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Geocaching Premium: Is it worth it (for me)?


RossJohn

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I am considering trying the 3-months of premium membership (for £7.99), but don't know whether it is suitable for me or not.

 

Firstly, I am not a 'serious' geocacher: although I am become increasingly interested in geocaching, it is still a sort of bi-weekly thing; I do not go geocaching every day.

 

Secondly, the paperless geocaching perks that come with a premium membership would be irrelevant to me, as my GPSr (a Garmin eTrex H) does not support paperless geocaching. I use C:geo on my smartphone to store geocache data, then input the coordinates into my GPSr when I'm out and about. C:geo also allows the batch downloading of geocaches as a basic member, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is another perk of a geocaching premium membership.

 

However, I am very interested in viewing my geocaching statistics, and access to premium-only geocaches. Does it sound like a 3-month premium membership is for me, or should I stick with a basic membership for now and see if I become more serious about geocaching? Thanks.

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I'd say try the 3-month membership and see if you like it. Being able to run pocket queries is a big advantage, but less so if you don't have a paperless GPSr. You won't get the cache details, hints, logs, etc. but you can batch download the coordinates to the unit, so there is that.

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I am considering trying the 3-months of premium membership (for £7.99), but don't know whether it is suitable for me or not.

 

Firstly, I am not a 'serious' geocacher: although I am become increasingly interested in geocaching, it is still a sort of bi-weekly thing; I do not go geocaching every day.

 

Secondly, the paperless geocaching perks that come with a premium membership would be irrelevant to me, as my GPSr (a Garmin eTrex H) does not support paperless geocaching. I use C:geo on my smartphone to store geocache data, then input the coordinates into my GPSr when I'm out and about. C:geo also allows the batch downloading of geocaches as a basic member, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is another perk of a geocaching premium membership.

 

However, I am very interested in viewing my geocaching statistics, and access to premium-only geocaches. Does it sound like a 3-month premium membership is for me, or should I stick with a basic membership for now and see if I become more serious about geocaching? Thanks.

 

Be a little careful with batch downloading into c:geo, I think (although I could be wrong) that kind of thing is against the site's terms of use.

 

Pocket queries are the primary benefit of premium membership. There are others but unless you're the kind of person who is going to rush out the moment you get a new "cache published" email they aren't going to be of as much use as pocket queries.

 

If you want to try it why not get a 3-month membership and see if you miss it when it's gone?

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Chief301, Thanks, that was my main concern about getting a membership, about my GPSr not being able to run pocket queries. I suppose I could try the premium membership to see if it is worth it for the other features.

 

team tisri, Yeah, I can see how Groundspeak would have issues with mobiles apps giving away premium features for free. I don't know how much use I would get out of pocket queries, but I suppose I could still think about trying the membership for 3 months and see much use I get out of it.

 

Thanks very much for the answers!

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Wouldn't hurt to try it however, a subscription less then one year will AUTOMATICALLY rebill your credit card after the 3 months. The year option gives you the option of choosing not to autobill after the year is up.

I believe you can cancel the auto bill straight away though? Of course that may have changed and it wouldn't be below providers of some web services to make it difficult to do so - but I would be surprised if that were the case here.

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Wouldn't hurt to try it however, a subscription less then one year will AUTOMATICALLY rebill your credit card after the 3 months. The year option gives you the option of choosing not to autobill after the year is up.

I believe you can cancel the auto bill straight away though? Of course that may have changed and it wouldn't be below providers of some web services to make it difficult to do so - but I would be surprised if that were the case here.

 

Correct. The auto-renew can be cancelled within seconds of subscribing.

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I think you are allowed a once free trial of premium for a month. You should try it and then decide.

 

How do you access it? The link provided in another post in this thread doesn't work.

 

It didn't work for me either; I just Googled 'garmin 30 day geocaching premium' and it came up. Unfortunately, it requires you to plug your GPSr into the computer, and mine didn't come with a cable. I'm considering upgrading my GPSr though, for paperless geocaching.

Edited by RossJohn
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I think you are allowed a once free trial of premium for a month. You should try it and then decide.

 

How do you access it? The link provided in another post in this thread doesn't work.

 

It didn't work for me either; I just Googled 'garmin 30 day geocaching premium' and it came up. Unfortunately, it requires you to plug your GPSr into the computer, and mine didn't come with a cable. I'm considering upgrading my GPSr though, for paperless geocaching.

www.geocaching.com/garmin/freetrial.aspx

 

Seems to be a little temperamental!

 

Most Garmins are 'standard' USB fitting, do you not have another cable around that you could use to connect it?

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I think you are allowed a once free trial of premium for a month. You should try it and then decide.

 

How do you access it? The link provided in another post in this thread doesn't work.

 

It didn't work for me either; I just Googled 'garmin 30 day geocaching premium' and it came up. Unfortunately, it requires you to plug your GPSr into the computer, and mine didn't come with a cable. I'm considering upgrading my GPSr though, for paperless geocaching.

www.geocaching.com/garmin/freetrial.aspx

 

Seems to be a little temperamental!

 

Most Garmins are 'standard' USB fitting, do you not have another cable around that you could use to connect it?

 

My Garmin eTrex H was apparently the last Garmin device (or maybe the last eTrex?) to use a serial connection rather than a USB. I don't have any serial cables lying around, as all of my other electronics use USB cables.

