What’s the Best Accidental Freebie You’ve Ever Gotten?

In My Humble Opinion
1

After waiting seven months for my new, beautiful black Rollei 35 AF film camera, it jammed on frame three. I sent it back, and a month and a half later, a silver replacement arrived—looked great, worked perfectly. A week later, surprise delivery: another brand-new Rollei 35 AF, this time in that original black.

Turns out MiNT accidentally sent me two!

I’m sending the extra one back, but for a moment, I had the rare joy of comparing both versions side by side in my own hands. Wild.

So tell me… what’s the coolest thing you ever received because of a seller’s goof?
Did you keep it? This is an $800 camera, so I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I did.

(See the two cameras side by side in this YouTube Short)

2

Not a goof, but…
There was a wonderful hobby shop in Wheaton Plaza, MD. that I used to frequent as a kid. I went in one time, and bought the absolute cheapest model rocket that Estes made - the mini Mosquito. It was all of 69¢ and had 6 parts. As I was paying for it, the cashier said “do you want a freebee?” I had no idea what he meant. He said - "do you want this?” and held out a very nice full-sized rocket kit. I said, “how much is it?” He said - it’s free!
I was skeptical, and a little embarrassed, but I said yes, and took it. I had no idea that Estes was running a promotion, but I thought it was really awesome!

3

OK - here’s another one that just happened a few weeks ago.
I bought a used Tek oscilloscope online (actually, that has kind of an interesting story in itself). The scope didn’t come with the plastic protective dust cover, and used ones were going for absurd amounts on ebay (like, $100 with shipping). I found another scope that was listed as “for parts only” that had the dust cover, and made an offer of $112, figuring that I could always part it out after stealing the dust cover from it. When the scope came, I plugged it in and turned it on, and it worked perfectly! I ended up upgrading the firmware on it, and re-selling it on ebay (without the dust cover) for $260.

4

A different category of accidental freebie–my parents decided in my senior year of college that they’d assume my student loan repayment. That was $11,400 with interest.

5

I ordered an anaglyph 3D DVD of Creature from the Black Lagoon for outdoor movie night. It came with a (totally illegal) 3D copy of “The Dark Side of the Rainbow” (The Wizard of Oz dubbed over with Dark Side of the Moon). We watched it at another outdoor movie night the same week our town got it’s first legal weed store.

6

I rented the fairly recent N64 game Super Smash Brothers from Blockbuster for a New Years Eve Party, New Years Eve 1999.

By the end of the 5 day rental I asked my mom if she could extend the rental for another 5 days. She went to Blockbuster but they told her literally the rental wasn’t in the system so they had no idea what she was talking about.

Apparently Y2K actually did have an effect, and I got a free $50 video game because of it.

7

I used to live in the US. I moved to Europe almost a decade ago.

I owned an Xbox One, and brought it with me. I was aware, of course, that the American-style plug on the power supply wouldn’t work, and it would be inadvisable to just use a plug adapter. I needed to replace the whole brick.

I searched the Microsoft store, European edition, and found the replacement power supply. I placed my order.

A week later, I hadn’t received it. My payment had cleared, but no shipment. I contacted customer support and was informed that there was a processing delay, but it would be resolved shortly. They had the order and were planning to fulfill it, but they had to get past this little hiccup.

Another week goes by. I contact customer support again. They say it looks like the order has been fulfilled, but they don’t have any tracking information on the shipment. They will research the problem and get back to me.

They do not get back to me.

I contact customer support again. It’s now going on a month and I’d really like to play my console. This time, the service agent says there’s something strange, and puts me on hold. I wait a few minutes. Somebody else comes on, and asks a bunch of dumb questions about whether I actually did place an order, because it looks like it was cancelled somehow. I confirm that I placed the order, and they have my money, and I want my power supply. He says he’s stuck, because their systems are locked up; in different screens (I gather, different integrated systems), the order has different status values. One says fulfilled, one says cancelled, one doesn’t have the record at all. He puts me on hold again.

A few minutes later, a third person comes on. This guy apologizes for the headache. He doesn’t know how all this happened, but he’s a director, and he’s going to use his authority to issue an override and force my case to closure. I should expect my shipment within three days. He’s also going to refund my original purchase price as compensation for the headaches.

The next day, I get my money back as the original payment is reversed.

Two days later, a box arrives.

It’s a whole new Xbox One.

For whatever reason, they decided it was easier and cheaper to just straight up give me a console than to untangle whatever it was that had borked the original order.

I still have it. I’m currently replaying Dragon Age: Origins on it. :smiley:

8

Once (close to 20 years ago) someone in Europe somehow got into my Paypal account and stole $350. After reporting it, Paypal gave me a preliminary refund of the $350. After several weeks of investigation, they concluded the complaint was valid, and refunded me another $350. So probably the best accidental freebie was $350. (I suppose I should have told Paypal to take back $350. But I didn’t.)

9

About 25 years years ago, it was a $325 deposit into my BOA checking account. There was no explanation of who made the deposit, and my research at the time proved it wasn’t me or anyone I knew. I meant to bring it to their attention, but somehow, it slipped my mind. I closed the account years later.

