In my times of troubles, Mother Mary Kowalski, Our Lady of Perpetual Disappointment, comforted me, speaking words of wisdom: you deserve some free hamburgers.
When I first moved to Lawrenceville I was scraping by on bags of 19¢ ramen. The mice living in the walls were eating half of it. I bordered on madness. Burgers exponentially increased my standard of living and were the wind beneath my chair. Thank you, Wendy's, for pulling me through those rough times.
Wendy's, like a number of chains, cares a great deal about its customer base. They care so much that they're willing to give away free products to get us/you(/them, because who really goes to Wendy's, right?) to come in and buy more products. For every report you call or submit online to Wendy's HQ, you get a coupon code to redeem for a free 1/4lb single hamburger, a normally-$3 sandwich. To fill out the questionnaire online takes maybe 2 minutes. The phone call is a bit more of a bother. Still, both are worth their weight in beef.
The online submission requires a receipt number and one unique personal identifier in order to redeem a free burger code, your email address. The system prevents the submission of a survey more than once a month from a single email address, but beyond that takes no strides to stop people from schemeing to have more than one free hamburger a month. They do require that the survey be filled out within 96 hours of purchase, assumably for authentic reviews or something.
I lived on the same block as a Wendy's franchise, in a neighborhood where littering was part of the local heritage. Wendy's receipts were everywhere and temporary email addresses are easy to create. The staff didn't recognize my repeat visits or was too underpaid to care. I, with my tech savvy and stick-it-to-the-man attitude, ate more than my fair share of free burgers. I'd typically snatch up a receipt from the ground, use it to submit a survey, and keep the code for those days when the bank account was drained.
It wasn't long before I reached a point of great illumination, wherein I saw my system self-perpetuate. When they handed me a to-go bag with the free burger in it, they also included a receipt. On this receipt was the purchase number, and that would be enough to submit for another burger. Thus I entered into the infinite burger loop. I'm glad I didn't have health insurance that would tell me how bad this was for my body.
Thrifty friends, library card-carrying homeless, and cash-poor hipsters, I hope this post can bring a little light into your lives like those burgers did for me.
Oh, Burger Kind has a similar thing going.