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Money Well Spent?


Simply Paul

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I don't personally have premium membership - I contribute to the game of Geocaching in other ways. But if I did pay good money for the services Geocaching.com advertise, I'd want to get them. I see the site is dead at the moment. It was playing up when I tried to set up a fresh cache for my Ridgeway Run event last weekend. It wasn't playing ball a few days before that too.

 

My question is, how often and for how long would their servers need to be offline before you wanted a refund - if only partial? Call me a trouble maker, but it's a genuine question about the quality of service we (you) are receiving, and its value for money.

 

SP

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Personally, I'm very frustrated right now :blink: . I've spent a LOT of time setting up a new series, and today at long last everything is in place but I can't submit it! We've all worked like trojans today to get it set up as I'm away from home for a while as of tomorrow morning. That's why I'm still up, waiting for the website to come back yet again...however, it looks like it's down for some time, had enough, off to bed. Nite nite

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It's up and running now (just gone midnight). We haven't so far had a time when it's been down long enough to bother us. We consider we've already had value for money since signing up and wouldn't ask for a refund, not even a partial one. After all, what would a partial refund of £16/17 amount do? Not much really. Even without any extra services as a premium member, we would still cough up the fee each year. At the end of the day, someone's got to pay for the site. :blink:

Edited by The Cache Hoppers
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It was offline again just now - "Service Unavailable" (23.54 BST)

 

Concern about this seems particularly relevent to the arguments about lack of attention to improving gc.com services while Groundspeak resources get diverted into the silly Waymarking project, which as I see it is using premium members' subs to create an unwanted kind of online yellow pages of virtuals. It's basically a way of creating advertising income, and nothing to do with geocaching. It's also mis-using the monopoly that GC has over geocaching worldwide, IMO.

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There are surely more interesting things to do late in the evening than try to access GC.COM?!! :blink:

 

We have always been, and (hopefully) always will be, Premium members so long as we are in the hobby and we support GC.COM fully. A handful of times we have experienced problems but we have also experienced problems with 10,000 other web sites so hardly find it cause to complain. If it's down, go back later - if you ring a phone number and it's engaged you go back later. What's the difference? Bren runs a web site which goes down sometimes - that's life. We're pensioners but £16 is such a pittance we find it astonishing that anyone should quibble. How many of the whingers run expensive PCs, laptops, PDAs, GPS, cars, etc? Those people surely don't call £16 "good money"?

 

As for Paul not feeling the need to subscribe as he contributes in other ways, fine, but it reminds us of the people who say "we're not sending Christmas cards as we've given a donation to charity". Bottom line - they haven't forked out any thing extra at all..

 

Long live GC.COM and ALL active geocachers should be Premium Members.

 

Here endeth our sermon - now it's out to find some caches and watch a few aeroplanes.

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Annoying, yes. If I was in the boots of the Hancock Clan, I'd be very annoyed and frustrated. But as an IT techie, I can see why failures do happen from time to time. If I was paying sensible money for the service, like maybe the same as my SKY tv subscription per month (about the same as my GC annual subscription) then I'd make some noises about a refund.

 

For me at least, this recent downtime has been a one-off, but maybe I have been lucky?

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I don't personally have premium membership - I contribute to the game of Geocaching in other ways. But if I did pay good money for the services Geocaching.com advertise, I'd want to get them. I see the site is dead at the moment. It was playing up when I tried to set up a fresh cache for my Ridgeway Run event last weekend. It wasn't playing ball a few days before that too.

 

My question is, how often and for how long would their servers need to be offline before you wanted a refund - if only partial? Call me a trouble maker, but it's a genuine question about the quality of service we (you) are receiving, and its value for money.

 

SP

"Patience is a virtue"

 

How many of you paid several thousand pounds for a car and every 6 months or 12,000 miles you have to take it in for a service, I bet you never complain about that!

 

These systems which you are looking at on here are not maintenance free, sometime fixes and repairs and additions can be placed in "On the fly"; other times a system has to be taken offline for work / maintenance.

