Perfect example of real-life hacking

http://www.futilitycloset.com/2010/02/22/the-pudding-guy/

by ph0rque • 16 years ago

208 41 16 years ago

shib71• 16 years ago

How can you call that hacking? He covered every angle like the engineer he was.

DannoHung• 16 years ago

Because it reminds me of that one dude from the Val Kilmer movie Real Genius who sent in all of the "No purchase necessary" contest forms.

noelchurchill• 16 years ago

What a great find.

chacha102• 16 years ago

It's funny that the company made that mistake, but it is really cool that the guy got his miles. I would have thought that they would have a 'Some Restriction may apply' clause and have put a maximum on the amount of miles you can receive.

idlewords• 16 years ago

It wasn't a mistake. As the Snopes link says, the pudding company was happy with the publicity, and the airlines were as well.

kleevr2• 16 years ago

Are you sure this is real?

I ask because this anecdote seems to be verbatim from the movie "Punch Drunk Love". Although the movie I mention was released in 2002: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/

joshu• 16 years ago

http://www.flyertalk.com/pudding.htm

kleevr2• 16 years ago

I guess the proof is in the pudding... (thanks)

there• 16 years ago

if you look at the film's trivia (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0272338/trivia) you'll see that it was based on this story:

The film was inspired by an article in 'Time' magazine about David Phillips, a University of California civil engineer who stumbled upon a lucrative frequent-flyer promotion. By purchasing 12,150 cups of Healthy Choice pudding for just $3,000, he accumulated 1.25 million air-miles.

eli• 16 years ago

Yup, the movie is based on this guy. http://www.snopes.com/business/deals/pudding.asp

JacobAldridge2• 16 years ago

An example of art imitating life.

(Actually, that was one of the many things that annoyed be about that film. When Adam Sandler was comparing all the different products to gain the miles, I yelled at the TV "Buy the freakin' puddings you moron." When he subsequently did, my wife looked at me like I was prescient; I made the mistake of telling her that element was based on a true story hence my foresight.)

aoriste• 16 years ago

And let us not forget the Lazlo Hollyfeld from the 1985 classic The Real Genius (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0089886/) who computerized his "no purchase necessary, enter as often as you like" way to millions in cash and prizes.

mhartl• 16 years ago

That was based on a real event at Caltech:

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/archive/permalink/the_cal...

The short version: in 1975, at the dawn of the computer age, a group Caltech students used the school's IBM mainframe to print out 1.2 million entries to a McDonald's sweepstakes, stuffing them into the entry boxes at 98 separate restaurant locations. The students ended up winning 20% of the prizes, including a new car and $3000 worth of groceries.

lotharbot• 16 years ago

There are people who buy dollar coins straight from the US mint (with free shipping) with credit cards, deposit the coins to pay off the bill, and accumulate rebates and frequent flier miles. IIRC one guy bought an appreciable fraction of a million dollars worth of coins, a few grand at a time, and got a similarly ridiculous number of frequent flier miles out of it.

One reason this is considered "real life hacking": it's an exploit of a bug. Credit card companies generally exclude "buying cash" from their rewards programs ("some restrictions may apply"), but some of them failed to account for dollar coins as a form of cash.

Judson• 16 years ago

And they got free shipping on the coins!

Story is here: http://www.google.com/url?q=http://online.wsj.com/article/SB...

(google link to get behind paywall)

dhyasama• 16 years ago

I'm assuming the Treasury is funded by taxpayers which means the free shipping is paid for by taxpayers. Cool hack but kind of lame.

Sam_Odio• 16 years ago

I actually tried this a few months back. No longer works...at least not if you purchase the maximum order ($5,000).

