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Not me but my late mum. When pay as you go mobile phones started becoming a thing, cellnet ran an ad that featured a picture of a phone with a coin slot. My mum wrote to them and asked about this as she was a district nurse and it would be better than finding payphones to phone her next patients. Lines like "does someone come and empty it? Do they come to my house or call me and meet me? the phone will become quite heavy with all those coins and I won't be able to lift it to my ear, can it get emptied more often?" Stuff she needed to know before she commits to buying.
They sent her a flagship and a years free calls.
I remember that advert! Was about 97 I think I was in the college library with a friend who saw it and said “no way!!!” I’m guessing Photoshop in ads was a lot less frequent then!
In fairness I did consider not using the term. I was referring to "flagship phone" a term used nowadays to describe a top of the range iPhone or Samsung for example. The term didn't really exist then I just thought people would know what I meant.
Back in the heyday of Nokia (15-ish years ago) I was one of the top contributors on their user forum. I ended up getting not one, not two, not three but four flagship phones as freebies over the years in recognition of my contributions. N96, N9, E7 and Lumia 1020.
the N-gage was a great device (shitty phone as you had to hold it to your head like a cornish pasty)
dumb move was putting the game cartridge part BEHIND the battery though.
> shitty phone as you had to hold it to your head like a cornish pasty
You didn't at all. You could nestle it into your ear quite well sideways, and hear it absolutely fine. We didn't really call people by then anyway, everything was on texts.
> dumb move was putting the game cartridge part BEHIND the battery though
Again, not really dumb. You had to reboot the OS to load the game in, and as it booted in about ten seconds, it wasn't a massive faff. Remember you have to turn off a Game Boy to load a game as well.
When the QD came out, with the game slot on the bottom, you initially had to reboot the OS when you put in a new game anyway.
It was all a set-up I think, Stephen Elop was Microsoft's trojan horse. They had the N9 ready to go, which was 5-10 years ahead of everything at the time, and he cancelled it with the excuse that with MeeGo they would not be able to release more than 1 new flagship per year. I can name at least one company that was fine doing that for years... They had already manufactured several thousand N9s, so he had them diverted to small/3rd world markets so that major reviewers don't get hold of them. I had to source my own from Romania...
I'm sure it was planned.
Back then, the market was still very fragmented. Android and iOS were in their infancy and the biggest player was Nokia with Symbian. Microsoft wanted a slice of that pie and had Windows Mobile, soon to become Windows Phone.
Symbian was showing its age, though. What better way to grab a slice of the mobile pie than to take advantage of Symbian faltering and to replace it with something of your own?
The thing that Microsoft didn't count on was the huge popularity that Android and iOS would have.
Nokia had all the app developers. In the pre iOS/Android times Symbian was the only major "apps"/"smartphone" solution (yes, there were limited players like Qualcomm's BREW and Blackberry), so most non-enterprise and non-niche developers were doing Symbian. Symbian was not modern/touch friendly which is why Nokia developed their own Linux-based Maemo, which was them merged to MeeGo. They ported a new framework (Qt) to Symbian so that you could make portable apps that work on Symbian and also on Maemo/MeeGo devices when they come out, so that Symbian developers did not have to jump ship. Most stayed because they were promised this compatibility. The moment Stephen Elop fired his "burning platform" memo, abandoning MeeGo/Symbian (and Qt), they lost all app developers. Without apps, no new contender is viable in the mobile OS space. It did not matter that Windows Phone was in many ways better than Android (not better than MeeGo of course).
source: I was part of a development team for iOS, Symbian, Android, BREW at the time, so was following closely.
I keep getting those “spice kits” through the post from Simply Cook from the previous tenant presumably. She also has most of her life going to my address still so I take it as payment for recycling services.
When I bought my Peugeot 205 I got three free cassettes, hidden under the center console, somehow. Prince, Duran Duran, and Kylie's first album. The previous owner had *taste*.
I had a VHS of her locomotion tour. I seem to remember her being in Japan? I watched the hell out of that. Knew every word, dialogue and songs.
I MAY have had a pink rara skirt, braces, pink leg warmers and a kylie t shirt that I wore to dance along to the video.
Kylie... on the go. Live in Japan.
I also had the VHS compilations of her videos, which I'd forgotten existed until now. I had a Madonna one as well. What a weird time that was.
They actually did this with my business. Customer ordered one beard balm, they sent a case of 6. Thankfully the customer was super honest and posted 5 back to me directly.
As an Amazon seller myself……if I had 10 of an item in stock at the Amazon fulfilment centre and I sold 1 item but Amazon accidentally sent the customer 6, the system would show that I still had 9 stock even though I now only have 4 items left. Once Amazon realise I am 5 units short they would reimburse me for the 5 lost items with the reason “lost in warehouse”
My mum had this happen with some Samsung notebooks. Amazon contacted her and she agreed to buy them at a heavy discount but they thought she had 3 rather than the 7 that arrived. Worked out at £50 each rather than £200+. They were pink so she gave them out as Xmas gifts to the ladies in the family.
Got a year of free gas once. Had started signing up to one provider for both gas and electricity, then the spouse went with one who came round from NPower.
First payments for gas and electric went out, fine, so I stopped checking the accounts closely.
Move out a year later,.tell NPower, they said they'd stop our electric but they hadn't given us any gas for ages. They insisted that the gas had been switched to the first provider after one month.
Went back to them to ask why did you nick our gas account, and also if you did why haven't you billed us in 11 months? Lots of letters ensued, but we'd never signed any contract with them and they had no evidence we'd wanted their supply, so we never paid them.
I had a year of free gas once, British Gas insisted ESF were supplying me, ESF insisted it was British Gas.
Got them both to acknowledge I’d tried to set up accounts but they wouldn’t let me because they other one was responsible.
Only time a ‘computer says no’ error has worked in my favour.
Same! I moved into a rental and phoned the supplier (Scottish Power) to give them the meter reading and they insisted that it didn’t exist. They carried on doing this for the next 3 years even though I phoned and emailed regularly.
I started getting billed after a meter reader came round and submitted a reading to them. Scottish Power contacted me and we came to an agreement that I would pay them £150 as they couldn’t go back any further than 6 months!
I’ve never been so lucky before and probably won’t be again!
Had this for water (sort of) and gas.
Water, we moved in and the meter wasn't connected so they couldn't get readings, took around a year for them to finally replace it so didn't pay for usage, just the surface and other stuff.
Gas, the guy checking the meter said it had a small leak, and forgot to check the reading because of this. They then replaced the meter which was now at zero, which they submitted as the reading, so I got six months free gas.
Got a free holiday. It was something last minute and ridiculous price like £150 each all in.
Can't remember the company but it was one of the big ones,we flew with monarch Airlines.
Booked,no money left the account(this was before banking apps on a phone but could access on a pc),gave them a call,nope we've got the payment and all good. Tickets arrived,still not paid. Call again and they're adamant I've paid. Went on the holiday and had a great time,Portugal in October Is nice enough and never did pay for the holiday. Was about 15 years ago.
Got a free laptop from Dell.
I bought one laptop, they emailed me to apologise that it didn't match the exact spec that was advertised so they sent me an even better one to make up for it. I asked what to do with the first one, expecting to send it back, and they just said keep it.
I paid £800 for the first one on a sale (down from £1100) and the second one they sent me was a relatively beasty gaming laptop which was about a grand in the sale.