 

Now it is purely your choice if you want to part with a small amount of cash to become a Premium member but if you presently are not, then I would suggest that your moaning is the same as a person who does not vote (worthless)

 

Why? you might ask, well if all members of GC.com paid the $30 a year (about £17.50 in the UK) then maybe the GC.com could afford more resilience measures to be placed online; but alas a huge number of people choose to ride on the backs of us Premium members and I'm not complaining about any downtime, or any ones free lunch!

 

Milton (aka moote)

Edited by moote
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The only thing to watch out for when changing it to members only (as opposed to it being MO from the start) is that people may have already gone off hunting for them and get home and be unable to log it.

Oh! sorry I was just fed up this morning with all these non-payers moaning about there free service, I will of course be putting them back into all to view status P&T :blink:

 

Milton (aka moote)

Edited by moote
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The only thing to watch out for when changing it to members only (as opposed to it being MO from the start) is that people may have already gone off hunting for them and get home and be unable to log it.

Oh! sorry I was just fed up this morning with all these non-payers moaning about there free service, I will of course be putting them back into all to view status P&T :blink:

 

Milton (aka moote)

OK all back to normal, I will not lower myself to that standard again :D

 

Well not until I get back put up again by someone with a pet Wallet Moth :blink:

 

Milton (aka moote)

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:blink: We were out yesterday (Saturday) and wanted to log out visits, and log in/out TB's, but the system was down.

 

This morning (Sunday) the system is still down/down again, so prevents us from logging TB's for others to find, and prevents us down loading locations of caches to visit today... :blink:

Not had any problems with it at all today myself :D

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As for Paul not feeling the need to subscribe as he contributes in other ways, fine, but it reminds us of the people who say "we're not sending Christmas cards as we've given a donation to charity".  Bottom line - they haven't forked out any thing extra at all..

:D Don't get me wrong, I do agree with your sentiments but without the contributions Paul has given in Buckinghamshire / Herts (Over 110 cache settings) IMHO the quality of caches would not be so high.

 

His contribution has included the outlay in cache boxes, contents etc and time way beyond that of most cachers which, I believe would equate if not exceed that of premium membership fees for the past year and a bit.

 

More than that, Paul is not one of the 'freeloaders' I believe you should be referring to. He attends many events, holds the same and is always available for help and advice.

 

To boot, he is not a paperless cacher and would not benefit from PQ's etc as I do. In this instance I will defend his decision - not that he needs anyone to defend him but I am his Padawan after all. :blink:

 

Any other cacher who contributes in the same way and is not a Premium member, I will gladly stand up for. Likewise, I will also stand up for The Birders and Moote for their views about those cachers who do not.

 

Moote.

I applaude your actions on reflection. Good on you for not lowering your moral standards.

 

Oss!

:blink:

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:blink: Don't get me wrong, I do agree with your sentiments but without the contributions Paul has given in Buckinghamshire / Herts (Over 110 cache settings) IMHO the quality of caches would not be so high.

 

His contribution has included the outlay in cache boxes, contents etc and time way beyond that of most cachers which, I believe would equate if not exceed that of premium membership fees for the past year and a bit.

 

More than that, Paul is not one of the 'freeloaders' I believe you should be referring to. He attends many events, holds the same and is always available for help and advice.

 

To boot, he is not a paperless cacher and would not benefit from PQ's etc as I do. In this instance I will defend his decision - not that he needs anyone to defend him but I am his Padawan after all. :blink:

 

Any other cacher who contributes in the same way and is not a Premium member, I will gladly stand up for. Likewise, I will also stand up for The Birders and Moote for their views about those cachers who do not.

 

Moote.

I applaude your actions on reflection. Good on you for not lowering your moral standards.

 

Oss!

:blink:

I was just stating that this place is "Free as in a Bird" but can't be "Free as in money" I consider myself told off though :D

 

Milton (aka moote)

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Although I do agree that web sites need servicing and that they will crash now and again, it looks like the website is yet again too popular at the weekends, and we cannot get on again.

 

This is the error that I am gettinmg at the moment

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Server Too Busy

Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.

 

Exception Details: System.Web.HttpException: Server Too Busy

 

Source Error:

 

An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. 

 

Stack Trace:

 

 

[HttpException (0x80004005): Server Too Busy]

  System.Web.HttpRuntime.RejectRequestInternal(HttpWorkerRequest wr) +148

 

 

 

This is another good reason on why people should pay their way, not for the reason of supporting the site, but more for the reason that if you didn't want to part with a few quid for access then why should you get access when paying members are struggling.

