Reps
In the bike trade you get all kinds of reps coming in pedalling their wares (helmets, clothing, parts etc) and we spend most of our time trying to get free stuff, pretty good we thought until the boss found out. As i was taking delivery of my new Arai helmet (worth £300), he came storming into the parts department shouting at the rep as to why he was giving the staff freebies when he was the one owning the shop, why did we all have free helmets and he had an old one, the rep panicked and offered him anything to appease him, including a £550 race replica lid. anyways after a few days the bosses new helmet arrived. he calmly took it out of the box,laughed,put a price tag on it and put it on sale for £550. apparently he does this to every rep every year. the jammy swine
( evilamnesiac says fuck you Prince, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 15:03, 3 replies)

cheepskate
My freebie spree started when I realized that the vast majority of stuff in my workplace wasn't nailed down.

£6 per hour and free everything!
( willenium Fist bump for verification, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 14:43, Reply)

I've been to the pub.
Now I fully understand the question (see page 2), I'd like to say that I'm brilliant at abusing freebies.

Take B3TA for example. I'm not in the least bit arsed about having a funky looking icon next to my login name, yet I'm double happy coming on here, looking at the images and more importantly, posting rubbish replies to QOTW (although saying that, I only post replies if I have a genuine answer to a question).

Either way, it's free and to prove I'm abusing it….

Everyone one on B3TA is a cunting fucker.

How's about that for some abuse?
( JeffTheDogFucker Can you dig it?, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 14:39, 4 replies)

Journalism
As a music / film / games hack of some 17 years standing, I've had my own weight in freebies over the years. Dozens of free festivals, thousands of free CD's, hundreds of free gigs (usually with a plus 1), hotel rooms, brand new computer games, etc etc. I've made thousands flogging some of them on ebay, and am rarely stuck for anything to do; for instance, last night I went to the Waterloo IMax cinema to watch the new Beowulf movie, with my missus, for free, a week before it cam out. So I do now qualify as a postgraduate level blaggist.

The two particular items that stand out for me though, weren't got through the hack privileges. A) My day (non-journo) job issued me with a metal business card holder. No use for me as I barely give out one business card per year, but ideal as a holder and portable surface for the naughty powder. And B) I managed to blag myself onto a medical trial testing the effects of cannabis - so I got paid £60 to get 100% legally stoned, having pure THC injected straight into the bloodstream (which knocks your bollocks off BTW). That's good blaggery in my book.
(keeferreefer, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 14:12, Reply)

While our boss was on holiday...
...we took the opportunity to requisition a set of business cards for every member of the team, from our in-house printing department.

5 years later, he still doesn't know about it.

I know it doesn't sound like much, but he's a pedantic little shit and he'd go off his chump if he knew about it.

It's little victories like that that get you through the day. Tosser.
(Reverend Fister "a disciplined fuckwit", Fri 9 Nov 2007, 14:11, 1 reply)

cheap xmas pressie
for a whole year i collected anything free. i subscribed to loads of websites, and got sent loads of samples incl perfumes, calendars, teabags, makeup, tshirts, razers etc...

i then put my whole collection in a nice box and gave it to my mate for xmas!

she wasnt impressed! .... i thought it was genious! - a massive box full of stuff that i didnt pay for!

although i can understand why she gave me a funny look when she pulled out a 'tenna lady' sample and an 'adult incontinent nappy' hehe.
(chixor, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 14:01, Reply)

Derby vs London
We worked for the internet publishing side of a newspaper group and had just been merged (taken over by) another part of their business. To be honest, there was a bit (lot) of bad feeling between the two parts of the company, apologies to anyone who's from Londonshire, but the guys we worked with thought the universe revolved around London, and anywhere else (I'm being serious) was inconsequential. Maybe it was just the attitude of the kind of people that get attracted to working in that industry, I don't know.