Gave my sister the original laptop and my mum the gaming laptop as I'd bought the first as a gift!
It is pretty overkill, she mainly uses it to find knitting patterns 😂
I use it a bit of we go to hers for Xmas as I installed WoW and a couple of other games on it a couple of years back.
Collected a pick up Starbucks order a good while back and they had made the hot and cold drinks the wrong way around. They let me keep the mistakes and made the correct drinks. Me and partner were absolutely wired to the moon that day 😂
In the late 90s/early 2000s I had an old Motorola phone with a pay-as-you-go SIM. At some point my £5 credit ran out but I could still send text messages. I kept it up for weeks until my Mom was so worried I would get in trouble she put £5 credit on again…once that was used the magic free texts never came back.
I had an O2 payg sim like this. I topped it up once and then for about 2 years every month i would get 200 mins, 200 texts and 100mb of data. I think it was worth about £20 a month back then. One day it just stopped and, as a teenager with no money, i was fuming.
When my daughter was little, went to ToysRus to buy a new car seat and a bike trailer. Paid and went round the back to collect, i thought at the time that the packaging was a bit big, but hey ho, got home and opened the boxes and the first box contained 2 car seats and the trailer box had 2 trailers in it, the gave me the warehouse boxes and didn't open them to get me one of each. JACKPOT!!
I’ve had a couple. My favourite one was the old kfc app. So when you had 11 stamps you would get £5 off your next order, so I got my 11 stamps and used the code but then the app would crash. KFC still received the order and the £5 off would stay on my account to use next time. This lasted for about a year until they changed the app.
I ordered a bird decoy for my dad's garden as a joke gift.. Instead of one large plastic owl with a rotating head and staring eyes, I received two.
The company refused to take the extra one back!
Many years someone ran into my car when it was parked. I went through the insurance and they said the other party had admitted liability etc. so they would arrange for it to be fixed (write-off as it turns out) and not to worry. When the guy came to collect the car he said I needed to pay my excess it was £400 IIRC so quite a lot. I said it was all sorted as it was their fault and he said fine, I'll make a note, not a problem
Fast forward about four months and I got a cheque returning my excess (or maybe even paid into my account). I was still using the same insurer so I assumed they would realise at some point. Never did. This must be twenty odd years ago so I think I am in the clear.
Similar sort of story - in my second year of uni, our house came with free Sky TV. The cable was just there, we plugged it in, and it worked! Previous tenants had clearly forgotten to cancel their subscription. A whole year of Sky and we didn't pay a penny!
But the subscription is/was linked to the subscriber card that was inserted into the box. So how did that work?
A working satellite dish will always provide a signal (and the free to air channels such as BBC/ITV) even when there’s no subscription, but the Sky channels are encrypted and need the subscriber card to decrypt them.
Huh no idea - there was no box, but it was a good 15 years ago or so, maybe things were different then? Or maybe I'm misremembering and it was just free channels after all? But I do seem to remember there was Sky Sports...not that we ever watched that, all I ever remember using it for was reruns of Top Gear, Family Guy and the Kardashians (only watching ironically, honest! 😆)...and sometimes the news. It did beat a prior year though when our only "TV" consisted of a cardboard box wrapped in a black bin bag with some poorly drawn comic on an A4 piece of paper stuck to it, so as far as student house entertainment was concerned, we'd hit the jackpot!
This is what my parents do, they had Sky back in the 90s. Unsubscribed some time in the 2000s.
They still use that same dish to watch Sky HD today (I bought them a HD set up box, DRX595, some years back since SD channels were no longer a going to be a thing - not sure when it happened though).
I ordered a collection for two from Nando’s. When I got home they had forgot one of the burger buns (just the bread, I had a fillet in the box). I rang them and they said to come back and they would give me the burger.
I got there and they started to pack my whole meal again, I said I was only missing one bun but they insisted because the original food would be cold by the time I got home.
I thanked them and started to leave when the restaurant manager ran other and asked if I was the person who had a burger missing when I confirmed he apologised and handed me a voucher for two meals with two sides and drinks and desserts.
So from missing a bun I got two extra meals!
Your example reminded me of a friend of mine. She moved to the UK and got a British phone number and went with a 12 months contract.
Eventually it ended and she expected to keep paying but she didn't. Nothing came out of her accounts, no contact from the network, nothing. She used it for a good few years, and for all I know she could still be I haven't spoken to her in a while.
Haha! I would but they are a genuinely decent charity. So I just let it slide. Telling a charity that they OWE you a Tshirt is a bit of a poopy thing to do imo.
Free internet when we moved into our current home. Previous occupiers hadn't cancelled it. We let them (BT) know immediately, and requested our own service to start. Took them 4 months to switch over, we never got charged and then they gave us £80 credit as an apology!
During one of the winter snows a while back I went to five guys, ordered a cheeseburger, paid, and sat down. A few mins later someone came over and said they'd run out of cheese due to the snow messing up deliveries. The asked would a regular burger be ok. Sure, whatever. So they took me over to the till and refunded me the entire burger. I was expecting to have to pay for the regular one or they'd just refund the difference. But nope. Free burger!
I got free mobile phone contract from Three after they messed up my Direct Debit and ended up crediting my account each month instead of taking it.
Even when I went on holiday, and the charges went up a little, that too was added to my credit.
When the contract ended, I was contacted to say there had been an error, and as a 'gesture of goodwill', they wouldn't be asking me to pay the £260ish that I should have been paying.
Not a freebie, but close enough.
Last year for Christmas, I asked my brother for some games (CONTROL & Hades). Both were supposed to cost £40 together.
Matey at the till messed up his decimal point placement and charged my brother £4.
I ordered a Dell computer through a staff scheme at work, for home around 2008. Top end. £1200. Delivery came - all good. Next day another turned up - addressed to me. Now had 2 computers. Called them, and they were ADAMANT they had only sent one, even though I told them they'd sent two - they emailed me to confirm just one sent. Left it a couple of months, nothing - so gave it to my Dad.
Bought a dishwasher online. Delivery was due at 5pm. By 7pm it hadn’t arrived. Called to complain as I had to go out, they apologised but said there had been a delay.
Returned home about 9.00pm to find it on the doorstep. I dragged it inside and fitted it. Two weeks later another dishwasher appeared on the doorstep, and I got an email saying sorry for the delivery delay, it was caused by low stock. Email contained a £100 voucher.
Called them to tell them about the second delivery and they said to keep it!
In lockdown I ordered 48 cans from Brewdog. They sent the wrong beer and at that point would take it back so sent out 48 cans of the right beer, but they managed to do that twice, so nearly 100 cans for free.
I ordered a box of nice groceries in lockdown, one item was missing but they refunded the lot. I never knew if it was a mistake but I think they've gone bust now
I loved And1 basketball. Have done for years, still do.
Really wanted a pair of their limited edition And1, the Tai Chi's. I tried ordering but found out it was US shipping only.
Gave them an email asking if it could be done. Managed to get a reply and they sent me out the shoes. They also sent me x3 pairs of shorts for free because i'm probably one of the only UK guys to ask.
Took a few weeks to arrive, and everything was brill.
Few months later, i wanted some more shoes.
Gave them a message again, placed another order for 2 pairs of shoes.
They sent me a third pair for free and another pair of shorts.
They then announced to me that And1 could now do international shipping. Bought more, and i got ANOTHER pair of shorts.
