1. Get a Car for Free
This one is a classic. Find a hotel that has a lot of expensive cars in the parking lot. You can distract the guy they have hired to park cars and have someone dressed up like him "park" the car. Take the car and make a run for it. If the hotel only has one person behind the desk you can distract that person and take one of the car keys if they are kept in the same place as the room keys. If there is both a car key and a room key present, this means that the owner is out without a car and these will buy you the most time. Needless to say this scam only works to use a car, not to steal it. There are too many odds against you. The trick can be pulled further when you use the car to drive to a car dealer. You leave the expensive car there and ask for a test drive. If you look presentable, the dealer may see the expensive car as proof that you're to be trusted. No one would leave his Ferrari there, just to steal a Lamborghini, now would he? ;)
2. Get a Free Hotel Room
Don't try tricks like this in hotels that are nearly full. Call in to ask if they have places for your volleyball team of 40 people, then ask them if they are close to the volleyball stadium and apologize for not booking the rooms. Ask for specifications about the rooms. On what floor are they? Can all of us stay on the same floor? Ask everything you need this way. Most hotels are quite open. If you just take an elevator up and act like you are a guest who stays in the room. That means that the only thing that separates you from the room is a door. There are several ways of opening it. Don't try to call room service from another room; most people from room service don't have access to all rooms. You can try and get the key from the board downstairs through a classic distraction or you can just change in the elevator into a worker's costume, get your toolbox from your suitcase and act as if you're repairing the lock on the door.
The best way to get a room is albeit a dangerous one, the classic namecard swap. Try to get a name card of the owner of the hotel. Reprint it, but change the telephone number. Act like the hotel owner's friend who got his wallet stolen (and beaten up to make it a bit more dramatic) and ask for them to call your friend if you could stay in his hotel. A friend of yours should answer the phone and seal the deal. The worse beat up you look and the more you need help, the easier they'll go on you.
3. Get a Free Meal at the Restaurant
Although running away without paying works, it has too many disadvantages. If the waiter remembered what you look like, it's a problem. You can't go to the same place again. You may have to run with a full stomach. The trick is for them to feel sorry for you. In the movie heartbreakers, one of the actors throws glass in her meal after finishing half of it and both her and her friend leave in a fury. The restaurant wants to keep it quiet so they will let you off as fast as possible. But it's in a movie, so people may know the scam. You need to slip something in your food without anyone noticing and so on. No, you need to be bold and do it with style. Eat your meal and when you're ready, trigger the fire alarm. All restaurants need a fire alarm (safety regulations are really harsh on restaurants), if they don't you can be even bolder and say you're a safety inspector as your day job and threaten your way out of paying.
Now when the fire alarm is triggered, you need to act cool. Leave the restaurant and go out on the street. You can either walk away or wait for the solution of the restaurant owner. You may all get your meal for free. If you decide on the walk away code and it happens to backlash, use a story. My mother died in a fire and the alarm brought up the memories, I just couldn't stay there.
4. Get Free Airplane Travel
-This is one of the hardest. Although airlines pay a lot of things for free for you (hotels, food...), the plane trip is usually not one of them. You need to book a flight to even just start arguing with the people behind the counter. The only way to get on a plane for free is as staff. Airline staff doesn't fly for free, but there are alliances that sort of make the company pay for the staff's flight. Staff's names are not a secret. If you have at least one connection to someone who works for an airline, you should be able to find a name of a person on holiday or who is flying on a flight that's in another continent, than the one you're traveling to and from. You need to dress up as staff and tell people that you need to go somewhere to be staff on a flight that leaves from that place. Be in a hurry, act friendly and not as if it's the difference between life and death if you get there or not. This scam needs lots of research and if you get caught, you're really into a lot of trouble. The more doubtful the airline, the more chance on succeeding, if you're leaving from Libreville airport on an air Gabon flight and look like a pilot and the documents to match, you'll probably have a chance.