Anyway; we were based in Derby, they were in London - they thought of us as hicks from the sticks, we thought of them as coke sniffing idiots - so there was a lot of anticipation when our new company organised a pre-christmas get together at Koko's in London...free alcohol and accomodation all round. One of the lads took so much advantage of the free bar, he ended up stripping and then writhing (naked) all over another (female) party goer right in front of their MD heh!

I suppose you could say that was abusing freebies in all kinds of ways. Needless to say relations between the two sides were a bit frosty after that. The writhing guy didn't come back to work again (he texted his boss saying he hated all that corporate shit!) Not sure if they got invited back the next year, luckily I'd left by then. (yay)
( curvylittlegoth heard the voices in your head on, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:57, 1 reply)

A Company Laptop
I work for an IT department for a certain council in the UK. One day, a councillor brought his laptop into us as he was having trouble with it. Somebody happened to have on them a utility which scans the file which records all of the internet history, Google searches, etc so we decided to try it out on his.

We discovered to our amusement that he had a fetish for being dominated by women whilst they dressed him up in sexy lingerie. His searches reflected that he wanted to find prostitutes in the locale that would accomodate his kinks along with strap-on play and various other harmless but eye opening antics.

We showed it to the manager as a laugh but he decided that it wasn't funny and that the councillor was abusing a resource from the tax payer. He then reported it to the top brass and a week later, the poor bloke resigned.

We felt a bit shit about it afterwards.
(Taunting Lunatics Belming at you since, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:50, 2 replies)

Ambassador, with this free booze you are really spoiling us
Not many freebies for government office workers, but you can't beat a good embassy booze up if you get the chance. The first one I went to left me vomiting chapagne the next morning and looking like death.
(Glen Moranjie, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:47, Reply)

Free drink
I get free water out of my taps so I left them running and filled up a load of buckets a few weeks back. Now I've got as much water as I can drink for probably the next few years, or something.
(Jamey, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:45, Reply)

CAKE!!!
When I worked at a larger company each floor/dept would have it's own kitchenette.

I discovered that if you visited every kitchen sooner or later you would discover it was somebody's birthday and there would be cakes left in the kitchen.

I had a free cake every day for the 2 years I worked there!
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:36, Reply)

I work for a wine merchants
and regularly get to go on holidays in wine-growing areas for free. So far I've been to Champagne, the Rhone, and Bordeaux. I'm off there again in March.
As these trips are supplier-funded (they usually take us round the vineyards and winery) I don't put my hand in my pocket all week. Including some very nice restaurant meals - as we usually have the owner or a director with us, it's not going to be a kebab, is it?
And I couldn't even count the free samples I get my hands on.
It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it.
( wynoh kills threads by his mere presence, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:31, 1 reply)

Every Freeby on the Internet
Penfold, a good friend of my has some issues. Being a computer bod he's always been quite and over-reserved. So to spice up his life we spent a whole day at work sending free stuff to his house.
He got through the post:

Tampons
Sanitary Towels
Cat Food (had no kats)
Jelly Bellys (sweets)
Soiled Panties
But-Plug
Vaginal Fungicide
Many more..

The icing on the cake though was that we entered him into a poetry contest and it ONLY BLOODY ONE! The poem read:

"Rodents big, or rodents small
I don't care, I love them all

I Like them with chips, or salsa dips
Cheese or chives, all wrapped up in a hive

Splokey dokies make that noise
Quite unlike the other toys

Watching children run and play
oh how-I-wish-I-was-their-wooden-horse

but most of all the thing I like
Is a rodent most furry"

Good old penfold - to make up for it visit his site and give it some hits. www.silverblade.co.uk/
( SiX and his hat, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:27, 2 replies)

"I've got his wife and kids!"....
This is the standard outcome in a game we play at work...

Basically whenever we have cause to target someone in the public arena our little IT team go on a mission to obtain information about said person.

For example we have had the person using our copyright images on our website and leeching them to their auctions on ebay. Further investigation also showed they were fraudulently obtaining our stock by complaining items were not recieved etc. Basically they sold on ebay as much stuff as ordered but only paid for about 20% of it as it "was missing from the order".