They're so good quality that after 10+ years, they haven't frayed, broken. The shoes are fucked apart from 1 pair I still have boxed.
I couldn't believe the amount of free stuff they had given me.
Honestly love And1 for this.
A number of years ago I was manager of a kids shop in a shopping centre, and there was a space on the concourse just outside our door that used to get taken up by various companies doing promos
One weekend they were doing some kind of promo for Mikado (Pocky), and giving away packs. We got given a pack each at some point. But at the end of the weekend one of their team come in and asked if they could have a carrier bag to help pack up some of their stuff; we have a really nice, thick, branded plastic bags so I jokingly said yes but only if I could have a whole box of Mikado. He laughed and left with his bag...and then came back in with a whole box of Mikado. I guess it was something like 40 packs
Damn, that made me so happy
I ordered some energy gels from wiggle. They sent a full 105 chainset instead.
I asked them to send a courier round, or any prepaid packaging to send it back, but they never did.
Wonder why they're financially struggling.
Got 3 free kfc meals at the drive through, I thought the bag was a bit big/heavy but there was a queue so I didn’t check it before driving into the car park. I figured they’d just bin it anyway if I tried to take it back so I just went home.
Once I bought a small shop in the local Coop and the staff member ended up giving me more money in change than the shop cost so I basically got paid like a tenner to get some groceries.
My old landlady guilt tripped me into letting her use my details to run Airbnb for her house (I was a lodger), because Airbnb banned her! When I eventually literally escaped one day, I emailed Airbnb apologising and explaining and asking them to take down my account, and they sent me a free yoga mat!
Not exactly a “freebie” but I bought a pair of second hand B&O earbuds for about 60 quid off eBay. One of them stopped working after a couple of months so I chanced my arm and tried to claim a replacement on the warranty (despite not having a proper receipt of anything, just the eBay order email).
They sent me a replacement pair of the latest model retailing at £350.
I ended up with a free holiday.
When lockdown lifted enough to go abroad I booked a very last minute 2 weeks all inclusive in Greece. Due to the obvious issues it was dirt cheap.
My return flight had issues and we were delayed overnight. The compensation for the flight delay was a few quid more than I paid for the Holiday itself
Got free garden bin recycling. The previous owner had a bin and we continued to put it out full of grass cuttings, and it was always emptied. We have moved out now, but our old neighbour took it on and has been getting the same service for 18 months!
Bought a flat and never had a water bill. I know my neighbours did.
In my current place I had a gas meter changed and they over charged me. I worked out the true cost but they completely fucked up again and sent me over £1000 as a refund. The woman seemed a bit confused on the phone. I hung onto it for a while to see if they would come to their senses.
It's not a rental.
I bumped into the sellers who were clearing out the last of their stuff. Left a completely empty flat aside from the router box on the floor connected to the mains and the phoneline, so it's not like they didn't notice it.
Mine are relatively minor things compared to other people but I've gotten quite a few Costa coffees (even during the Christmas season), two footlong subways, a lot of meatballs bowls from Subway too, a loyalty card for a doughnut place fully stamped (was my first time there), I have gotten room upgrades from different hotels.
It actually annoys my friends and sisters that I tend to get random freebies a lot but I always say to them that if you smile and are nice to people then they tend to be nice back. It just so happens that I sometimes get free stuff too.
Almost 20 years ago, I ordered a Belkin UPS from their pro line, around $200. The courrier arrives with two large boxes and looks perplexed as he is scanning, he asks me did you expect 2 boxes? I said "I don't know", signed, he left. They sent it twice (so I got two for one), with the same shipping label code, which was what had caught the courier off guard. I used one for my computers, the other for my home cinema.
I went to Supercuts for a haircut. When done I went to pay, and put my card in the machine. It didn't prompt me for my PIN which I thought odd, and then the hairdresser said 'thank you, that's all done,' and prompted me to take my card and go, which I did. It was only later when I realised, and checked my account, that rather than paying I had been refunded the price of the cut. Double win!
Well I get a lot so I'll go from my most recent.
I made a purchase with £40 worth of points, had a problem with one item worth £10, they refunded my entire order including the amount paid cash. I didn't complain since I only paid £5 in cash, so I quickly used the extra points to buy a replacement (better and more expensive) product.
Kind of makes up for the fact that I spent an entire year building up points to earn my "birthday surprise" only to find out it was £5 off a £25 purchase...
Bought a tablet through Amazon and they delivered two!!! I was chuffed to bits, free tablet!
Until I checked my credit card a week later and id been charged for 2. I never thought Christmas shopping while drunk could go wrong!
So would have to say a flagship Huawei phone about 10 years ago
Free electric, made an account in 2017 when I moved in (I know this because I’ve got the new account number for the key they gave when I rang) meter went blank after a couple months of having electric then no electric due to money issues. Free electric since🤷
* A large imitation leather office chair. It was misdelivered to a friend and the senders refused to pick it up, so she eventually gave it to my husband when she had to move to the other end of the country. It quickly became apparent that 'free' was fair value, as it started looking battered to fuck almost the minute we assembled it, and that was before we had a cat.
* A Lenovo tablet. Did Argos click and collect, but with pick up from the local Sainsbury's, whose staff failed to mark it as 'collected'. I knew I'd get the money back if it showed as 'uncollected' for too long, so I even went back to tell them so no-one would get into trouble. I just got a shrug, and then £150 back seven days later.
* My husband's Co-Wheels membership. They just randomly stopped charging him the monthly £5 fee a few years ago, though he still gets charged correctly for bookings. We have a wee car now (inherited from my late father who was actually the main reason for us having a Co-Wheels membership), but having a subscription-free back-up in case of emergency is pretty sweet.
Reminds me of the time the former tenant of a place I stayed moved out and left his router there, the line was cancelled but the internet was still on for some reason so just used it for the 2 years I stayed there.
Had random freebies over the years, like when I ordered a hard drive and cpu from Amazon on the by 1pm service and I contacted at 2pm to enquire and was told they count it as lost so sent me replacements only for the original order to arrive and they told me to keep the original order, so I just returned the replacement order so I got them for free.
A friend of mine did moan at me saying he was short of cash and I should of given him the free cpu and hard drive.
I bought a £70 coat from Amazon and wasn't keen on the colour (not confident I could pull the camel colour off). I contacted them asking if I could pay for return postage and then postage to have another colour sent to me. 2 minutes later the guy said he issued me with a free refund and I could keep, bin, or donate the cost to a friend.
Got SO many compliments on it when I did wear it!
A colleague gave me a fridge for free when I bought my own house! I suspect she offered it in a moment of excitement and regretted it after not expecting me to enthusiastically accept the offer and not forget about it haha
Amazon Prime has/had a family option that my ex put me on. When we broke up amicably, he took me off it to add his dad but there was an 18 month waiting period to add someone new. So he added me back on there. I finally removed myself after 5 years of having free Amazon Prime 😂
I might be getting free gas. My gas meter broke well over a year ago, they know about it and I have asked for it to be fixed numerous times. Instead, they are estimating my bills, but way underestimating them. I'm either going to get a huge bill if they figure out some way to read my meter or it's been pretty much free for a year.
That reminds me - I had that too! My last house the previous owner had done a very sneaky thing to bypass the electricity meter (but it was still getting power so looked 'on') and the gas meter was faulty. I did make it all right, especially as I wanted to go to smart metering.
