So my mate would just walk up to the counter, tell them his name, and a free meal would be waiting for him.

Can confirm still works. Group of mates used to do this when we were at Uni after our sports matches every Wednesday. Eventually they started asking for a car and number plate to check it was legit and that we had been through the drive-thru. Suffice to say some of the staff there are not the brightest, and at one point were actually trawling through the systems to find a yellow Lamborghini Gallardo, number plate JS4V 1LE.

 

[marlowe]

In the days of vinyl LPs and C90 cassettes I'd regularly buy LPs from Virgin or HMV, take them home and record them onto cassette and then return the LP to the shop and get a refund using the receipt.

 

[AmexRuislip]

Clean my car at work, using their hoover and washing facilities.
Print stuff off at work, no need for printer at home.

 

[maffew]

perform sex acts on myself at work, using their hoover.
Print stuff off at work, no need for printer at home.

Printing stuff at work yes, I used to have my post put through the franking machine at work. Never abused the company hoover though, saves a tenner I suppose

 

[AmexRuislip]

Never abused the company hoover though

What are you trying to suggest, I'm quite sensitive to such accusations

 

[WildWood]

When I was a kid (about 30 years ago!) I used to go round all the local phone boxes & stuff the cash return bit at the bottom with loo roll. Go back round them the following night & collect all the coins that had got stuck. Stuff & repeat!!

 

[maffew]

When I was a kid (about 30 years ago!) I used to go round all the local phone boxes & stuff the cash return bit at the bottom with loo roll. Go back round them the following night & collect all the coins that had got stuck. Stuff & repeat!!

^^^^^^

 

[marlowe]

There is a Waitrose near where I work and I sometimes pop in for a paper and a sandwich, nothing sadder than the cheapskates scrounging coffee. I once was behind a man at the checkout who's only purchase was a can of Waitrose Savers Vegetable Soup..... 27 p I think it was, and he waved his card and asked for his coffee.

Because of environmental concerns Waitrose are phasing out their takeaway coffee cups but they still want to provide their customers with free coffee so in order to do so they are asking customers to bring their own cups. I think you must have lost all sense of personal dignity if you are prepared to bring your own cup in order to get a free coffee. I'm not sure it sets a particularly good precedent in customer relations for a supermarket to be asking their customers to humiliate themselves in order to be granted that little reward. There is a bit of an unhealthy sado-masochistic undercurrent to the whole arrangement. All very venus in furs. Next they'll be asking their customers to turn up in a gimp mask and a straw.

 

[The Bear]

Wrapping a 1p coin in a Rizla seems to work in a 20p vending machine.

Self reductions in TK Maxx was also always a winner.

 

[maffew]

Wrapping a 1p coin in a Rizla seems to work in a 20p vending machine.

Self reductions in TK Maxx was also always a winner.

Good one if true, not sure it is though, coin mechs are pretty accurate bits of kit, that said mexican pesos (I cant remember what oin it was, it had a hole in the middle like a polo) used to work ib vending machines but I cant remember if they increased or decreased the value of the coin. Either way a good way to get rid of them

 

[StonehamPark]

Used to put 10p coins in the pool tables in Spain.
100 pesetas I think they used to be.

 

[maffew]

Used to put 10p coins in the pool tables in Spain.
100 pesetas I think they used to be.

Aah pool table hacks. You could jam the coin mech in with another coin and wobble it about to get free games. Or 6 sponge tennis size balls worked at school!

 

[Luke93]

Definitely pikey this one... As a teenager our family would always spend holidays in Devon, and I learnt a few tricks in the arcade. Electric lighters can give you free credits on some machines (mainly the crane grabbers). Older Simpsons fruit machines had a code programmed in by hitting the nudge / hold buttons in the right order which emptied the reserve cache (from memory it was 1,2,3,3,2,1,2,1,3).

 

[Cian]

Years back there used to be an engineer code number that went straight to the Eircom (BT equivalent ex-govt owned telco in Ireland) dialup ISP, but for free. Worked great on landlines, but I used a new entrant mobile firm that just threw hard to handle numbers out to the local exchange to their HQ and charged you whatever they got charged. This was in the days before any form of mobile internet so I was using it for a 9600 modem connection. Dog slow but it was free.

Many months later I got a call on my mobile asking if I worked for Eircom and, if I did, could I please use my provided landline equipment in future as I was costing them rather a lot of money.