Also we have a free wireless network in the office for visiting sales persons use etc. We detected an American fellow in the next office using it to download movies etc.

SO anyway, after a victim is identified the challenge is set. Find out everything you can.

For mr Ebay we were astounded at how much we could find including;
- Home address
- Date of birth
- Name of his wife
- Names & DOB of his children (getting iffy here), His wife was asking advice on a parenting forum, hence...
- ...we knew what illnesses his kids had (and when).
- Then we got photos....
It started out with "He's selling his Volvo on autotrader"
"I've got a picture of his house" (with volvo in foreground).
"I've got a picture of his wife and kids"...

That was pretty much where we decided to give up. There is online stalking but the wife and kids line was too far.

So you can imagine the amusement when we were able to get similar info on our next victim.

I wanted to print the picture out and put it under his car windscreen wiper.

Anyway, DON'T ABUSE THE FREE INTERNET.... 'cos we're watching ;)
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:19, 2 replies)

I own a medium sized manufacturing company..
...who's business is eagerly sort by many raw material and machinery suppliers.

I'm regularly flown to Florence to look at machines I don't buy. I attend most of the big sporting events as a corporate guest including any Premiership match, Superbikes etc. Best of all, I recently ran up a £1000 bill in a popular London lap dancing establishment.

In addition to this my brother inlaw is a successful stand up comedian so I often blag myself backstage and after show party invites so I can hang about with famous people.

Length? Longer than yours.
(Cane: I love Sushi, Sobriety & Shotokan, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:18, 1 reply)

harvey bastarding nics
my ex flatmate had gone shopping in edinburgh to the annual harvey nics store card holders pissup shopathon. alone. first mistake!

several hours later she phoned me with great news. she had bought me a jumper which was reduced down to a bargain £100. (at the time this was a considerable amount of cash. cash that i didnt have!)
needless to say i was going to have to pay for this so i thought it would be wise to skip uni and drive to edinburgh to get a refund immediately. second mistake!

upon arriving at harvey nics i was greeted by my flatmate carrying umpteen bags of clothes and two glasses of champagne. champagne?!?!?
'whats this?' i ask.
'its free' she replies
(no prizes for guessing what happened next)
an hour and a half and a ridiculous amount of cheap bubbly later and i was suitably twatted to think it a good idea to spunk 2 months rent on a jacket which is about as practical as a used tampon. just cos its got a fancy frickin label.

free champagne - big mistake.

harvey nics are cnuts!
(babyjak, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 13:05, Reply)

Not me, my dad.
He's a dermatologist.

He's also tight-fisted to an alarming degree- for a time there he was proud of the fact that he could eat more at Wendy's all-you-can-stand salad bar than anyone else there. But I digress...

See, the pharmeceutical companies, like other companies, try to drum up business by giving out freebies with their newest product emblazoned on them. So when I was a child we had (and Dad still has them) refrigerator magnets advertising one thing, pens advertising something else, pads for various zit creams and antibiotics, and so on. He even got (and gave to me) a tee shirt advertising some anti-fungal ointment in big letters on the front, with the details from the insert listed on the back (including the molecular structure of the active ingredient).

It always annoyed and embarrassed me as a child that everything in our house had some medical product's name printed on it- even the dish towels, for gods sake.

But the crowning touch was the pair of golf socks he wore advertising a medicine for athlete's foot...
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:55, 3 replies)

Mars bars
In about 1990/1991 Mars did an offer where they gave away vouchers inside Mars bars.

The odds of winning these vouchers were 9/1.

I ended up winning 5 in a row (i.e. paying for 1, and getting another 5 free)

Odds of this: 9⁵/1!
(deane1980 - I wasn't working at:, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:54, 2 replies)

A few years ago, when I worked in London...
(why do all of my stories start with this?).

Anyway, one day a lady appeared at our Trade Counter and said "Do you guys like beer? Do you like Budweiser? Do you you want to come and drink as many free Buds as you want?"