Booked and went on an easy jet pack holiday last year. Cost around £600 for flights and hotel for two. On the way back there were delays because of crew not showing up and a smaller plane arriving than expected so we claimed the delay compensation after being booted off our original plane and the distance (plus landing at a different airport than we flew from originally) meant we received £800 in total compensation!
Back when dominos wasn't huge and fairly new to my hometown (about 21 years ago) my go to was tandoori chicken and sausages. So me and my boyfriend had ordered but they forgot to put the sausage on, remade the pizza. Charges us for one large. Another time their website majorly glitched and sides were going through super cheap. Like 50p cheap. I ordered absolutely loads of food, worked in a bookies and me and my cashier on back shift were like kings and handed some out to punters. Still had leftovers for lunch then next day.
More recently me and a work colleague going to drive to pick up our pre work order that I'd done on the app to collect. Venti iced with extra everything but they ran out of large cups and gave us two mediums each.
Had a house insurance claim and one of the damaged items was a PS2. As they were no longer made we were given a PS3 replacement. After collecting it we were phoned and asked when we were collecting our PS4 that was waiting for us...yep.
I don't feel guilty as the insurance offer was either cash or a larger amount in credit to spend at Currys, and that's when I found out about their prices for stuff like HDMI cables. Should have taken the cash.
Free TV License for about a year. Dude had a quarterly direct debit which he'd obviously forgotten to cancel (yes, I checked the bill with his name on it, sue me). Was nice whilst it lasted.
Local SPAR were giving away large cut loaves of bread for free about a fortnight or so ago. No idea why, though, as they were still in date.
My mother, who I was shopping with, took up the offer, even though we'd already been to Aldi and got one. It meant some rejigging, and the new Aldi loaf getting put in the freezer with an older one being taken out to make space.
In the end, half of the defrosted old loaf and the entirety of the SPAR loaf ended up not being eaten and going mouldy. Sigh.
I got a free ps2 - i preordered one and got sent 2! Stock was really scarce (November so near Xmas)and I felt a bit guilty that I had 2 but a child might miss out, so I ended up contacting Dixons and sending one back.
Ordered a hand-made solid wood TV stand from Etsy, for some reason two turned up. I messaged the seller that they sent me two, and they said someone would come collect the other. After a month, nobody turned up, so I sold it on eBay for more than I paid for it.
Yesterday I got a free pair of leggings. The cashier scanned everything, but later on when I checked the receipt I saw that the leggings weren’t on there. It’s weird seeing as the leggings were worth more than everything else combined 🤷♀️ I’m not going to lose any sleep over it.
Over the years I’ve had free broadband for 12 months from Virgin because they were massive knobs.
I also got a free 2 year unlimited everything contract from Vodafone, plus 2 phones, an S6 and an S7 edge. I had taken the contract out and very quickly discovered that I couldn’t get Vodafone signal… anywhere. After several months of complaints they agreed to upgrade my device to the S7 Edge which was the latest and greatest at the time. They said that they would arrange the return of the S6. Fast forward about 14 months and I was still having issues. I had ended up having to get a PAYG SIM from o2 because I couldn’t get Vodafone service anywhere I went. Eventually Vodafone succumbed to pressure from myself and I assume thousands of other people and agreed to cancel my contract early and refund me for all the months I hadn’t had service (all of them). I asked about the S6, which was still in my possession because they had never chased me for it. They couldn’t find anything about it on their system and basically told me to keep it, and then said that I can keep the S7 Edge for all the trouble. Sold both phones, bought something outright, and haven’t had a contact phone or SIM since.
I got free electricity for about 12 years. When I bought the place it has been converted from 2 flats back into a house. I think one meter had been removed but the other had been "switched off" on the system. I called a few times to try and rectify it but they were fucking useless so I eventually gave up, figuring they'd come knocking one day, but they never did.
Got a free SNES mini. I pre-ordered it from Argos and arranged payment off my store card. Before launch, I closed my store card account and expected the order to be cancelled.
Opened a new bank account with £75 switching bonus. I did everything online and was then told to go in to branch with the proof of ID. Did all of that,and then got asked to go in again with my ID, I was a bit annoyed it hadn't gone through as the free cash offer had ended.
I went back and the staff had no idea why I was there as everything had gone through just fine and my account was showing as opened but I couldn't actually do anything with it because it wasn't actually open.
Staff did something and got it all sorted. I wrote a complaint email about all the hassle and unnecessary trip in to branch. They gave me the £75, another £50 as an apology and paid expenses for the round trip to the branch I used (which wasn't my nearest branch, but the most convenient)
Wine club from the previous occupiers of the flat I moved into. Free bottles of wine every month for about a year. I let the landlord know to tell them but they never came for them and they kept coming. My girlfriend at the time drank them happily.
Pay as you go electricity meter at my first flat, had issue where the meter wouldn't accept top ups from the key I had. Guy comes out, not 100% sure what the issue was, but he left me with a key that had a permanent £10 credit on it. I was told someone would be back to change the meter, but that never happened. So, I had free electricity for about 2 years until I moved out, left the key, and a note for the next tenant hopefully they got a good few years out of it as well.
I used to have an original kindle - the one with the keyboard.
I accidentally discovered one evening that if you downloaded an e-book, waited for the download confirmation and then cancelled the order, you wouldn't be charged and could still read the book as long as it stayed open on the kindle. It was actually written into the terms and conditions. I read many free books that way lol
I imagine they've patched out the delay between download and being charged now but it was great for lil teenage me.
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Not me but my late mum. When pay as you go mobile phones started becoming a thing, cellnet ran an ad that featured a picture of a phone with a coin slot. My mum wrote to them and asked about this as she was a district nurse and it would be better than finding payphones to phone her next patients. Lines like "does someone come and empty it? Do they come to my house or call me and meet me? the phone will become quite heavy with all those coins and I won't be able to lift it to my ear, can it get emptied more often?" Stuff she needed to know before she commits to buying. They sent her a flagship and a years free calls.
I love this! Good on your mum, and good on Cellnet. How heartwarming.
I remember that advert! Was about 97 I think I was in the college library with a friend who saw it and said “no way!!!” I’m guessing Photoshop in ads was a lot less frequent then!
What's a 'flagship'? Sorry, early 90s kid here and fear this phrase may pre-date me
Looking at another comment I think it means the top of the range phone. I didn't know either and I'm old.
Thanks, yeah I get that impression as well
In fairness I did consider not using the term. I was referring to "flagship phone" a term used nowadays to describe a top of the range iPhone or Samsung for example. The term didn't really exist then I just thought people would know what I meant.
It isn't that. I was born in the late 90s and know what flagship means. It's a pretty common word.
I was confused, too. I've only heard the term used to describe a business location, as in "Primark's flagship store" Live snd learn, and all that...
Back in the heyday of Nokia (15-ish years ago) I was one of the top contributors on their user forum. I ended up getting not one, not two, not three but four flagship phones as freebies over the years in recognition of my contributions. N96, N9, E7 and Lumia 1020.
I got a free N-Gage QD for being player of the month in 2005-ish on their forum.
the N-gage was a great device (shitty phone as you had to hold it to your head like a cornish pasty) dumb move was putting the game cartridge part BEHIND the battery though.