 

For the record Simply Paul, you are not the only person that gives more to the community than just money. Althoguh I haven't place in excess of 100 caches (due to travel restrictions for maintaining) I like many others have organised events, placed caches, meet people who need a guide or help to locate difficult caches, do interviews if requested, but unlike yourself, some other people don't use this as justification to not pay for the service.

 

I think Groundspeak should get a grip and start charging for membership after an introductory period. I know people will get around this by making up new memberships, but there are systems out there that can put a block on the same email or ISP address from making making different accounts.

 

Now I am not against different accounts being used, if you want more than one account have it registered under the same email or ISP, as long as one member within the household is paying then the rest can ride free in that circumstance. (A bit like an internet account, you get more than one email address).

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Personally, I'm very frustrated right now :blink: . I've spent a LOT of time setting up a new series, and today at long last everything is in place but I can't submit it! We've all worked like trojans today to get it set up as I'm away from home for a while as of tomorrow morning. That's why I'm still up, waiting for the website to come back yet again...however, it looks like it's down for some time, had enough, off to bed. Nite nite

I agree. I placed a cache today, and the one day that I have free time from work and school it has to be crazy.

Edited by Super_Nate
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Well I would hate to see it end it's free status but on the otherhand I would like to be able to get on and find caches. Any way they could dedicate (a small) part of the server to free members, and a large part to premium members so we do not have to wait. I bet if people had to wait to get on they just might come up with an extra 30, heck I think the geomaps is worth the 30 I spent.

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Man, I feel so naked without my premium membership on my profile and here on the forums. It expired last week, and even though I sent in the renewal money they haven't renewed my account. I guess they are working to get this crappy site back up to snuff.

Send them an email asking why?? It should happen straight away.

The check was sent Wednesday...does that give them enough time?

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I have thought of another reason to pay what equates to £1.46 a month (less than 5p a day), in recent months there has been postings on here about caches being taken. Well if we were all premium members then we could make all our caches Premium only and keep away the fools that take or destroy caches

 

Milton (aka moote)

Edited by moote
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I have thought of another reason to pay what equates to £1.46 a month (less than 5p a day), in recent months there has been postings on here about caches being taken. Well if we were all premium members then we could make all our caches Premium only and keep away the fools that take or destroy caches

 

Milton (aka moote)

Hang on. On one hand you point out how cheap membership is, and on the other hand you see that as a deterrent to stop people nicking caches.

 

Bit of a flaw in the argument there. There are enough idiots out there that would pay that amount to gain entry to continue their activities.

 

Also doesn't stop the 'find and take' that happens by accident without a GPS and website

 

OK, so it would cut out a certain percentage but money is not the barrier. These people can afford computer, GPS, internet connection and time to hunt down the cache.

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Hang on. On one hand you point out how cheap membership is, and on the other hand you see that as a deterrent to stop people nicking caches.

 

Bit of a flaw in the argument there. There are enough idiots out there that would pay that amount to gain entry to continue their activities.

 

Also doesn't stop the 'find and take' that happens by accident without a GPS and website

 

OK, so it would cut out a certain percentage but money is not the barrier. These people can afford computer, GPS, internet connection and time to hunt down the cache.

I'm sure that it could lessen the incidence of such events like the ones down in the Dorset area where someone creates accounts just to track down caches to take and destroy.

 

I don't really advocate this view I placed I was just joining The Cache Hoppers at being devilish

 

Milton (aka moote)

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My thanks go to Stuey for answering the question I asked in my original post. He doesn't feel he pays a lot of money for GC.com's services -and he doesn't- so he doesn't feel the occasional/semi-regular/frequent (discuss) outages are an issue. :blink:

 

Picking up another (of many) points made on this thread, if I was forced to pay to cache, naturally I'd be forced to charge gc.com for setting caches up and maintaining them...

 

SP

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My thanks go to Stuey for answering the question I asked in my original post. He doesn't feel he pays a lot of money for GC.com's services -and he doesn't- so he doesn't feel the occasional/semi-regular/frequent (discuss) outages are an issue. :blink:

I think that my remarks also came to a similar conclusion.