Of course we all answered yes to all of these questions, and signed up. Anheuser-Busch were doing some research, so on the appointed night we all left work, went straight to the hotel over the road and hit the conference room, where we joined a few other chaps and chappesses.

Basically, there was a shitload of Budweiser there, all with the labels blanked out, some marked Type A, and some marked Type B. We had to drink one of each and say which we preferred, then we were allowed an hour to drink as many more as we could, while they made a note of which type we had.

As there were a few of us we then proceeded to enjoy an hour of chilling out, chatting to each other, and necking as many beers as we could. Our mate Lawrence "won", he had 18 bottles. I came second, with 16. As we left, there was a distinct wobble on the floor that hadn't been there when we started.

Oh, and I've just remembered - they paid us for it as well, £20 each! Is that the ultimate freeby or what?

\o/
(Professor Kenny Martin Hmm? What?, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:50, 1 reply)

white supremacists freebie
Billy Jo Bob and Deekus were sitting round in their pointed hoods and drinking moonshine. Billy put down his Martin Luther King voodoo doll and turned to Deekus: "God daaaamn, man. We ain't had a cross burnin' for months now - not since Bubba got sent down for a stretch. Why don't we go down to Ol' Man Thompson's store and get us some wood."

So the two men went out to the pick-up - still wearing their hoods - and drove down the road apiece to the store. But Ol' Man Thompson was off sick, having caught his beard in a combine harvester and had his face ripped off. "That's the third time he done that," opined Deekus.

Manning the store was Thompson's assistant, Washington DeLorean, a man of colour. Seeing the two hooded men walk through the door, he knew what he had to do.

"Well if it isn't Washington," sneered Deekus. "Last time I looked, you was white!"

"And last time I looked, you were a redneck pindick bastard," thought Washington (who had not yet garnered the concept of the customer always being right). "What can I do for you gentlemen? Some beams for a cross, maybe? I got two left and you can have 'em for free."

"You goddamn right, DeeLorean. Now hop to it and load them beams on to our pick up while we look through these here girly magazines."

Washington did as he was bidden, and settled down to watch the news later that evening. He was not remotely surprised to see a story about two local 'tards in pointy hood blown up in a petrol explosion. He was not surprised because he had sold them the last two remaining beams from Ol' Man Johnson's petrol station forecourt, soaked with 30 years of petroleum drips and just begging for a match to be applied.

"How 'bout some more of that ebony lovin'?" said Billy Jo Bob's ungrieving girlfriend, making a grab for Washington's enormous phallus.
(frankspencer, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:47, 3 replies)

I'm ashamed of this one....
We started a magazine. it got us VIP access into festivals, we met some record executives and got free cd's. we also interviewed some bands. You know the usual Journo stuff..

Trouble is, we only published one issue and got no advertising. but we still collected the cd's from the record companies. that is until they noticed...
(Bluffboy South Africa! World Champions!!!, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:43, Reply)

Running a conference
For about 18 months I was the IT bod for a dept of the open university that was running these training conferences in hotels all over the UK. We typically did about 1 a month or sometimes 3 or 4 back to back then nothing for months.

Anyway, I discovered that the hotels would supply stuff like pens/pencils etc to the rooms used for group sessions. I was responsible for a PC & projector in each room so after the conference had to clear up.

Thanks for hotel provisions some 9 years later I still have a plentiful supply of pencils, biros, felt tip marker pens and small notepads. All bearing the name/logo of major hotel chains! I reckon they'll last me about 20 years!
(golddust QOTW now revolves around being a cunt, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:39, 1 reply)

Alcohol Story #2
I had just joined a band. Generally that means loads of girls all over you (you have to be good though) and plenty attention all round.

The first party we went to I was showing off my drinking skills very well by finishing off a few 750 ml bottles of beer in one sip*
I also polished off a bottle of some sours or the like though it escapes me now for very obvious reasons.