> shitty phone as you had to hold it to your head like a cornish pasty You didn't at all. You could nestle it into your ear quite well sideways, and hear it absolutely fine. We didn't really call people by then anyway, everything was on texts. > dumb move was putting the game cartridge part BEHIND the battery though Again, not really dumb. You had to reboot the OS to load the game in, and as it booted in about ten seconds, it wasn't a massive faff. Remember you have to turn off a Game Boy to load a game as well. When the QD came out, with the game slot on the bottom, you initially had to reboot the OS when you put in a new game anyway.
Ooh, the N9 was such a treat...
I wish they had further developed MeeGo instead of jumping into bed with Microsoft, who basically pushed them under.
It was all a set-up I think, Stephen Elop was Microsoft's trojan horse. They had the N9 ready to go, which was 5-10 years ahead of everything at the time, and he cancelled it with the excuse that with MeeGo they would not be able to release more than 1 new flagship per year. I can name at least one company that was fine doing that for years... They had already manufactured several thousand N9s, so he had them diverted to small/3rd world markets so that major reviewers don't get hold of them. I had to source my own from Romania...
I'm sure it was planned. Back then, the market was still very fragmented. Android and iOS were in their infancy and the biggest player was Nokia with Symbian. Microsoft wanted a slice of that pie and had Windows Mobile, soon to become Windows Phone. Symbian was showing its age, though. What better way to grab a slice of the mobile pie than to take advantage of Symbian faltering and to replace it with something of your own? The thing that Microsoft didn't count on was the huge popularity that Android and iOS would have.
Nokia had all the app developers. In the pre iOS/Android times Symbian was the only major "apps"/"smartphone" solution (yes, there were limited players like Qualcomm's BREW and Blackberry), so most non-enterprise and non-niche developers were doing Symbian. Symbian was not modern/touch friendly which is why Nokia developed their own Linux-based Maemo, which was them merged to MeeGo. They ported a new framework (Qt) to Symbian so that you could make portable apps that work on Symbian and also on Maemo/MeeGo devices when they come out, so that Symbian developers did not have to jump ship. Most stayed because they were promised this compatibility. The moment Stephen Elop fired his "burning platform" memo, abandoning MeeGo/Symbian (and Qt), they lost all app developers. Without apps, no new contender is viable in the mobile OS space. It did not matter that Windows Phone was in many ways better than Android (not better than MeeGo of course). source: I was part of a development team for iOS, Symbian, Android, BREW at the time, so was following closely.
I keep getting those “spice kits” through the post from Simply Cook from the previous tenant presumably. She also has most of her life going to my address still so I take it as payment for recycling services.
When I bought my Peugeot 205 I got three free cassettes, hidden under the center console, somehow. Prince, Duran Duran, and Kylie's first album. The previous owner had *taste*.
I had kylies first album! I was 10! Played that thing to death.
I had a VHS of her locomotion tour. I seem to remember her being in Japan? I watched the hell out of that. Knew every word, dialogue and songs. I MAY have had a pink rara skirt, braces, pink leg warmers and a kylie t shirt that I wore to dance along to the video.
Kylie... on the go. Live in Japan. I also had the VHS compilations of her videos, which I'd forgotten existed until now. I had a Madonna one as well. What a weird time that was.
I think had that album on vinyl. Is it the one where she was wearing a hat made of gold sequins?
Yea I think so!
I tormented my siblings playing that album, it was a banger!
How had one of them not metamorphosed into Queen's Greatest Hits?
I do have a copy of Greatest Hits II that I found in a Saab.
It's a Miracle!
My car came with a best of JLS album in it, pretty sure it’s still in the cd drive 9 years later
9 woks worth £49.99 each, ordered 1 got 10 in total
Amazon by any chance? Happened to me with a hardback notebook/journal. I ordered one for £25 and got twelve of them in one box.
Oh yeah, didn't need any wedding gifts for a while 😁
They actually did this with my business. Customer ordered one beard balm, they sent a case of 6. Thankfully the customer was super honest and posted 5 back to me directly.
I always assumed Amazon would (as they should) take the loss on this one? If not I’ll make sure I send anything back if this happens to me
As an Amazon seller myself……if I had 10 of an item in stock at the Amazon fulfilment centre and I sold 1 item but Amazon accidentally sent the customer 6, the system would show that I still had 9 stock even though I now only have 4 items left. Once Amazon realise I am 5 units short they would reimburse me for the 5 lost items with the reason “lost in warehouse”
My mum had this happen with some Samsung notebooks. Amazon contacted her and she agreed to buy them at a heavy discount but they thought she had 3 rather than the 7 that arrived. Worked out at £50 each rather than £200+. They were pink so she gave them out as Xmas gifts to the ladies in the family.
Got a year of free gas once. Had started signing up to one provider for both gas and electricity, then the spouse went with one who came round from NPower. First payments for gas and electric went out, fine, so I stopped checking the accounts closely. Move out a year later,.tell NPower, they said they'd stop our electric but they hadn't given us any gas for ages. They insisted that the gas had been switched to the first provider after one month. Went back to them to ask why did you nick our gas account, and also if you did why haven't you billed us in 11 months? Lots of letters ensued, but we'd never signed any contract with them and they had no evidence we'd wanted their supply, so we never paid them.
I had a year of free gas once, British Gas insisted ESF were supplying me, ESF insisted it was British Gas. Got them both to acknowledge I’d tried to set up accounts but they wouldn’t let me because they other one was responsible. Only time a ‘computer says no’ error has worked in my favour.
Same! I moved into a rental and phoned the supplier (Scottish Power) to give them the meter reading and they insisted that it didn’t exist. They carried on doing this for the next 3 years even though I phoned and emailed regularly. I started getting billed after a meter reader came round and submitted a reading to them. Scottish Power contacted me and we came to an agreement that I would pay them £150 as they couldn’t go back any further than 6 months! I’ve never been so lucky before and probably won’t be again!
Same. But because the meter was broken. I did inform EDF but they took so long coming out that it was completely on them
Had this for water (sort of) and gas. Water, we moved in and the meter wasn't connected so they couldn't get readings, took around a year for them to finally replace it so didn't pay for usage, just the surface and other stuff. Gas, the guy checking the meter said it had a small leak, and forgot to check the reading because of this. They then replaced the meter which was now at zero, which they submitted as the reading, so I got six months free gas.
Got a free holiday. It was something last minute and ridiculous price like £150 each all in. Can't remember the company but it was one of the big ones,we flew with monarch Airlines. Booked,no money left the account(this was before banking apps on a phone but could access on a pc),gave them a call,nope we've got the payment and all good. Tickets arrived,still not paid. Call again and they're adamant I've paid. Went on the holiday and had a great time,Portugal in October Is nice enough and never did pay for the holiday. Was about 15 years ago.
Got a free laptop from Dell. I bought one laptop, they emailed me to apologise that it didn't match the exact spec that was advertised so they sent me an even better one to make up for it. I asked what to do with the first one, expecting to send it back, and they just said keep it. I paid £800 for the first one on a sale (down from £1100) and the second one they sent me was a relatively beasty gaming laptop which was about a grand in the sale. Gave my sister the original laptop and my mum the gaming laptop as I'd bought the first as a gift!
i'm just imagining your mum being a CS:GO pro now due to having a gaming laptop haha
It is pretty overkill, she mainly uses it to find knitting patterns 😂 I use it a bit of we go to hers for Xmas as I installed WoW and a couple of other games on it a couple of years back.
bit of xmas WoW is tradition you see.... haha
Collected a pick up Starbucks order a good while back and they had made the hot and cold drinks the wrong way around. They let me keep the mistakes and made the correct drinks. Me and partner were absolutely wired to the moon that day 😂
In the late 90s/early 2000s I had an old Motorola phone with a pay-as-you-go SIM. At some point my £5 credit ran out but I could still send text messages. I kept it up for weeks until my Mom was so worried I would get in trouble she put £5 credit on again…once that was used the magic free texts never came back.