 

Milton (aka moote)

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My thanks go to Stuey for answering the question I asked in my original post. He doesn't feel he pays a lot of money for GC.com's services -and he doesn't- so he doesn't feel the occasional/semi-regular/frequent (discuss) outages are an issue. :)

I think that my remarks also came to a similar conclusion.

 

Milton (aka moote)

As I read (and reread) your remarks, you seemed more worried about being the victim of 'parasitic cachers' than server issues, but thanks for clarifying your position. :D

 

SP

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Picking up another (of many) points made on this thread, if I was forced to pay to cache, naturally I'd be forced to charge gc.com for setting caches up and maintaining them...

 

Paul, sorry mate, but nobody asked you to place in excess of 100+ caches. Very decent of you and all that, and helps to keep many of us mindless cachers who part with our cash, amused. I suspect there may have be an element of amusement there for yourself also. However, the administration of your caches, which might not necessarily be a financial strain granted, but definitely time consuming, for example, approval (our guys don't just tick a box ya know!), server time spent taken up by cachers logging your 100+ caches etc etc. Quite frankly I am quite astounded that you feel you don't need to pay up this ridiculously paltry amount each year to give something back to the sport. Even more astounded that you have the audacity to try and justify your non-payment. I quite empathise with Sensei's defence of you (personal email sent to Lester) but at £17.50 per annum it has to be ranked as excellent value for money. All those of us who have placed caches have given back to Geocaching .... so the "I give to Geocaching in other ways" cuts no ice mate, sorry. As a team, we spent the best part of the three days of our last Bank Holiday weekend, planting a cache series. Entertainment for six of us for those three days .... well if we had gone to Alton Towers, Thorpe Park, Chessington, we would have been in the region of £300 out of pocket. We planted caches, didn't count the cost, but of course it was nowhere near that amount, even including a £17.50 annual fee to GC.com. And the entertainment continues! Endless emails sent from GC.com telling us how much fellow cachers are enjoying themselves finding those caches. Oh enough said, I've got better things to do right now. Sleep well all Premium Members, and happy caching! Liane, The Cache Hoppers :)

Edited by The Cache Hoppers
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I paid up for premium membership as I thought that I owed GCcom for the pleasure that I get from the hobby. Apart from this I don't get anything else of value from GCcom. I sometimes get the latest caches sent to me but these I can find just as easily by other means.

I don't need the other downloads for paperless as I find the sheets of paper less of a bother than using my Ipaq and bluetooth gps

As the saying goes... You pays your money.... Or you don't?

Edited by McDeHack
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Picking up another (of many) points made on this thread, if I was forced to pay to cache, naturally I'd be forced to charge gc.com for setting caches up and maintaining them...

 

Paul, sorry mate, but nobody asked you to place in excess of 100+ caches. Very decent of you and all that, and helps to keep many of us mindless cachers who part with our cash, amused. I suspect there may have be an element of amusement there for yourself also....

How I love being judged!

 

Please, let me pick up on some of your points:

 

1) Nobody asked me to place caches, it's true. I do it partly because I enjoy it, and because I think it's important that people plant caches as without doing so, there is no game of geocaching. I believe it's a very valid and valuable way of giving something to UK caching. I could, of course, pay to find loads, make rubbish swops and place burger all but that, to me, just wouldn't be cricket.

 

2) I don't think you're mindless. Do you?

 

3) I am very grateful to the Reviewers for their UNPAID efforts. They are generous with their time and efforts for no more reward than the knowledge of a service to UK caching well done. If I knew they were being paid, I might be more tempted to become a premium member.

 

4) You're very easy to astound. For my next trick, you're thinking of the seven of clubs.

 

5) £17.50 would feed a family for a week in many parts of the world. In some contexts I don't feel it's a paltry sum. I chose not to pay it because, as Lester kindly said, I'm not a paperless cacher, without a serial lead for my etrex and very few premium member only caches in my area. By paying for the right to cache, I'd gain nothing more than a sense of righteousness, and I have one of those already :)

 

6) I am audacious It's a two edged sword.

