‘We discovered hack to bag freebies from our favorite retailers – however it’s essential to complain’

Let’s be honest, we all love a freebie.

Whether it’s food or booze, as Brits we’ll appreciate every little thing. Now shoppers revealed the best (and worst) items they’ve received as compensation.

It followed a Reddit user recalling a moment in the 1980s which saw his mum allegedly buy a box of Feast chocolate ice creams from Iceland, only to discover all six had no chocolate block in the middle.

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After complaining to Wall’s, the user said his family received “a voucher worth five times the original cost of the ice creams”. This allowed them to, quite literally, “feast on Feasts for a good few weeks”.

The user then asked: “What’s the best value thing you’ve ever gained from complaining directly to a head office after something went wrong?”

Inundated with replies, another Reddit user wrote: “When I was a kid we had a pack of McVitie’s teacakes with rock-hard marshmallows, so mum sent off a complaint and they sent us a large crate full of stuff, we didn’t have to buy biscuits for months!”

In another sweet treat memory, a third user penned: “Twenty years ago as a student with way too much time on my hands I sent a joke complaint to Mars because I bought a bag of Joosters that didn’t have any pink ones in it.

“A couple of weeks later they sent me a kilogram of just pink ones. My mouth is watering just thinking about it, I miss them so much.”

A fourth user said he got lucky moaning to department store. They revealed: “Complained to John Lewis about some chipped plates from our wedding list.

“Got brand new plates, a huge bouquet of flowers for my wife and £400 in John Lewis vouchers – all for 2 chipped plates.”

In more bizarre circumstances, one person recalled being compensated by a lads’ mag with an item completely unrelated to his complaint.

“I once complained to the magazine FHM about an article they did on how to clean your ears properly with cotton buds,” he explained.

“They said to go into the ear canal as far as possible with the cotton buds and I wrote in to say how dangerous I thought that was. They apologised and sent me a remote control tank that shoots foam darts and the targets to go with it!”

A grateful sixth user looked back fondly at a moment from his childhood, and said: “Mum got a full roast dinner out of Farmfoods when I was a kid.

“She found a rock a third of the way down a bag of frozen cabbage, so took it back to the shop. The manager took her round the shop and told her to pick out all the items she wanted to make a Sunday lunch for our family of five for free.

“He even packed it all up for her. We had next to nothing at the time, so it was a pretty meaningful exchange for a already-half-eaten bag of cabbage.”

Others, however, looked back on complaint ‘fails’ that saw them receive nothing for their troubles. “My son’s custard pot had a bit of rubber tubing in it,” another Reddit user fumed.

“My wife didn’t really complain, just sent an FYI letter, and for her trouble she received a free letter calling her a liar. F*** you, Ambrosia.”

Similarly, someone else moaned: “I got a multipack of crisps from a supermarket own brand, and two of the packets were completely empty. Sealed, but empty.

“I wrote a letter saying so, and received a terse reply detailing the production process and explaining how this was impossible.”

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