Premium Member only converts

[Trekkin and Birdin]

Up to now, we’ve only listed a few of our caches as PMO. We’ll do that for puzzles at first, some of our challenges and couple others that we just didn’t want casual cachers to wander in and possibly mess with what we brought people to see.

With the advent of all these free intro apps, we’ve been getting newbies who log EarthCaches without ever reading what they are, challenges that require X number of specific finds when they’ve found…..5 local caches, and just not understanding how to log something fun without giving away the cache surprise. Many of them don’t bother to validate their email so we can’t even write to them to help them as newbies. We’re talking about making most of our caches except for the few park and grabby ones into premium member only caches. It’s happening on a pretty regular basis, like at least once a week. We hate to go all elitist, but it’s getting to be a pain in the butt.

Has anyone else felt the need to do this for similar reasons?

[Sloughfoot]

Yup, same reasons and same frustrations. Most of ours are PMs. Like you we have left some P&Gs alone. Cache owners put too much time into this game to not receive the respect their caches deserve.

[Northwoods Tom]

I’m sure this may ruffle some feathers:

Having started out as a regular member and caching for a couple years in that mode, I looked at it as a way to enjoy an activity without having to pay what I refer to as another fee. Sure it isn’t that much but we all get nickel and dimed to death with all those extra fees we pay for everything so I looked at it as another unnecessary expense.

During that time I looked at the PM cache as a special group of caches placed by those who’s reasons I thought were as you stated, “elitist”. After meeting and talking to other cachers and becoming a premium member, I discovered that there were many valid reasons for pm designation. Many I don’t agree with. The only caches I have with pm labels are the caches up by the cottage 300 miles away. The only reason they are is my enjoyment on checking out who is looking at them. The sites pm features are something I rarely use. I became a premium member to grab the caches on my travel route back and forth. Using the pm feature as a block for some groups is something I don’t consider. If there is a problem, I contact them if possible, delete their log with a note on the site or just ignore. Personally I have found many problems with premium members.

Both groups have their “pains in the butt”. The technology is used by both groups. You place a cache and except the maintenance that goes with it. If I could see who is checking out one of my caches up north without being a premium member, they would all be non-premimum.

Who here hasn’t gotten a wonderful write up from a new regular member?

[Team Deejay]

I don’t believe the intro apps show anything but traditionals, so don’t blame it on that.

[sandlanders]

First of all, NWT, you must have seen us checking out some of your “unnamed lake” caches last fall that we never got around to finding on our trip to that area. 😉

But like Northwoods Tom, we don’t use all of the premium features available to us, but we do enjoy the freedom to find caches wherever we are whenever we are there. The first year of caching we were not premium, and there was maybe one cache in the area at that time that was, and we got it sometime after we went premium. Currently, none of our caches are premium. We use that at first when we put out new tricky puzzle caches to see what the interest is in them. After a couple of finds, we take that off.

As for not being able to contact cachers to let them know that there is something wrong with their logs or to otherwise instruct or encourage them, I was following a discussion about this in the Groundspeak forums a few months ago. The consensus was that a verifiable email address was needed before intro and/or other users could access more than a few caches. Many folks were making their hides premium because those caches would not be on the intro app, and thus would not be available to intro app users. As far as I know, nothing has been done by the powers that be, so it is up to the cache owners to take steps on their own.

I see no problem with making one’s hides premium. They are the placers’ caches, and they have control over them. They can also leave them open to everyone and take whatever logs come, be they great logs or TFTCs or intro app boilerplate logs. I get weary of C&P and TFTC logs, but those will always come from some cachers whether they are newbies or not, whether they use the intro app or not, or whether our hides are premium or not. Premium hides are also a way to see who has checked on the cache pages recently (though it’s not fool proof) in case there should be any subsequent physical problems with the caches or trackables contained in them. For sensitive hides or ones that COs might have more concerns about, this might be a way to go on those.

As for us, we will most likely keep our hides open to all and hope that some of the problems that plague other areas don’t infect Sandland, although the game and the players keep changing… 😕

[Mister Greenthumb]

I used to think premium members only on our hides would protect them from muggles. I did a random audit of some of our hides and found that well over 90% of the finders were already premium members. Some of these may have changed if they came premium members after the find. All of our hides are now premium except for pngs. My reason though is not to limit accessibility to pm only. My reason is that this is an activity that requires far less $ investment than most others and that everyone who participates should contribute equally.

[kc9gbo]

Not ready to do the premium member thing yet for my caches, but I feel the pain. I’ve had caches get logged by app users and then I go do maintenance and find they didn’t sign the log. Only thing I can figure is they found a cache but the gps signal was coming from the cell tower and they said they found that one. I couldn’t email them to tell them of their mistake and encourage them to log more because of the email thing.
I imagine having challenges and puzzles with folks logging found can be quite frustrating.

[JimandLinda]

We have 2 Premiums. If a cacher is reported missing some day, I can check the high D/T one to see if they tried it! I can give their family a starting point!
The other is to monitor trackables in a specific cache.

[Northwoods Tom]

@Mister Greenthumb wrote:

My reason is that this is an activity that requires far less $ investment than most others and that everyone who participates should contribute equally.

I agree with the low cost and what a great deal it is for those that use the bells and whistles. Yet in the same vein, I have a basic cell package, I don’t care for the other features, and I only use my cell for emergency (not typical). Dish T.V. is the basic package, we don’t upgrade for much we wouldn’t use. Netflix with 2 DVD’s at a time, don’t live stream, use the library a great deal. So many ways we choose to reduce costs.

The equal contribution factor is something I can understand but also find I don’t agree with totally. I find it important that people place caches, quality caches. I did a check of the caches on my favorite list and 24 out of 43 favorites were placed by non premium members. Not scientific by any means and I tend to be stingy with my points but interesting I thought. I just find it odd that PM’s get to do any cache and members only get to do the non premium.

Cindra and I may be odd, different, whatever (Heck we live on an island!) and that membership might be necessary for the success of GC.com. But if it isn’t, I look at it as the same as those “price leaders” that pull you into the store. If it’s something we use, OK, otherwise walk on by.

No offense is meant in any way, just the way are household looks at things until someone shows us our errors 🙂

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