 

7) GC.com doesn't need to charge for membership. They could raise money through advertising (oh, they do) or by commercial caches (this has happened) - failing that they could charge to track items (oh. Again...) or have sponsored TBs (ditto) or any number of other methods. The make a premium service, with premium features available, and invite people to take them up on the offer. I am emphatically not knocking people who have reached into their pockets. Good on you. Well done. You have helped an American become slightly richer while safeguarding the future of the game and I applaud you for that. But if that's all you think you need to do to make the sport work, you're just plain wrong.

 

8) My point, again, was that those who do wish to pay should be entitled to expect a reliable service for their investment. Someone mentioned cars and servicing. I have several and understand running costs. However, if I had leased a car that wouldn't start every other weekend, I'd expect the situation sorted out. Failing that, I might take my business elsewhere - which is where the analogy breaks down of course. GC.com's effective monopoly means I'd have to keep paying to hire the car and hoping that whatever problem with it went away. At least until the option to escape the lease came around again.

 

9) I have read a free newspaper. Am I a freeloader?

 

10) Would someone else please answer my original question? A simple '5 hours a week' would do :D

 

SP

 

Edited to add a missing 'Not'. See if you can spot it.

Edited by Simply Paul
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Back to Paul's original point. I paid the money as a contribution. I like the PQs as a) it means I have a fairly up to date local database of the caches I am likely to do if the main site is down. :) I have set up some searches that I never get e-mailed but use on-line such as who has found a cache within 5 miles of my house in the last 7 days (now I've revealed that I am a geo-voyeur).

 

But I could live without these and didn't pay my money to get them.

 

Do I get frustrated when the site is down - of course. Am I more frustrated as I have paid for it - no. The frustration level has got to be the same. The thought doesn't even cross my mind.

 

There are no contracts or guarantees of site availability - it is what is known as a best endeavours service. I'm sure the service is better because I have paid than it would be without it.

 

However, it would be interesting if it was run on a different business model, with transparent financial reports, guarantees of the proportion of funding received to be spent on servers etc before peoples wages. But those of us paying our money knew the nature of the business.

 

As to Paul's contribution, I'm sure he has a travel bug or 2. So buying the tag has contributed financially. Without people like him filling the database with caches for me to find I'm sure the server would run more smoothly. What could be easier to maintain than an empty server that no-one visits?

 

And with the number of people he has drawn into the game - all paying their money - his time and effort has resulted in a greater financial gain than if he had just paid his measily few quid and just got on with finding caches.

 

Sorry it's a ramble... In summary, I paid a few quid taking a gamble, knowing there was no refund mechanism (no Service Level Agreement). It's not as good as I would like, but would taking my money back help?

 

Oh - I agree about the frustration of time, effort and money spent on a development that I just can't see the point of.

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I'm not active enough in this sport yet to be a premium member, but i wouldnt quibble about paying £17.50 a year to make my life at caching easier, at the moment i dont have the time to cache.

I have been reading this thread and Simply Paul can i ask why you think you are unique? Do you think that premium members don't set caches? They pay there money and still set caches for you and i to enjoy, from your comments i wouldn't be surprised if they all change them to members only, from what i read most are members, where would that leave you? no caches to find.

 

As for your comment about £17.50 a week would feed a family in some parts,, well yes it would, but i doubt they are out caching either, or own pdas or pcs.

You seem to own many cars so why quibble about a paltry £17.50 that wont even fill up one of your tanks.

So the webpage goes down, inconvenience yes,,life or death.. NO.

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A few points from my perspective...

 

1. I would rather pay a fixed price for a service (example: BBC) rather than take a 'free' service paid for by advertising - I don't like advertising on websites and don't watch commercial televison.

2. I expect downtime on web services, just like sometimes tv, radio and telephones go wrong! I am sure the signup service conditions cover loss of service.

3. Web services often provide both a customer service and be an income channel for the supplier - hence an attempt to provide something free and also earn a revenue.

4. Paul's original question should be addressed, as well as uptime of service, I was upset at the recent change in the 'automatic' repeat pq generation changes - what service did I originally pay for and what do I now receive? In terms of service facilities, I don't except a degredation in service compared with what I thought was defined when I purchased the service (except 2 above). The service should increase hardware / infrostucture facilities to cater for increased requirements - more signed up users surely means more income? If the supplier is unable to supply the service for the period purchased, they should supply a refund. I should say, in this instance, I would be happy to pay extra for the service in the future - just do not expect me to except a reduced service for something I have paid for in advance - if the service is good (which it is), I will except an increase for future subscriptions.