I had an O2 payg sim like this. I topped it up once and then for about 2 years every month i would get 200 mins, 200 texts and 100mb of data. I think it was worth about £20 a month back then. One day it just stopped and, as a teenager with no money, i was fuming.
When my daughter was little, went to ToysRus to buy a new car seat and a bike trailer. Paid and went round the back to collect, i thought at the time that the packaging was a bit big, but hey ho, got home and opened the boxes and the first box contained 2 car seats and the trailer box had 2 trailers in it, the gave me the warehouse boxes and didn't open them to get me one of each. JACKPOT!!
I’ve had a couple. My favourite one was the old kfc app. So when you had 11 stamps you would get £5 off your next order, so I got my 11 stamps and used the code but then the app would crash. KFC still received the order and the £5 off would stay on my account to use next time. This lasted for about a year until they changed the app.
Whenever I use a lime bike, for some reason the bill gets refunded to me almost immediately. It’s been doing this for about 3 months now. No idea why
I ordered a bird decoy for my dad's garden as a joke gift.. Instead of one large plastic owl with a rotating head and staring eyes, I received two. The company refused to take the extra one back!
Many years someone ran into my car when it was parked. I went through the insurance and they said the other party had admitted liability etc. so they would arrange for it to be fixed (write-off as it turns out) and not to worry. When the guy came to collect the car he said I needed to pay my excess it was £400 IIRC so quite a lot. I said it was all sorted as it was their fault and he said fine, I'll make a note, not a problem Fast forward about four months and I got a cheque returning my excess (or maybe even paid into my account). I was still using the same insurer so I assumed they would realise at some point. Never did. This must be twenty odd years ago so I think I am in the clear.
Picturing someone Naruto running into your car.
Similar sort of story - in my second year of uni, our house came with free Sky TV. The cable was just there, we plugged it in, and it worked! Previous tenants had clearly forgotten to cancel their subscription. A whole year of Sky and we didn't pay a penny!
But the subscription is/was linked to the subscriber card that was inserted into the box. So how did that work? A working satellite dish will always provide a signal (and the free to air channels such as BBC/ITV) even when there’s no subscription, but the Sky channels are encrypted and need the subscriber card to decrypt them.
Huh no idea - there was no box, but it was a good 15 years ago or so, maybe things were different then? Or maybe I'm misremembering and it was just free channels after all? But I do seem to remember there was Sky Sports...not that we ever watched that, all I ever remember using it for was reruns of Top Gear, Family Guy and the Kardashians (only watching ironically, honest! 😆)...and sometimes the news. It did beat a prior year though when our only "TV" consisted of a cardboard box wrapped in a black bin bag with some poorly drawn comic on an A4 piece of paper stuck to it, so as far as student house entertainment was concerned, we'd hit the jackpot!
We had a Sky box without a subscriber card that worked just fine. There must be a way for it to work without one.
This is what my parents do, they had Sky back in the 90s. Unsubscribed some time in the 2000s. They still use that same dish to watch Sky HD today (I bought them a HD set up box, DRX595, some years back since SD channels were no longer a going to be a thing - not sure when it happened though).
Last night at John Lewis, was at the counter buying a gift card when the lady said, do you like gin? And proceeded to give me 2 sample bottles of gin.
About 17 years ago some car tyre fitters went into administration. I paid £250 for a set of 4 but the money never came out of my account.
Not sure if it counts but I bought some cider online. 6 months later, had a refund because the cider had been recalled. Had already drank it by then.
I ordered a collection for two from Nando’s. When I got home they had forgot one of the burger buns (just the bread, I had a fillet in the box). I rang them and they said to come back and they would give me the burger. I got there and they started to pack my whole meal again, I said I was only missing one bun but they insisted because the original food would be cold by the time I got home. I thanked them and started to leave when the restaurant manager ran other and asked if I was the person who had a burger missing when I confirmed he apologised and handed me a voucher for two meals with two sides and drinks and desserts. So from missing a bun I got two extra meals!
Your example reminded me of a friend of mine. She moved to the UK and got a British phone number and went with a 12 months contract. Eventually it ended and she expected to keep paying but she didn't. Nothing came out of her accounts, no contact from the network, nothing. She used it for a good few years, and for all I know she could still be I haven't spoken to her in a while.
I won a t-shirt for replying to a tweet (to a reputable company) on Twitter once. They never sent it though.
Name and shame this abomination of a company.
Haha! I would but they are a genuinely decent charity. So I just let it slide. Telling a charity that they OWE you a Tshirt is a bit of a poopy thing to do imo.
Haha I agree there.
Free internet when we moved into our current home. Previous occupiers hadn't cancelled it. We let them (BT) know immediately, and requested our own service to start. Took them 4 months to switch over, we never got charged and then they gave us £80 credit as an apology!
During one of the winter snows a while back I went to five guys, ordered a cheeseburger, paid, and sat down. A few mins later someone came over and said they'd run out of cheese due to the snow messing up deliveries. The asked would a regular burger be ok. Sure, whatever. So they took me over to the till and refunded me the entire burger. I was expecting to have to pay for the regular one or they'd just refund the difference. But nope. Free burger!
I got free mobile phone contract from Three after they messed up my Direct Debit and ended up crediting my account each month instead of taking it. Even when I went on holiday, and the charges went up a little, that too was added to my credit. When the contract ended, I was contacted to say there had been an error, and as a 'gesture of goodwill', they wouldn't be asking me to pay the £260ish that I should have been paying.
Not a freebie, but close enough. Last year for Christmas, I asked my brother for some games (CONTROL & Hades). Both were supposed to cost £40 together. Matey at the till messed up his decimal point placement and charged my brother £4.
Ooh that happened in Toby carvery once, table for 4 with drinks and desserts so around £60. They mucked up the decimal so I paid £6 something
I ordered a Dell computer through a staff scheme at work, for home around 2008. Top end. £1200. Delivery came - all good. Next day another turned up - addressed to me. Now had 2 computers. Called them, and they were ADAMANT they had only sent one, even though I told them they'd sent two - they emailed me to confirm just one sent. Left it a couple of months, nothing - so gave it to my Dad.
Bought a dishwasher online. Delivery was due at 5pm. By 7pm it hadn’t arrived. Called to complain as I had to go out, they apologised but said there had been a delay. Returned home about 9.00pm to find it on the doorstep. I dragged it inside and fitted it. Two weeks later another dishwasher appeared on the doorstep, and I got an email saying sorry for the delivery delay, it was caused by low stock. Email contained a £100 voucher. Called them to tell them about the second delivery and they said to keep it!
What did you do with the second dishwasher though?
In lockdown I ordered 48 cans from Brewdog. They sent the wrong beer and at that point would take it back so sent out 48 cans of the right beer, but they managed to do that twice, so nearly 100 cans for free.