JacobAldridge2• 16 years ago

Reminds me of the Burma Shave example from the 1950s - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1152409

lunchbox• 16 years ago

Reminds me of the infinite Jamba Juice hack:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=875856

blored• 16 years ago

Periodically you will find cereal boxes with a 'Free Adult Movie Admission' inside. The cereal is around $3.00 while movie admission is around $14. My friend and I used to buy some cereal, tear off the coupons on the way to the theatre and enjoy a nutritious snack during the movie.

frisco• 16 years ago

I definitely read "Free Adult Movie Admission" as "Free Adult Movie Admission" the first few times through. Nothing like cereal during porn?

cracki• 16 years ago

what if that's what it actually was?

Hexstream• 16 years ago

Reminds me of: http://www.frenblog.com/illusion/dolphin-illusion/

NSFW

Nekojoe• 16 years ago

That reminds me of this guy who did a similar thing to get a Concorde flight - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3204699.stm

robin_reala• 16 years ago

Unfortunately when you try a similar thing with Pepsi they refuse: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc.

ortusdux• 16 years ago

For a long time, 1 in 6 20oz pepsi products had an instant win cap worth another soda free. If you held the bottle still enough at the right angle you could easily check the cap in the reflection on the soda. I don't think the savings over the years of free soda would be enough to cover my dentist bills though...

nazgulnarsil• 16 years ago

this is a good example of needing money to make money. When I was unemployed for a while I found myself in a death spiral where I didn't have enough liquid cash to take advantage of some money making opportunities that came along.

JoeAltmaier• 16 years ago

Worse than that: not having money means not having safety nets, getting injured/sick/stressed with no backup, resulting in losing the job/house/car..and down you go.

RiderOfGiraffes• 16 years ago

Related story from two months ago: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=981433

ars• 16 years ago

He has a wikipedia page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur)

david927• 16 years ago

A friend of mine, Paul, did this in Zurich back in 2002. He saw that the Migros grocery franchise was giving 10x points for a week, some products were giving 10x points and his credit card was giving (I think) 10x points for the month. There was a special offer for miles-to-points at the time. So he put it all together for about 30 round-trips flights in Europe for a couple thousand bucks. At first they yelled at him, and then they relented.

When he told me about the idea, I just thought it was funny. When he told me he found a product cheap enough, and spelled it out, I immediately went to get the Migros point card, only to find out I had to wait a week for it, and the offers expired in the meantime. Damn.

Edit: I'm really fuzzy on the details. I'll ask him about it, if you want the exact specifics.

artaak• 16 years ago

I thought that "miles" is just a nice name for reward points: "Simply multiply the cost of your travel purchases by 100. For example, if your ticket costs $200, you’d multiply that by 100 to determine you need 20,000 miles to redeem."

In fact, in that story the guy might have had a lot of "miles", but it is only $12,500 in dollar equivalent. It means that this "great" hack is a hack, without "great". Please correct me if I am wrong.

Batsu• 16 years ago

Indeed, miles is just a nice name for reward points, but you're not quite on target with the calculations. In American Airline's AAdvantage program, you earn miles per dollar spent (for example, CitiBank's AAdvantage card earns 1 mile per dollar spent[1]). However, it takes a static number of points depending on your departure and arrival locations[2].

On top of the $1 = 1 mile business, for whatever reason, lots of airlines hand out frequent flyer miles like candy. American Airlines used to give you 1,000 miles ($500 worth, as you get double points with AA services) just for booking a vacation through their service... the pudding is another example of this. There's lots of potential for bonus miles, basically.

So, depending on how you want to look at it, doing this without rewards, he earned $1,250,000 worth of miles for around $3750. With rewards, it could be anything, but surely he paid the minimum amount.

[1] http://www.citicards.com/cards/wv/faq2.do?screenID=801&s... [2]: http://www.aa.com/pubcontent/en_US/disclaimers/free-ticket-a...

vladocar• 16 years ago

"Phillips also got Aadvantage Gold status for life with American Airlines, which brings a special reservations number, priority boarding, upgrades, and bonus miles."

- reminds me of the film "Up in the Air" http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/ I only hope that the Pudding Guy story has Happy End

etalbot15• 16 years ago

hacking is not a good thing

Perfect example of real-life hacking

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