Just my thoughts(expect to be flamed... :):D )

lttlejim

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A few points from my perspective...

 

1. I would rather pay a fixed price for a service (example: BBC) rather than take a 'free' service paid for by advertising - I don't like advertising on websites and don't watch commercial televison.

2. I expect downtime on web services, just like sometimes tv, radio and telephones go wrong! I am sure the signup service conditions cover loss of service.

3. Web services often provide both a customer service and be an income channel for the supplier - hence an attempt to provide something free and also earn a revenue.

4. Paul's original question should be addressed, as well as uptime of service, I was upset at the recent change in the 'automatic' repeat pq generation changes - what service did I originally pay for and what do I now receive? In terms of service facilities, I don't except a degredation in service compared with what I thought was defined when I purchased the service (except 2 above). The service should increase hardware / infrostucture facilities to cater for increased requirements - more signed up users surely means more income? If the supplier is unable to supply the service for the period purchased, they should supply a refund. I should say, in this instance, I would be happy to pay extra for the service in the future - just do not expect me to except a reduced service for something I have paid for in advance - if the service is good (which it is), I will except an increase for future subscriptions.

Just my thoughts(expect to be flamed... :D:D )

lttlejim

No flaming from me

 

Nice to see Simply's question answered :)

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Hi etrexgps and welcome to the genuinely friendly and fun world of Geocaching forums - thanks for joining in. Since you ask specific questions, you deserve specific answers:

 

I'm not active enough in this sport yet to be a premium member, but i wouldnt quibble about paying £17.50 a year to make my life at  caching easier, at the moment i dont have the time to cache.

 

It tends to be addictive, so expect that to change! As I have said, personally if I paid for premium membership my caching wouldn't be made any easier. This is a part of my decision not to pay.

 

I have been reading this thread and Simply Paul can i ask why you think you are unique?.

 

I do not think I am unique in choosing not to pay to cache, or in being disappointed in recent server reliability. I am, however, unique.

 

Do you  think that premium members don't set caches?.

 

Of course they do but the suggestion was I should pay regardless of whatever else I might do for the sport. To highlight the flaw in this I simply turned the argument around.

 

They pay there money and still set caches for you and i to enjoy, from your comments i wouldn't be surprised if they all change them to members only, from what i read most are members, where would that leave you? no caches to find.

 

Naturally I hope this doesn't happen. For reasons of principle I'd not pay up and I guess I'd have to take up a nice cheap sport, like golf. By having lots of premium caches in an area new cachers would also be discouraged from taking up this wonderful sport and that would be a bad thing.

 

As for your comment about £17.50 a week would feed a family in some parts,, well yes it would, but i doubt they are out caching either, or own pdas or pcs.

 

£17.50 a week feeds my family (me) in some parts (Buckinghamshire) and I am regularly out caching. My laptop cost me £175 inc VAT and I have no PDA (if I got one, I might decide to invest in GC.com's extra features)

 

You seem to own many cars so why quibble about a paltry £17.50 that wont even fill up one of your tanks.

So the webpage goes down, inconvenience yes,,life or death.. NO.

 

I pay (rather begrudgingly) to fill my cars with petrol because the alternatives are just driving off with a tank full (illegal) or involve more cycling than I'm happy doing. With geocaching, you're not asked to pay. It's optional. Please see above for my reasons...

 

Inconvenient, yes. Life or death, no. Worthy of discussion? [yes/no] Delete as applicable.

 

SP

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I cant do quotes, dont know how to

 

however simply paul you said you begrudingly pay for your petrol to fill up your cars.... so stop whinging about something that you get for nothing...... you have the choice you choose not to pay,, so why open this thread in the first place?????

Your moaning about a service that you get for free.. do you see the premium members opening a thread????? NO they would go direct no doubt.

So stop moaning and enjoy what you have.

Oh and by the way Golf isn't cheap to play.

