Ask Lemmy

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

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

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

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

Aglet

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.

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.