What's the best freebie you've ever had?

[Malevolence]

Does finding **** count?

I found a wallet a while back. It was just sitting on a wall next to a bus stop, it had just shy of £500 in cash and little else bar a couple of credit cards and debit card which, strangely, were all in different names. There was no driving licence or any other form of identification at all, just the three cards in different names. This was at silly o'clock (around 03:30) on a weekday and the town centre was dead. There was literally nobody in sight, on foot or in a car, and it was deathly silent.

Yoink.

 

[Rroff]

Until Amazon put a stop to it I used to get sellers I used regularly send me free stuff (usually in the hope of 5 star reviews and/or I believe in some cases they were doing it so they could give themselves 5 star reviews). Probably the best free thing I've had is a winter hat from that - was ostensibly a Christmas gift thank you for being a regular customer but it was quite nice quality, fit and style suit me perfectly and came at just the right time.

Used to get a few odds and ends from a friend who owns a computer store that was otherwise just sitting around and/or parts pulled from customer returns that would otherwise have been binned, etc. - got some one generation back high end CPUs, etc. back in the Pentium 2-4 days and stuff like that which was nice but nothing really that expensive by the time I got them.

 

[builder22]

Reminds me of shopping last week. Scales hadn't been calibrated so got an onion for 4p

Was this onion shaped like a pack of socks or some other higher value but low weight item?

 

[bainbridge]

Prawn crackers and fortune cookies.

 

[mumihp]

Complained to Amazon a prime delivery was late, got £10 voucher twice. Also, the 3rd time, Amazon said they will refund me for 2 months prime but they refunded the entire prime cost so 2020 prime delivery was free.

 

[eddie101]

Most recently, a Shure MV7 and a set of Shure Aonic 50's.

 

[Mr Joshua]

There's a few of things that stick out in my mind.

Most recently a petrol strimmer for clearing my allotment from a friend.

I got in touch with an electronics company about acquiring some scraps of 1.5mm copper clad board and they sent me a load, the postage must've been quite something!

One that I still remember clearly was from the early 90s when I wanted the book Stan's Galactic bug, unfortunately it had gone out of print but my dad wrote to the publisher and they sent one to us for free, really nice.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

Free copy of Skyrim SE as I already had LE and I got that in a steam sale. The hours of enjoyment I've spent in that has to be good deal especially when you consider the couple hundred quid I've had for making mods for it its paid for itself umpteen times over.

Ordered a top of the range GPU years ago, think it was £350. I cancelled the order and it low and behold it turned up 3 weeks later...

Something similar ordered a AIB cpu cooler that didn't show got in touch and they refunded me the cost, later that day got a knock on the door from the guy upstairs saying is this yours, it was delivered to me by mistake didn't notice until now...

 

[adolf hamster]

Isn't taking from someone else's skip without permission also stealing?

i thought it didn't count as theft if the item was evidently being disposed of?

and being chucked in a skip seems pretty good evidence.

 

[pp111]

Bought a table saw for £750. It was misaligned, but by the time I discovered it was easy to calibrate I had already arranged for a replacement. The replacement arrived and the seller never sent anyone to collect the original. A month later I phoned them up and reminded them. Eleven months after that they still hadn't collected it so I sold it for £500.

 

[Jean-F]

i thought it didn't count as theft if the item was evidently being disposed of?

and being chucked in a skip seems pretty good evidence.

Maybe it depends on who the skip belongs to, and the reason why they don’t want something taken from it
As I said in my post # 26, a big supermarket, beginning with T, and ending with O, said that they’d call the police if I took a boxed chocolate cake that they were going to put in the skip.
Although the cake had been made the day before, for collection that day, but the customer hadn’t shown, the store was concerned that I may get food poisoning, and blame them for allowing me to take the cake.

 

[Deleted User 298457]

We had a similar disposal policy when I worked in retail. If it has formally been written off the books as shrinkage, then 'legally' it must be disposed of. The ongoing liability sounds like something slightly more 'made up' but I don't doubt the thought process the employee went through.

 

[adolf hamster]

Maybe it depends on who the skip belongs to, and the reason why they don’t want something taken from it
As I said in my post # 26, a big supermarket, beginning with T, and ending with O, said that they’d call the police if I took a boxed chocolate cake that they were going to put in the skip.
Although the cake had been made the day before, for collection that day, but the customer hadn’t shown, the store was concerned that I may get food poisoning, and blame them for allowing me to take the cake.

sounds more like they were trying to dodge liability.

i mean if you had taken it and got food poisoning i can't see that lasting long in court given the whole premise was that you were eating food you got from a bin.

 

[SpeedFreak]

Private box at Twickenham for England Vs New Zealand was a good one.

 

[Salsa]

Ordered a king size bed from John Lewis which came with a damaged headboard. No problem, I arranged a replacement headboard which took a couple of months to be delivered because of Covid.

The replacement turned up while I was out so JL delivered to my neighbour only it turns out they delivered a whole new bed frame. I contacted them to let them know of the mistake and they arranged to collect the un needed frame. 7 days later they refunded me in full for the original purchase. I called them twice more to try and sort it all out but they were more confused than I was. 7 days after that they refunded me again Never did get to the bottom of it...

12 months later and I still have both bed frames, and have managed to repair the original and use it in the spare room. The double refund paid for a new TV for the lounge, which I bought from John Lewis.

/Salsa

 

[moon man]

My oak and copper bed frame was a free cycle thing, Iits massive (I get told , ha I wish) and those are shadows on sheets nowt dodgy
Edit also wardrobe, that's a whopper also
Also a laptop last week from a lady at work, she was going to bin it, win 7 but its 10 now and has a dvd drive, do like to put my cds on to my car usb stick

 

[cyber69]

I’m ordering food delivery from Morrisons through Amazon at the moment and they are regularly sending the odd wrong item even though I asked for it not to be substituted. I just go on Amazon and tell them it’s wrong and they refund me no hassle. I got a free garlic bread the other week!

I got a free crate of beer once from a customer for doing some extra work but a contractor I knew down in London got a free crate of champagne from the contract he was working on.

 

[BigBoy]

Back when I was just a boy and McDonalds ran the original Trivial pursuit competition my dad won a Sony separates hi fi system with the first CD player we ever owned.

More recently I won a GTomega Element Napa leather chair on a Twitch stream competition.

 

[Captain]

I recently got 23 nuggets in my 20 nugget share box, I was happy.

 

[glenimp617]

I won a two week holiday in Australia when I was 17

 

[LabR@t]

Ordered a video card was delivered on the Monday and again on the Tuesday.

Waited a month no contact so i kept it.

Ps not overclockers
I think it was a Radeon 7850 can't remember