14 Clever Stories Of People Exploiting A Loophole

9.

“In the late 1980s, I was an intern at Apple. They had just released the Mac II, the first color Mac, and the machines were basically impossible to get. As an intern, I was eligible for what Apple called ‘first discount,’ buying a machine at a substantial savings. I forget exactly what the savings was, but it was about 50–70% off. So the $8,000 machine would only cost about $3K AND we could get it immediately. The only catch is that everyone only got ONE first discount, so we had to use it wisely. If you bought something now, you would never get another in the future. I wasn’t planning on getting one since I already had a machine provided by work, and I didn’t have the money anyway. But then, a family friend who owned a small business asked if there was any way I could get a machine since his local store had no availability. I told him I could buy it with my first discount and explained how it worked.”

“He was super appreciative and paid me the full price for the machine. WAY more than my discount. A few weeks later, as the intern season was coming to an end, he contacted me again, asking if I could get another machine somehow. I tell him I only had that one discount, but I would ask around. I asked some of my roommates and fellow interns and explained the situation, and someone let me use their discount as well. When I got paid, I split the extra cash with this person. I had a few thousand dollars for doing basically nothing.

At that point, the floodgates opened.

I systematically went down the list of all of the interns, finding people who were not using their first discount and would be willing to give it up. I offered them $500. Many people were happy to take it. Meanwhile, I got a list of ‘clients’ who were willing to pay OVER market price for the machines in order to get them quickly. I focused on customers who wanted the highest end possible so the price (and my discount) was maxed out. These were also the hardest machines to get, so people would gladly pay a premium for quick delivery. I moved about a dozen machines before the list was tapped out. It took about a two months.”

—David Vronay