Why don't people notify when they move trackables?

[+artemisworks]

I don't know why people don't log travel bugs and geocoins they've taken in/out of a cache?? I guess lots of you have had the same experience, of travelling a long way and making a special effort to find a cache, only to find that the cache has been plundered of all its trackables and yet NOT had its inventory updated?? To me, that's rather demoralising. I'm still trying to rack up my geocoin discoveries, and living in a city, it's hard enough to find any caches that are NOT micros.... I don't really understand why people can log a cache find on the website and yet not also note the trackables they've removed....

 

ArtemisWorks

[+JamGuys]

I don't know why people don't log travel bugs and geocoins they've taken in/out of a cache?? I guess lots of you have had the same experience, of travelling a long way and making a special effort to find a cache, only to find that the cache has been plundered of all its trackables and yet NOT had its inventory updated?? To me, that's rather demoralising. I'm still trying to rack up my geocoin discoveries, and living in a city, it's hard enough to find any caches that are NOT micros.... I don't really understand why people can log a cache find on the website and yet not also note the trackables they've removed....

 

ArtemisWorks

Well, having lost more than a few trackables of my own over the years, here's my perspective. The main reasons people don't log TBs and geocoins are:

 

1. They're newbies and they don't know how to do so. A significant proportion of these TBs and geocoins will never be logged as the newbies lose interest in the sport and move on.

 

2. They procrastinate about it or are just too lazy to go to the car or the garage or wherever they store their geocaching gear to retrieve the TB or geocoin when they're logging the cache online. Some of these TBs and geocoins will eventually become misplaced and/or forgotten and lost.

 

3. They never really intended to log the TB or the geocoin they took from the cache. We all know what these people are called.

 

Edited to add:

 

4. They're on an extended caching trip or vacation and are waiting until they return home to log their finds.

Edited January 18, 2009 by JamGuys

[Keystone]

If you do visit a cache with an inaccurate inventory of trackables, mention this fact in your log: "I came here to find the XYZ Geocoin, but it's not here. The only coin I saw was the ABC Geocoin. I took that and dropped off one of my personal coins." This alerts the cache owner to remove the missing trackable by going to its page and using the "mark as missing" option from the dropdown menu.

 

You can also help out by going to the missing trackable's page and leaving a note that conveys the bad news. The trackable's owner is notified of that log, whereas they may not notice that their trackable was reported missing in a log on the cache page.

 

If neither the cache owner nor the trackable owner reacts to this information by marking the trackable missing, the information is still useful. Once a year or so, I go through all the caches in my review territory that are supposed to have trackables in them. I look for reports of missing trackables, and mark them missing, leaving a note for the owner to explain what I did. So, in Ohio, when you visit a cache that's supposed to have a trackable item in it, there's a higher likelihood that it's actually there.

 

Your friendly volunteer cache reviewer or Eartha can also mark items missing. We are happy to help keep the listings accurate.

[+BlueDeuce]

If you do visit a cache with an inaccurate inventory of trackables, mention this fact in your log: "I came here to find the XYZ Geocoin, but it's not here. The only coin I saw was the ABC Geocoin. I took that and dropped off one of my personal coins." This alerts the cache owner to remove the missing trackable by going to its page and using the "mark as missing" option from the dropdown menu.

 

You can also help out by going to the missing trackable's page and leaving a note that conveys the bad news. The trackable's owner is notified of that log, whereas they may not notice that their trackable was reported missing in a log on the cache page.

 

If neither the cache owner nor the trackable owner reacts to this information by marking the trackable missing, the information is still useful. Once a year or so, I go through all the caches in my review territory that are supposed to have trackables in them. I look for reports of missing trackables, and mark them missing, leaving a note for the owner to explain what I did. So, in Ohio, when you visit a cache that's supposed to have a trackable item in it, there's a higher likelihood that it's actually there.

 

Your friendly volunteer cache reviewer or Eartha can also mark items missing. We are happy to help keep the listings accurate.

 

ayep, well said.

Edited January 19, 2009 by BlueDeuce

[+weylan]

Awesome! I expect that is doing your job and helping out. Which is great.

