Ask Lemmy

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

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

Don’t be a dick to service workers. Your entire life will be better.

Alright, so, in Texas you're not allowed to own an opossum as a pet. There is no license for owning a pet opossum (they're "fur-bearing animals"). However, there is a license that'll let you kill opossums for their fur. Furthermore, said license allows you to trap them. The interesting part is that there's no legal requirement for you to actually kill the opossum if you trap one. You can trap the opossum and take possession of it for however long you like.

So basically a hunting license (might have been a trapping license?) lets you effectively own an opossum as a pet in Texas!

Edit: also, yes, opossums are as soft as they look, which is why people used to hunt them for their fur. I got a chance to pet one and it was about as soft, if not softer, than a cat. Also very boney, like cats.

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

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

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

Jury nullification.

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

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

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

There was a burrito shop that had a frequent customer card that you could use to earn points towards a free menu item. You could register the card online and for whatever reason you could add multiple cards to the same account.

A friend of mine realized that if you registered a new card they would give you a decent chunk of points just for signing up, then you could merge that account in with your existing account and get free points.

Every chance he got he would grab handfuls of the cards, activate them all, and get tons of free food.

Not drinking isn't one of the 12 steps

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

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

It was my personal freeway off ramp for years.

Tried cancelling adobe. They wanted to charge for the rest of the year or something as a cancellation fee. Instead, I "upgraded" to a more expensive package, giving me their 14 day refund policy and was able to cancel immediately and still gave me access to the rest of the month. Fuck adobe

If you want to cancel a subscription for whatever reason, worst comes to worst (dark pattern nonsense like trying to cancel an Adobe subscription) you can call your bank and request for a replacement card

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

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

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

The conversation usually goes:

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

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

In the USA the FASFA is used to determine how much financial aid (grants, or zero interest loans) someone can get for university

Unfortunately it looks at parents assets as well as the adult students assets.

Unless

• over the age of 25
• military veteran
• married

So the loop hole here is obvious, two students should get married, then their financial need will be totally unmet and get the highest level of benefits

If your bank can only deposit a certain amount of a check the same day and you need it all just cash it and deposit the cash

Currently I found a glitch to get near-free infinite mobile data usable in my country via 3 different mobile carriers giving me far superior coverage as well.

I got a Czech T-Mobile SIM card with the purpose of receiving SMS verification codes. Unlike cards in my country, Czech ones don't need ID card registration. The cheapest one was an IoT SIM card, so that's what I took. I found I could get signal basically everywhere with it, since they have multiple roaming partners (Slovak Telekom, O2 and Orange).
For shits and giggles, I've used that 200MB it came with since it's available in EU as well. And that's when I discovered the 64/32 kbps limit after using up the data isn't getting applied outside of Czech Republic. It just still goes at full speed.
Charged at 0.00CZK:

The difference with IoT and regular SIMs is that low speed. IoT SIM cards get that reduced speed while regular ones have a hard cut-off with more data amount. Attempt with regular SIM after using up the data:

So really, I can just fully use 80MB for 39CZK (1.59USD) and keep going:

But there is a caveat: Permanent roaming charges. If for the past 4 months the SIM is used more than 50% abroad, T-Mobile can start charging these charges. This year it's €1.30/GB without VAT. But I can probably just keep getting new SIM cards each few months.

But I am being nice and still mostly using my regular carrier with 300GB of data. I rather keep this as backup. The wholesale market data cap is that €1.30/GB in 2025, so the carrier could get charged up to €390 for that same amount by their roaming partner. Regardless, I am not giving them equivalent of €1.55 for just 80MB either.

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

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

Amex can get your money back on anything. Went to the vet they tried to gaslight me into doing an expensive procedure so I dispute the visit fee 75$

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

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

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

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

I had little money for the videogames and pinball.

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

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

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

Credit card manufactured spending. Still doable, but I think it's more difficult now.

You sign up for a fancy card with a fancy offer. Say, spend 6k in 3 months, get 1k in points.

Then you go to the local post office, and buy a money order for 6k. They used to be more permissive about letting you charge it on the CC, with only a nominal fee.

Then deposit that money order to your bank, use that money to pay off the charge for 6k. Boom, free signup bonus achieved.

My work has guest WiFi but I don't have access.
However, if i connect to it on my phone, enable my VPN on my laptop, then enable USB tethering from my phone i have unrestricted access on my laptop. lol

I went to Catholic school, so probably the poophole loophole

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

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

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

You can get a kindle with ads for cheaper than ask them to remove the ads.

I enjoyed paying $1.50/mo for YouTube premium by signing up with a VPN to Turkey 🇹🇷 but that’s not a thing anymore 😢