I ended up throwing up on the hosts carpet and getting carried home. I'm not a small bloke so that was rather hard to do.

I still cringe at that every time I see any of the people who were there that night.

* each bottle, not more bottles in one sip. though that would be impressive

I also know why none of the girls ever paid me any attention despite my great length...
(Bluffboy South Africa! World Champions!!!, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:38, Reply)

Was a sub-editor on our student magazine at uni.
The magazine had a free meal & pint token for the local Weatherspoons pub.

I and friends ate there for every single meal that term.

Sadly the mag stopped soon into the next term due to, er... a lack of circulation.
( Je suis un vagabond is an unfunny, up your own arse middle class knob, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:36, Reply)

Like a dream come true.
Many years ago, I spent some time working for a major charity which organised large fundraising events - world record attempts at wacky things and so on. One of these had over 3,000 attendees and was sponsored by McVities. As part of the sponsorship deal, they supplied a small pack of Jaffa Cakes for every attendee. These were delivered to the venue the day before whilst we setting up and part of my job was to check the storeroom and make sure everything was okay, which I did.
As I was checking up, I heard a click behind me. Someone walking past had obviously seen the open door and, worrying about possible Jaffa Cake theft, had closed and locked the door. I was momentarily worried, until it struck me that the storeroom had a tap so I wasn't going to die very quickly and, more to the point, I was locked, alone and unsupervised, in a room with ten thousand Jaffa Cakes.

I was rescued about an hour later, but it was great while it lasted.
(davywavy, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:32, 8 replies)

McDonalds
Mcdonalds, Stockport Grand Central c1990. 'Trivial Pursuit' scratch card offer. Stole 2 boxes of cards (about 500), borrowed an encylopedia (this was before elastictrickery) and looked all the answers up. Spotted a rotating 100 questions in the cards eventually. Result? More free stuff than I could imagine. Mostly sold the cards to mates for 10p a pop. Made a killing. Well, about twenty quid really. Adjusting for inflation, thats about a million or so.
( I have run out of coke is a little sweaty, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:21, 2 replies)

Viewing Tower Piss Up
Not me but my brother in law back in his crusty student days. Mate of his worked in Dublin Airport and coming up to Xmas managed to get Brother in Law and a few others into a free booze piss up being held in one of the flight control towers. All were warned to keep a low profile so as not be noticed (staff only gig of course). There were just enough people there so that this was quite manageable. The night progressed. People got very merry on free lager, wine and song.....
That is until one of the impostors excitedly jumped to his feet and started pointing out the tower window "Look!! Look!! A plane!!"
Rumbled. They got their coats and tried to explain to their dim witted pal that the sight of a jet coming into land wasn't exactly a novelty for Dublin Airport employees.
(jackdonaghy has a special helmet, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:20, Reply)

tmobile
gawd bless 'em. free texts all weekend for topping up one messly tenner on a friday.
one tiny bit of scripting later and our sms broadcast campaign went live. we sent forty thousand messages last weekend and it's friday today so we're doing the whole lot again this weekend!
icstis, if you are listening, they were all opt in purchasers - no spamming from us.
and - i've just found out that o2 are doing a similar deal for free messages every day for topping up £30. no sooner typed, than done! freebie abuse? i reckon so!
(localhost, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:18, 1 reply)

another Budwiser t-shirt blag
reading Reverend Fister's story about the Budwiser tshirt scam reminds me.....

when the promotion was on I managed to pinch the reel of stickers from the bar we were drinking at in Portsmouth. We had limitless stickers to put on our cards, to claim Bud '96 tshirts with. The only problem was the promotion ended the next day. so we arranged a pub crawl around all the pubs with the promotion on. Had a pint in every pub. claimed at least 4 tshirts per pub, and by the end of the day had amassed quite a sizeable amount of bud tshirts. It was a legendary day.




b3ta qotw cherry popped
(Bugs, Fri 9 Nov 2007, 12:18, Reply)