People stealing or switching Travel Bugs !

[+bigAPE]

I recently travelled from Australia to London on business and dropped off our first four Travel Bugs to the much popular London Letterbox & Travel bug xchange in Regents Park. Within days of it being put in they one appears to have had the tag switched to another item and another two have been stolen (while the cache remains intact) or moved without a report. Only one has been moved on successfully. My seven year old is gutted and spent most of this morning crying when he found out.

 

Is this a common occurrence to have TB's ruined or stolen by other cachers !? I have to say this has really turned me off the whole idea. I took a day out of my trip to London to set these bugs off on their journey. What a waste of time and money.

[Aushiker]

another two have been stolen (while the cache remains intact) or moved without a report.

It would be helpful to know the time frame. Are you talking days, weeks or months since the bugs where dropped? I am asking this as they have been picked up by other travellers who haven't had a chance to log them out as yet (e.g., no Internet access).

 

Have you checked with the cache owner to see if there is a log indicating removal of the bugs? Have you approached those who have visited the cache since you dropped them off to see if they have seen or removed the bugs but forget to log them out? I have found the later to be not uncomon or I find the whilst a cache has lots of visitors a lot of folks don't take bugs so the bug/coin remains in the cache.

 

Hopefully your bugs have not gone missing, but are just waiting logging out.

 

Regards

Andrew

[+UncleJimbo]

I recently travelled from Australia to London on business and dropped off our first four Travel Bugs to the much popular London Letterbox & Travel bug xchange in Regents Park. Within days of it being put in they one appears to have had the tag switched to another item and another two have been stolen (while the cache remains intact) or moved without a report. Only one has been moved on successfully. My seven year old is gutted and spent most of this morning crying when he found out.

 

Is this a common occurrence to have TB's ruined or stolen by other cachers !? I have to say this has really turned me off the whole idea. I took a day out of my trip to London to set these bugs off on their journey. What a waste of time and money.

 

From your profile I see that you dropped these TBs on 9/16/07, and after only 1 week (9/23/07) you have decided that they were stolen. Perhaps you should wait a bit longer before deciding they are lost? Some people are extremely slow in logging finds (and some do not log at all, but will still move the TB along eventually).

 

Having said that, I also looked at the cache page for London Letterbox & Travel bug xchange, and from the location I would worry about muggles finding the cache. Sadly, TBs go missing all the time.

[+jcar]

Within days of it being put in they one appears to have had the tag switched to another item and ...

 

I have seen on a couple of occasions when opening a cache to find the TB tag has fallen off the TB, or the chain. This was not an issue because it was the only TB in the box and I was able to determine what it belonged to and double checked later. I suppose I could see the possiblity of this happening on a bigger scale and if someone was in a rush.

[+Team Teague]

We had something similar to this happen. We placed our ladybug travel bug in a cache and the VERY NEXT DAY the the travel bug was picked up and logged by a cacher but he posted that the actual wooden ladybug was missing. Within one day!! It wasn't easy to get off, either. Someone had to work to remove the ladybug. It made me so mad, but the nice guy who picked up the TB mailed it back to me, and I restarted it with the same type of tag.

 

I do live by the rule "if you place it out there, it's out of your control now". I learned that lesson fast!

[+UncleJimbo]

We had something similar to this happen. We placed our ladybug travel bug in a cache and the VERY NEXT DAY the the travel bug was picked up and logged by a cacher but he posted that the actual wooden ladybug was missing. Within one day!! It wasn't easy to get off, either. Someone had to work to remove the ladybug. It made me so mad, but the nice guy who picked up the TB mailed it back to me, and I restarted it with the same type of tag.

 

I do live by the rule "if you place it out there, it's out of your control now". I learned that lesson fast!

 

In my short time caching and reading these forums, I have been shocked by the number of TBs that disappear from the very first cache in which they are placed. I don't know if people finding these TBs are just clueless, or if there are people who specifically hunt down and steal TBs, but either way, it is somewhat pathetic.

[+JustKeely]

I say give it more time. I was pretty upset myself recently when two of my favorite coins that I really debated on letting go disappeared from the cache I placed them in 1200 miles away, and then the next cacher reported that the cache had been muggled. Strangely, though, a week later one of them was retrieved from another cache, and then two months later, the other one resurfaced.

I haven't lost any TBs yet, but I have lost half the coins I put out, and those were lost when I jsut started caching. I did have the hitchhiker stolen from one of my TB tags and luckily a nice cacher sent the tag home to me so I could fix it back up again.

Sorry for your loss, but I would still have some hope.

[+wildchld97]

I honestly don't know whether my ONE and ONLY TB was stolen, or whether the person who picked it up at the Midwest Geobash in July just forgot to log it...or lost it. I've waited patiently for over 8 weeks for this thing to get moving. Apparently over 110 TB's are still listed and not logged. Even though there was a note posted acknowledging this fact, the person doesn't seem overly concerned because that's only 7% "missing" out of approximately 1500. The poster rightly puts the blame on those who picked them up and didn't log them.

 

I suggest that if anyone is going to organize a mega event like this, that more care should be taken with the logging of TB's at the event itself. Sign your TB's in and also require that they SIGN THEM OUT. That way if a person fails to log it, we have some way of getting the name of the actual person who picked it up so we can send them a gentle reminder to LOG IT and MOVE it!

 

This really burns my britches.

[+Team Teague]

One of our TB's got logged into an event and it was quite a while before it moved on. Markey ended up putting a cool tag on it then got it moving. I was thankful for the tag after it got on it's way, but it did move after a while. So keep the faith!

 

Stacey

 

I honestly don't know whether my ONE and ONLY TB was stolen, or whether the person who picked it up at the Midwest Geobash in July just forgot to log it...or lost it. I've waited patiently for over 8 weeks for this thing to get moving. Apparently over 110 TB's are still listed and not logged. Even though there was a note posted acknowledging this fact, the person doesn't seem overly concerned because that's only 7% "missing" out of approximately 1500. The poster rightly puts the blame on those who picked them up and didn't log them.

 

I suggest that if anyone is going to organize a mega event like this, that more care should be taken with the logging of TB's at the event itself. Sign your TB's in and also require that they SIGN THEM OUT. That way if a person fails to log it, we have some way of getting the name of the actual person who picked it up so we can send them a gentle reminder to LOG IT and MOVE it!

 

This really burns my britches.