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It would be wonderful if this site, or any other IT-based service, were as intrinsically as unlikely to fail as, say, a ton of breeze blocks, or a tin of Ronseal. However, this is the 21st century, and it just ain't so. The economic model of almost every premium website in the world is based on the tacit understanding that occasional downtime will happen.

 

I use two online banking sites and they are both far less reliable than gc.com, in terms of unexpected server downtime, schedule outages, crashes, software errors taking out the browser, etc. I could get all pompous and inform my bank(s) that because of this, I will be taking my custom elsewhere, but I won't, mostly of course because of the hassle, but also because I know perfectly well that everybody else I could go to uses exactly the same technology and suffers from exactly the same problems. (Being a bit of a Microsoft hater, I like to imagine that if the site were rewritten for the free "LAMP" platform it would be not only better and faster, but also give me a warm feeling. But frankly, that's not likely to be the main cause of the site's outages.)

 

I'd be interested to know if any of the people who are complaining about how their conditions of service aren't being met, have ever run a computer network or a Web site - for profit or not - with a target availability of something like 99.99%. Having done so (office network with 1600 PCs) for about 15 years now, let me tell you, it's no picnic.

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The grey button above the white box which you type into marked Quote is the one you need. Click once, cut and paste the other persons comment and then click it again to 'close' the tag.

[Q1UOTE]You should end up with something that looks like this, but without the ones.[/Q1UOTE]

On the page it should look like this

Or you can use the quote button at the top right corner of the post you're replying to. Hope that helps.

 

however simply paul you said you begrudingly pay for your petrol to fill up your cars.... so stop whinging about something that you get for nothing...... you have the choice you choose not to pay,, so why open this thread in the first place?????

 

I had hoped not to whinge. It is, in my belief, a growing problem. Not my whinging, the GC.com server downtime - especially at weekends. It is BECAUSE I'm not a premium member (and thus not in a 'moral' position to moan) that my original post asked for premium members thoughts.

 

Your moaning about a service that you get for free.. do you see the premium members opening a thread????? NO they would go direct no doubt.

So stop moaning and enjoy what you have.

 

Actually I'm replying to your moan about my perceived moan. Perhaps premium members were too busy downloading waypoints to their PDAs to start a similar thread (the 'are you a member/not a member' issue isn't one that often gets an airing on the forums anyway. Having read the responses to this thread with interest, I can see why it's rarely discussed) and thanks for the advice on enjoying what I have. I usually do.

 

Oh and by the way Golf isn't cheap to play.

 

I will have to look into this :):D

 

SP

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I don't personally have premium membership - I contribute to the game of Geocaching in other ways. But if I did pay good money for the services Geocaching.com advertise, I'd want to get them. I see the site is dead at the moment. It was playing up when I tried to set up a fresh cache for my Ridgeway Run event last weekend. It wasn't playing ball a few days before that too.

 

My question is, how often and for how long would their servers need to be offline before you wanted a refund - if only partial? Call me a trouble maker, but it's a genuine question about the quality of service we (you) are receiving, and its value for money.

 

SP

hmm, it would have to be down a while, maybe a 1-2 months. Since I figure thats how long it would take to get over the PQ withdraws, and get used to caching without gc.com.

 

As for frequency, i don't know :) Websites go up and down all the time. It would be nice if Jeremy et al. could build and run a system that would never ever breakdown no mater what and stay just ahead of growth. But thats not going to happen. As long as someone is actually working to fix current problems, and avoid them in the future I'm happy.

 

As for what they do with my membership... I'd be nice if they'd let me vote on what things to funds/time on. But I've realized that they won't... Its a business, they do what they want, when they want. I can ask, beg, complain, whine they do things my way, but it wastes my time since they don't listen to me. What would tick me off is if they either took away something I'd been promised for a fee, or wouldn't fix an apperant problem.

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can't say i often get troubled by downtime but then i go online at stupid oclock at same time as americans.

 

not that i'm a cynic but does the downtime correspond with when they are fast asleep in the states? now that would irritate me if they did maintenance only when they were asleep and only affecting other countries...

 

but £17 a year happy to pay it for ease of use. not much when you break it down week to week.

 

i think we should all pay but maybe basic members only a £5 say. it would deter sock puppets, and those just interested in thieving caches.

 

just an idea

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