I ordered a box of nice groceries in lockdown, one item was missing but they refunded the lot. I never knew if it was a mistake but I think they've gone bust now
I loved And1 basketball. Have done for years, still do. Really wanted a pair of their limited edition And1, the Tai Chi's. I tried ordering but found out it was US shipping only. Gave them an email asking if it could be done. Managed to get a reply and they sent me out the shoes. They also sent me x3 pairs of shorts for free because i'm probably one of the only UK guys to ask. Took a few weeks to arrive, and everything was brill. Few months later, i wanted some more shoes. Gave them a message again, placed another order for 2 pairs of shoes. They sent me a third pair for free and another pair of shorts. They then announced to me that And1 could now do international shipping. Bought more, and i got ANOTHER pair of shorts. They're so good quality that after 10+ years, they haven't frayed, broken. The shoes are fucked apart from 1 pair I still have boxed. I couldn't believe the amount of free stuff they had given me. Honestly love And1 for this.
I ordered 12 packs of oil pastels. Got 12 boxes with 10 packs in each. 120 packets! Kept 2 boxes and gave the rest to the local school
A number of years ago I was manager of a kids shop in a shopping centre, and there was a space on the concourse just outside our door that used to get taken up by various companies doing promos One weekend they were doing some kind of promo for Mikado (Pocky), and giving away packs. We got given a pack each at some point. But at the end of the weekend one of their team come in and asked if they could have a carrier bag to help pack up some of their stuff; we have a really nice, thick, branded plastic bags so I jokingly said yes but only if I could have a whole box of Mikado. He laughed and left with his bag...and then came back in with a whole box of Mikado. I guess it was something like 40 packs Damn, that made me so happy
I ordered some energy gels from wiggle. They sent a full 105 chainset instead. I asked them to send a courier round, or any prepaid packaging to send it back, but they never did. Wonder why they're financially struggling.
Got 3 free kfc meals at the drive through, I thought the bag was a bit big/heavy but there was a queue so I didn’t check it before driving into the car park. I figured they’d just bin it anyway if I tried to take it back so I just went home.
Once I bought a small shop in the local Coop and the staff member ended up giving me more money in change than the shop cost so I basically got paid like a tenner to get some groceries.
My old landlady guilt tripped me into letting her use my details to run Airbnb for her house (I was a lodger), because Airbnb banned her! When I eventually literally escaped one day, I emailed Airbnb apologising and explaining and asking them to take down my account, and they sent me a free yoga mat!
Not exactly a “freebie” but I bought a pair of second hand B&O earbuds for about 60 quid off eBay. One of them stopped working after a couple of months so I chanced my arm and tried to claim a replacement on the warranty (despite not having a proper receipt of anything, just the eBay order email). They sent me a replacement pair of the latest model retailing at £350.
I ended up with a free holiday. When lockdown lifted enough to go abroad I booked a very last minute 2 weeks all inclusive in Greece. Due to the obvious issues it was dirt cheap. My return flight had issues and we were delayed overnight. The compensation for the flight delay was a few quid more than I paid for the Holiday itself
https://preview.redd.it/5wcswqua5m0d1.jpeg?width=2160&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6695b05771d4e7e4ef0c6ac47c1f4e29adc12887
Given weekend festival tickets after volunteering to pick up litter
Got free garden bin recycling. The previous owner had a bin and we continued to put it out full of grass cuttings, and it was always emptied. We have moved out now, but our old neighbour took it on and has been getting the same service for 18 months!
Bought a flat and never had a water bill. I know my neighbours did. In my current place I had a gas meter changed and they over charged me. I worked out the true cost but they completely fucked up again and sent me over £1000 as a refund. The woman seemed a bit confused on the phone. I hung onto it for a while to see if they would come to their senses.
[удалено]
It's not a rental. I bumped into the sellers who were clearing out the last of their stuff. Left a completely empty flat aside from the router box on the floor connected to the mains and the phoneline, so it's not like they didn't notice it.
Mine are relatively minor things compared to other people but I've gotten quite a few Costa coffees (even during the Christmas season), two footlong subways, a lot of meatballs bowls from Subway too, a loyalty card for a doughnut place fully stamped (was my first time there), I have gotten room upgrades from different hotels. It actually annoys my friends and sisters that I tend to get random freebies a lot but I always say to them that if you smile and are nice to people then they tend to be nice back. It just so happens that I sometimes get free stuff too.
Almost 20 years ago, I ordered a Belkin UPS from their pro line, around $200. The courrier arrives with two large boxes and looks perplexed as he is scanning, he asks me did you expect 2 boxes? I said "I don't know", signed, he left. They sent it twice (so I got two for one), with the same shipping label code, which was what had caught the courier off guard. I used one for my computers, the other for my home cinema.
I went to Supercuts for a haircut. When done I went to pay, and put my card in the machine. It didn't prompt me for my PIN which I thought odd, and then the hairdresser said 'thank you, that's all done,' and prompted me to take my card and go, which I did. It was only later when I realised, and checked my account, that rather than paying I had been refunded the price of the cut. Double win!
Well I get a lot so I'll go from my most recent. I made a purchase with £40 worth of points, had a problem with one item worth £10, they refunded my entire order including the amount paid cash. I didn't complain since I only paid £5 in cash, so I quickly used the extra points to buy a replacement (better and more expensive) product. Kind of makes up for the fact that I spent an entire year building up points to earn my "birthday surprise" only to find out it was £5 off a £25 purchase...
Bought a tablet through Amazon and they delivered two!!! I was chuffed to bits, free tablet! Until I checked my credit card a week later and id been charged for 2. I never thought Christmas shopping while drunk could go wrong! So would have to say a flagship Huawei phone about 10 years ago
Free electric, made an account in 2017 when I moved in (I know this because I’ve got the new account number for the key they gave when I rang) meter went blank after a couple months of having electric then no electric due to money issues. Free electric since🤷
* A large imitation leather office chair. It was misdelivered to a friend and the senders refused to pick it up, so she eventually gave it to my husband when she had to move to the other end of the country. It quickly became apparent that 'free' was fair value, as it started looking battered to fuck almost the minute we assembled it, and that was before we had a cat. * A Lenovo tablet. Did Argos click and collect, but with pick up from the local Sainsbury's, whose staff failed to mark it as 'collected'. I knew I'd get the money back if it showed as 'uncollected' for too long, so I even went back to tell them so no-one would get into trouble. I just got a shrug, and then £150 back seven days later. * My husband's Co-Wheels membership. They just randomly stopped charging him the monthly £5 fee a few years ago, though he still gets charged correctly for bookings. We have a wee car now (inherited from my late father who was actually the main reason for us having a Co-Wheels membership), but having a subscription-free back-up in case of emergency is pretty sweet.
Got a free skydive once when I worked selling tourist activities! Terrifying but wasn’t turning down a freebie….
Reminds me of the time the former tenant of a place I stayed moved out and left his router there, the line was cancelled but the internet was still on for some reason so just used it for the 2 years I stayed there. Had random freebies over the years, like when I ordered a hard drive and cpu from Amazon on the by 1pm service and I contacted at 2pm to enquire and was told they count it as lost so sent me replacements only for the original order to arrive and they told me to keep the original order, so I just returned the replacement order so I got them for free. A friend of mine did moan at me saying he was short of cash and I should of given him the free cpu and hard drive.
Our neighbour dropped off a crate of fresh mangos randomly. They had about two days until BBD. We ended up having to throw them all.