I appreciate the work.

 

Any idea how to find the reviewer for my area?

 

If you do visit a cache with an inaccurate inventory of trackables, mention this fact in your log: "I came here to find the XYZ Geocoin, but it's not here. The only coin I saw was the ABC Geocoin. I took that and dropped off one of my personal coins." This alerts the cache owner to remove the missing trackable by going to its page and using the "mark as missing" option from the dropdown menu.

 

You can also help out by going to the missing trackable's page and leaving a note that conveys the bad news. The trackable's owner is notified of that log, whereas they may not notice that their trackable was reported missing in a log on the cache page.

 

If neither the cache owner nor the trackable owner reacts to this information by marking the trackable missing, the information is still useful. Once a year or so, I go through all the caches in my review territory that are supposed to have trackables in them. I look for reports of missing trackables, and mark them missing, leaving a note for the owner to explain what I did. So, in Ohio, when you visit a cache that's supposed to have a trackable item in it, there's a higher likelihood that it's actually there.

 

Your friendly volunteer cache reviewer or Eartha can also mark items missing. We are happy to help keep the listings accurate.

 

ayep, well said.

 

 

[+BlueDeuce]

Any idea how to find the reviewer for my area?

 

Looking at recently published caches in your area it appears to be Nomex or Krypton

Edited January 29, 2009 by BlueDeuce

[+Jedi_Mayq]

As a cache owner, I quickly began to feel it my responsibility that if someone marks a trackable item as missing from one of my caches to go out, verify and mark it as missing if not present.

 

If someone is on something like an extended vacation later, they can still take possession with no problems.

[Hawk284]

What if the person still shows it in their possession but they dropped it some where else? Is there a way to take back possession and then place it where it really is?

 

I figured it out by dumb luck

Edited February 9, 2009 by Hawk284

[+Max and 99]

There's no excuse for not logging that you took or moved a TB. I recently made a special trip to rescue a geocoin for an out of state cacher whose coin had not left the area in a year. I never would have gone to the cache except for the TB rescue. We found the cache but the coin was not in there, and the last person online to say they took a TB did so three months earlier. My log stated that some lame cacher took the coin. The cache owner sent me a very long, nasty email saying maybe the person who took the coin had a good reason for not logging it. In three months? I doubt it! Lazy, lazy, lazy!

[+Eartha]

There's no excuse for not logging that you took or moved a TB. I recently made a special trip to rescue a geocoin for an out of state cacher whose coin had not left the area in a year. I never would have gone to the cache except for the TB rescue. We found the cache but the coin was not in there, and the last person online to say they took a TB did so three months earlier. My log stated that some lame cacher took the coin. The cache owner sent me a very long, nasty email saying maybe the person who took the coin had a good reason for not logging it. In three months? I doubt it! Lazy, lazy, lazy!

 

Anything could have happened to them. Anything. But suppose something didn't happen to them, supposed they just forgot to log it, and when they did go to log it, they read your log, and were insulted by it. Now it would never get logged, because you might have just scared them away from the game entirely. Please try to refrain from calling people names in logs and in the forums. You get more flies with sugar than you do with vinegar. People respond a lot better to a polite note, or log, than they do to hate mail and inflammatory logs. Forgetting to log something can happen to the best of us. Things slip down to the bottom of the backpack while the toddler is crying because he's been hiking too long, and the car has to be unloaded, and the tire went flat, and they sprained their ankle, and they had to drop off everyone on the way home, and so on and so on..... things happen.

 

Maybe there are no excuses, but there are reasons.

 

Here's how it should have gone. You find the cache, you make note of the cacher that said they grabbed it, and then you go home and privately email them a polite note, asking if you could get the trackable item from them, because you want to get it for the owner, and you'd like to remind them that they haven't logged it yet. You could ask if they already dropped it, and maybe even send them the link to "How to Log a Trackable Item", because sometimes people don't know how to log properly. Did you by any chance, look to see if this cacher accidentally logged a "discovered", instead of a "grab"?