Admit it, finding loopholes and abusing them leave a bad taste in your mouth, but are otherwise legal and nobody can really do anything about it, except learn from it and possibly implement counter-measures so as to not allow others to abuse the heck out of it.
But when it works, and even the bank teller is having a laugh about it as it didn’t really hurt anyone, it’s bliss.
This one internaut recently shared their perhaps not-too-malicious-but-still-very-much-strict-compliance story explaining how they figured out an interesting loophole in the banking system that effectively allowed them to withdraw all of their money despite having withdrawal limits but still remain a bank patron.
More Info: Reddit
Finding loopholes in bank systems both leaves a bad taste in your mouth, but also feels satisfying for many reasons
Image credits: Rex Roof (not the actual photo)
So, Reddit user u/luther_williams is an American who lives in South Korea but works for an American company that, for reasons they did not want to disclose, does not provide the necessary documentation proving that they work for the company, making some minor things a hassle.
In particular, one of these things is having restrictions on their bank account and what they can do with it. (For the sake of simplicity, we’ll focus on the dollar conversions).
This person found out that you can avoid money transfer restrictions without any ramifications—just close your account
Image credits: luther_williams
In more particular, they can only withdraw roughly $216 a day from an ATM and if they go to an in-person teller at the bank, they are allowed to withdraw about $870 a day. Also, they can’t have a credit/debit card, but rather this electronic “bank book” thingamajig. But it doesn’t cause big problems as they use their US card much more often.
Except for this one particular situation.
OP simply wanted to transfer their $8,700 deposit to the landlord, but were stopped by a $870 per day limit
Image credits: luther_williams
OP signed a lease for a new apartment, and the deposit was ten times the allowed withdrawal sum if they were to do it with an in-person teller—$8,700. So, they transferred that money from their US account to their South Korean account and went to the bank to get this sorted out.
Well, it wasn’t a possibility. While OP’s first idea was to transfer the money in ten daily installments, the landlord did not want that, so they were not stuck between a rock and a hard place.
One argument later, the manager popped up and explained in a friendly and polite manner that the type of account that OP had did not allow for bigger bank transfers. But then a light bulb moment occurred.
After a short exchange with a manager, a light bulb moment occurred and OP closed their account, pocketing the money that they could now pay in cash
Image credits: luther_williams
OP started asking questions: would they get all of their money if they closed their account? Yes. Could they open up a new account after closing the account? Yes. Is there a waiting period? No. Cue malicious compliance.
They did just that, and once the friendly and helpful manager caught on to the scheme, he started laughing. Several formalities later, OP closed the account, got all of their money, opened a new account, deposited 8 bucks, and took their leave with the rest of the money—the entire sum for the deposit.
So, the current story, titled “Bank wants to play stupid games? Then lets play stupid games”, found its way on to the Malicious Compliance subreddit, where it got over 26,100 upvotes with almost 45 Reddit awards.
Here's how people reacted to this creative solution to an otherwise very red tape problem
It engaged a number of commenters, with some sharing their own frustrations with bank red tape (to the point that it has become very unhealthy), while others praised the ingenious way it was all handled as they probably wouldn’t have come up with that themselves.