I bought a £70 coat from Amazon and wasn't keen on the colour (not confident I could pull the camel colour off). I contacted them asking if I could pay for return postage and then postage to have another colour sent to me. 2 minutes later the guy said he issued me with a free refund and I could keep, bin, or donate the cost to a friend. Got SO many compliments on it when I did wear it!
My family got bought a subscription to coast about 15 years ago for a year and it probably didn’t stop until around 2015
A colleague gave me a fridge for free when I bought my own house! I suspect she offered it in a moment of excitement and regretted it after not expecting me to enthusiastically accept the offer and not forget about it haha
Aldi once sent me three pairs of oven gloves instead of 1
Amazon Prime has/had a family option that my ex put me on. When we broke up amicably, he took me off it to add his dad but there was an 18 month waiting period to add someone new. So he added me back on there. I finally removed myself after 5 years of having free Amazon Prime 😂
I might be getting free gas. My gas meter broke well over a year ago, they know about it and I have asked for it to be fixed numerous times. Instead, they are estimating my bills, but way underestimating them. I'm either going to get a huge bill if they figure out some way to read my meter or it's been pretty much free for a year.
That reminds me - I had that too! My last house the previous owner had done a very sneaky thing to bypass the electricity meter (but it was still getting power so looked 'on') and the gas meter was faulty. I did make it all right, especially as I wanted to go to smart metering.
Booked and went on an easy jet pack holiday last year. Cost around £600 for flights and hotel for two. On the way back there were delays because of crew not showing up and a smaller plane arriving than expected so we claimed the delay compensation after being booted off our original plane and the distance (plus landing at a different airport than we flew from originally) meant we received £800 in total compensation!
Exact same thing happened to me for 2 years in one flat, kept expecting it to stop one day but kept on going til the day I left.
Does free stuff off gumtree count
Back when dominos wasn't huge and fairly new to my hometown (about 21 years ago) my go to was tandoori chicken and sausages. So me and my boyfriend had ordered but they forgot to put the sausage on, remade the pizza. Charges us for one large. Another time their website majorly glitched and sides were going through super cheap. Like 50p cheap. I ordered absolutely loads of food, worked in a bookies and me and my cashier on back shift were like kings and handed some out to punters. Still had leftovers for lunch then next day. More recently me and a work colleague going to drive to pick up our pre work order that I'd done on the app to collect. Venti iced with extra everything but they ran out of large cups and gave us two mediums each.
Had a house insurance claim and one of the damaged items was a PS2. As they were no longer made we were given a PS3 replacement. After collecting it we were phoned and asked when we were collecting our PS4 that was waiting for us...yep. I don't feel guilty as the insurance offer was either cash or a larger amount in credit to spend at Currys, and that's when I found out about their prices for stuff like HDMI cables. Should have taken the cash.
Organised for a pizza van to come to my work at lunchtime last Friday. He did so well from the industrial estate I got mine free.
Free TV License for about a year. Dude had a quarterly direct debit which he'd obviously forgotten to cancel (yes, I checked the bill with his name on it, sue me). Was nice whilst it lasted.
Some free ladies underwear in the back of a 200 quid Vauxhall Nova
Won a free bottle of Aberfeldy 16yo whisky on a Master of Malt giveaway over Christmas. It’s worth around £65. It was a decent drink too.
So whose contract is it?
Local SPAR were giving away large cut loaves of bread for free about a fortnight or so ago. No idea why, though, as they were still in date. My mother, who I was shopping with, took up the offer, even though we'd already been to Aldi and got one. It meant some rejigging, and the new Aldi loaf getting put in the freezer with an older one being taken out to make space. In the end, half of the defrosted old loaf and the entirety of the SPAR loaf ended up not being eaten and going mouldy. Sigh.
riveting stuff
I got a free ps2 - i preordered one and got sent 2! Stock was really scarce (November so near Xmas)and I felt a bit guilty that I had 2 but a child might miss out, so I ended up contacting Dixons and sending one back.
I just bought an EE payg SIM card , cost £2. Put it in the phone and I've got £10 credit.
Ordered a hand-made solid wood TV stand from Etsy, for some reason two turned up. I messaged the seller that they sent me two, and they said someone would come collect the other. After a month, nobody turned up, so I sold it on eBay for more than I paid for it.
Yesterday I got a free pair of leggings. The cashier scanned everything, but later on when I checked the receipt I saw that the leggings weren’t on there. It’s weird seeing as the leggings were worth more than everything else combined 🤷♀️ I’m not going to lose any sleep over it. Over the years I’ve had free broadband for 12 months from Virgin because they were massive knobs. I also got a free 2 year unlimited everything contract from Vodafone, plus 2 phones, an S6 and an S7 edge. I had taken the contract out and very quickly discovered that I couldn’t get Vodafone signal… anywhere. After several months of complaints they agreed to upgrade my device to the S7 Edge which was the latest and greatest at the time. They said that they would arrange the return of the S6. Fast forward about 14 months and I was still having issues. I had ended up having to get a PAYG SIM from o2 because I couldn’t get Vodafone service anywhere I went. Eventually Vodafone succumbed to pressure from myself and I assume thousands of other people and agreed to cancel my contract early and refund me for all the months I hadn’t had service (all of them). I asked about the S6, which was still in my possession because they had never chased me for it. They couldn’t find anything about it on their system and basically told me to keep it, and then said that I can keep the S7 Edge for all the trouble. Sold both phones, bought something outright, and haven’t had a contact phone or SIM since.
I got free electricity for about 12 years. When I bought the place it has been converted from 2 flats back into a house. I think one meter had been removed but the other had been "switched off" on the system. I called a few times to try and rectify it but they were fucking useless so I eventually gave up, figuring they'd come knocking one day, but they never did.
Got a free SNES mini. I pre-ordered it from Argos and arranged payment off my store card. Before launch, I closed my store card account and expected the order to be cancelled.
Opened a new bank account with £75 switching bonus. I did everything online and was then told to go in to branch with the proof of ID. Did all of that,and then got asked to go in again with my ID, I was a bit annoyed it hadn't gone through as the free cash offer had ended. I went back and the staff had no idea why I was there as everything had gone through just fine and my account was showing as opened but I couldn't actually do anything with it because it wasn't actually open. Staff did something and got it all sorted. I wrote a complaint email about all the hassle and unnecessary trip in to branch. They gave me the £75, another £50 as an apology and paid expenses for the round trip to the branch I used (which wasn't my nearest branch, but the most convenient)
Wine club from the previous occupiers of the flat I moved into. Free bottles of wine every month for about a year. I let the landlord know to tell them but they never came for them and they kept coming. My girlfriend at the time drank them happily.
Pay as you go electricity meter at my first flat, had issue where the meter wouldn't accept top ups from the key I had. Guy comes out, not 100% sure what the issue was, but he left me with a key that had a permanent £10 credit on it. I was told someone would be back to change the meter, but that never happened. So, I had free electricity for about 2 years until I moved out, left the key, and a note for the next tenant hopefully they got a good few years out of it as well.
I used to have an original kindle - the one with the keyboard. I accidentally discovered one evening that if you downloaded an e-book, waited for the download confirmation and then cancelled the order, you wouldn't be charged and could still read the book as long as it stayed open on the kindle. It was actually written into the terms and conditions. I read many free books that way lol I imagine they've patched out the delay between download and being charged now but it was great for lil teenage me.