10

I’ve told this here before. When I got married >20 years ago, we wanted to have a champagne toast, but the venue wasn’t a champagne place, so we had to get our own glasses. After looking at rentals and plastic glasses, we settled on about 100 of these IKEA glasses which at the time were $5 for 6 glasses. Cheaper than renting, and cheaper than lousy disposable plastic glasses.

After the wedding, the venue asks us if they could buy the glasses off of us, for $1 a piece. Better than free, I made about $20 on that toast.

11

Not exactly free, but close:

I bought a PTZ dome video camera for about $120 from Amazon, on sale from $180. When I connected it, the camera wouldn’t pan. I opened it and found that a circuit board was jamming the camera and keeping it from rotating. When I reported this to the manufacturer, I included several pictures of the interior of the unit that showed the situation. They told me they would send me a new one and that I should simply toss the one I had received.

When I got the new one, I opened it and could see where the circuit board was supposed to be mounted. I basically rotated it and snapped it into place. It worked perfectly after that, though I added some hot glue to keep it secure. The two cameras have now been running continuously for about two years.

12

Nice!

Side note: We went to a Christmas/dollar store and Pier 1 to buy wine glasses and flower vases for our wedding. We encouraged our guests to take them, and we still have several.

13

I bought my first turntable in decades when covid landed, but two years later the speed went off. The vendor and I went back and forth on ways to fix it, but when those failed, they just sent me a new one.

I suspect the profit margins on these are pretty high.

14

This one was not expensive, but happened 30+ years ago and I still remember it. I (a US citizen) was visiting the Toronto Science Center. I went to the snack counter and ordered a soft drink, and gave the cashier a $5 bill (US). He grabbed his calculator, punched in some numbers, and then handed me my soft drink, some Canadian coins and my original $5 bill (US) back.

15

Last month I hit up Wawa and ordered an Italian sub on the kiosk. In the little “special request” box, I typed: “don’t cut.” Simple enough.

While I waited, I got to chatting with the three folks behind the counter—two guys and a gal—super friendly, funny crew. I told one of the guys he looked exactly like Mac from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and the other two immediately backed me up. “Mac” lit up like he just got cast in the reboot.

They wrapped my sub, and as “Mac” was about to hand it over, he spotted my no cut note and gasped like he’d betrayed the family. “No way, man—we’re making you another.”

I tried to wave him off: “Really, it’s fine, I’ll survive the trauma.” But he was already halfway through constructing sub #2 with solemn dedication, like a surgeon on his second try.

Then he wrapped the new one, uncut as requested, laid it next to the original, and said, “Take ‘em both. The first one’s on me.”

I hesitated, but “Mac” gave me a look that said this is happening, and hey—who am I to argue with a sitcom doppelgänger offering free hoagies?

16

Not a mistake - but back in 2020 when we were looking to add another cat to our family, I fell in love with a particular cat on our local Humane Society’s website. Due to many circumstances, we ended up holding off on adding another member to our family for about 5 months. To my surprise, this same cat was still available. I went to the Humane Society to meet him, and it was love at first sight for both him and I. When I went to finalize paperwork, the attendant told me that since “George” (now Wilson) had been there for so long, someone had sponsored his adoption fee in hopes of getting him adopted. I would have adopted him regardless, so I tell him constantly he’s the best free thing I’ve ever gotten. We paid it forward by sponsoring a senior female kitty at the same facility, in hopes it would give someone the incentive to adopt her.

17

You’re a nice person.

18

I once ordered some K-Cup coffee from a site that you could buy a single cup to see if you liked it rather than the whole box. I think ordered seven or eight singles… and a few days later a suspiciously large package showed up. Instead of sending me just one K-Cup they sent a whole box of each type I ordered. I contacted the company twice offering to pay the difference or send them back if they paid shipping but I never heard back. It was something like $100 worth of coffee that I only paid for single cups.

19

What a cool thing for a kid!

I have precious few memories of cool things like that from childhood.
Here’s a fun one: I was in kindergarten, so only went to school half days, while my brother went full days, so my mom often took me shopping or other places while my brother was still at school.

One day we were at the mall and we saw something unusual: an older guy opening up and refilling those gum ball machines that distract children the world over. I looked on with wide eyes he shoveled huge gum balls into the machines.

He caught my eye and, with a glance at Mom, he motioned me over and motioned for me to put out my hands. He then filled my hands with as many gumballs as I could hold!
I think Mom made them secretly disappear later that day, but that guy made an indelible impression on my mind that I remember over fifty years later.

20

I recall another one. My mom bought a 6 month subscription to Kiwi Crate for Kid Cheesesteak. And the boxes kept coming. Month after month, long after the sub should have ended. Long after my mom stopped paying.

I would have cancelled, but there was no number to call, I wasn’t actually a customer, and my mom was ill and wasn’t going to jump through hoops to stop someone from sending things she wasn’t paying for.

We wound giving tons of them away.