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However, I decided to try the 3-month premium membership. It seems good so far, although I haven't found any caches yet with it! I'll go out tomorrow and find some of the many premium-only caches in my area.

 

IMO, one of the biggest advantages of going premium back when I had my blue Legend was the ability to run a Pocket Query, load it into Easy GPS, (and later GSAK), and then send a couple hundred geocaches to the unit at once. You are crippled in this as you don't have the special cable.

 

If you search ebay for "Garmin etrex cable", you will see the original 9-pin serial cable as well as a USB cable, (if your computer does not have an ancient serial port), going for $5 to $20. I know, more money, but this game tends to do that to us. Putting it in perspective, I'll pay $5 for parking just go hiking and find a few caches.

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I am considering trying the 3-months of premium membership (for £7.99), but don't know whether it is suitable for me or not.

 

Firstly, I am not a 'serious' geocacher: although I am become increasingly interested in geocaching, it is still a sort of bi-weekly thing; I do not go geocaching every day.

 

Secondly, the paperless geocaching perks that come with a premium membership would be irrelevant to me, as my GPSr (a Garmin eTrex H) does not support paperless geocaching. I use C:geo on my smartphone to store geocache data, then input the coordinates into my GPSr when I'm out and about. C:geo also allows the batch downloading of geocaches as a basic member, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is another perk of a geocaching premium membership.

 

However, I am very interested in viewing my geocaching statistics, and access to premium-only geocaches. Does it sound like a 3-month premium membership is for me, or should I stick with a basic membership for now and see if I become more serious about geocaching? Thanks.

Link to comment

I am considering trying the 3-months of premium membership (for £7.99), but don't know whether it is suitable for me or not.

 

Firstly, I am not a 'serious' geocacher: although I am become increasingly interested in geocaching, it is still a sort of bi-weekly thing; I do not go geocaching every day.

 

Secondly, the paperless geocaching perks that come with a premium membership would be irrelevant to me, as my GPSr (a Garmin eTrex H) does not support paperless geocaching. I use C:geo on my smartphone to store geocache data, then input the coordinates into my GPSr when I'm out and about. C:geo also allows the batch downloading of geocaches as a basic member, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is another perk of a geocaching premium membership.

 

However, I am very interested in viewing my geocaching statistics, and access to premium-only geocaches. Does it sound like a 3-month premium membership is for me, or should I stick with a basic membership for now and see if I become more serious about geocaching? Thanks.

When I see posts like this it makes me crazy! Check this out....We own 21 caches in a 'park' in our area. ALL 21 are premium members only. There is a 22nd cache in the park that isn't PMO, owned by someone else. I cannot tell you how many times non-paying members have come to this park in search of the one FREE cache, walked right past our 21 PMO caches clueless that they're there and then gone off to cache for the rest of the day some place else, driving around, wasting gas and money for 20 more caches when they could've had those 20 other caches right there where they were.

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When I see posts like this it makes me crazy! Check this out....We own 21 caches in a 'park' in our area. ALL 21 are premium members only. There is a 22nd cache in the park that isn't PMO, owned by someone else. I cannot tell you how many times non-paying members have come to this park in search of the one FREE cache, walked right past our 21 PMO caches clueless that they're there and then gone off to cache for the rest of the day some place else, driving around, wasting gas and money for 20 more caches when they could've had those 20 other caches right there where they were.

But isn't that the point of PMO caches?

 

By hiding them as such you've tried to discourage a set of people from finding them. Sometimes they might find them, but mostly they won't. That's OK - it's what happens when you make a bunch of caches PMO, especially 21 in a park like that - to be honest (unless it's some sort of massive parkland area) I'd be very unlikely to go and look for those even if they were regular member caches!

 

It's OK if you make them PMO, really it is. Your right to do so. I really don't mind not being able to find them most of the time.

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I am considering trying the 3-months of premium membership (for £7.99), but don't know whether it is suitable for me or not.

 

Firstly, I am not a 'serious' geocacher: although I am become increasingly interested in geocaching, it is still a sort of bi-weekly thing; I do not go geocaching every day.

 

Secondly, the paperless geocaching perks that come with a premium membership would be irrelevant to me, as my GPSr (a Garmin eTrex H) does not support paperless geocaching. I use C:geo on my smartphone to store geocache data, then input the coordinates into my GPSr when I'm out and about. C:geo also allows the batch downloading of geocaches as a basic member, which, correct me if I'm wrong, is another perk of a geocaching premium membership.

 

However, I am very interested in viewing my geocaching statistics, and access to premium-only geocaches. Does it sound like a 3-month premium membership is for me, or should I stick with a basic membership for now and see if I become more serious about geocaching? Thanks.

 

Be a little careful with batch downloading into c:geo, I think (although I could be wrong) that kind of thing is against the site's terms of use.

 

Pocket queries are the primary benefit of premium membership. There are others but unless you're the kind of person who is going to rush out the moment you get a new "cache published" email they aren't going to be of as much use as pocket queries.

 

If you want to try it why not get a 3-month membership and see if you miss it when it's gone?

 

You can load PQ into c:geo and it works offline with static maps just like any paperless GPSr so used this way doesn't break any rules.

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