What life hacks have been exploited so much that they no longer work?

1. After it went viral that the Toy Story characters would fall down on the ground at Disney World/-land when you shouted, "Andy's coming!" they stopped doing it.
   — passion4film


2. Coupon code sites. Now they just link you to the sales already posted on websites.
   — pdxchris


3. I read something that a person could just order a bunch of $1 coins from the US mint and you would just pay the face value (no shipping & handling) since they wanted to get more on the market. Well one guy would buy thousands and thousands of dollars on his credit card, and just pay his credit card bill with the dollar coins to rack in millions of airline miles. Pretty smart if you ask me.
   — ThisJawnThatJawn






4. A certain bbq chain had a birthday club that would send you a free item via email. The email was a word document that was easily changeable. So instead of winning a brownie, you could change it to a huge party platter, as long as you had the correct code. "I just stopped in to claim this birthday thing. Oh I won a party platter? Great, I'm going to a party." Edit: it was Famous Dave's
   — BangkokMillionaire


5. I remember in the early days of ebay you could search for misspellings of items you were interested in and most of the time you could get it for cheap. Once everyone caught on to this it was game over, and now ebay has vastly improved search functionality. Still, I'll never forget that screaming deal I got on that bacuum cleaner. Edit: removed a word.
   — michaelnpdx


6. Pressing 0 on an automated phone tree to speak to a live person. I've encountered many that will just replay the menu options if you press 0
   — WCELY






7. Ordering free carpet samples on Amazon for cat related crafts
   — plantslut_


8. Looking up unknown phone numbers online to see who is calling you. Now all you get are pay-to-see sites.
   — tofudisan


9. In the 60s an activist named Abbie Hoffman published a book called “Steal This Book” that described how anyone could get a free elk or buffalo from the Department of the Interior. Don’t think that loophole stayed open very long after.
   — cbhorton85






10. Our local pizza chain used to sell fundraiser stickers that let you do a buy one get one free deal. Everyone had one, but my dad soon found out that most of the restaurants never even asked for the sticker when you went to pick up your order. So he would always say to keep the sticker in your pocket unless they asked for it. Furthermore, if they did ask for the sticker, they never checked expiration date on them. We got so much free pizza that way. They have now switched to a loyalty card method that is required for checkout and expiration dates are stored in the computer.
    — PeeeCoffee


11. In some games that involved waiting some amount of time, you used to be able to change the clock in your device into the future and unlock the item/whatever it is you were waiting for and then revert your time and still maintain the item. Unfortunately, now you have to wait Edit: I guess the consensus is that Nintendo games still allow you to do this most of the time
    — magicmann2614


12. Tricking parking garages. Used to be in the older days when you went into a pay parking garage, you got a ticket for your car. When you would leave, you put the ticket in the machine and it calculates how much you owe. They still do that. Thing is, in ye olden days, you could simply walk by the gate, get a new ticket, and then walk to your car and drive out using the new ticket and the system thought you were only in there for like 30 seconds. These days they put weigh sensors under the ticket area so they won't dispense a ticket unless there is actually a car sitting on top of it.
    — Edymnion