Adding additional advantage to Premium

[+ype]

The difference premium versus not-premium is low. I yesterday spoke with a geocaching couple who already have a lot of found caches. They love the game etc. They are Dutch and, as Dutches do (and maybe also other in the world), looking for cheap or free. They told me they see no real difference between premium of not-premium. There are enough nice not-premium caches arround. Then they told me they also like the FTF,STF and TTF race. I asked them if they would go to premium as premium-cachers would see the new caches a months earlier then not-premium-cachers. And the answer was .... :-)

Edited July 21, 2015 by ype

[RuideAlmeida]

Did they have been PM before, or they are just talking without proper knowledge?

Having the possibility to create PQs (instead of downloading the caches one by one), Routes, collecting and granting Favorites, etc. it is not a low difference and most of the times, when someone is PM, don't want to be BM again. Grant them a monthly free PM voucher and ask if their opinion changed after that.

[+whh0]

Not quite sure why this is on the forum for reporting website bugs.......

 

I have premier membership for 2 main reasons,

 

1. I imagine it costs to keep the website up and running. If nobody was prepared to put money into it how long would it last?

2. Pocket Queries, am I going on holiday for a week, if I use my phone I am likely to run up large data roaming charges, I can just run a PQ, put all my caches on to the GPS in one go and that is me sorted for the week.

[+TriciaG]

I'm confused. Are you suggesting that Groundspeak make caches unavailable to view for a period of time to all but premium members?

 

Ummmm.... NO.

 

I was starting to list reasons why I hate this idea, but decided to leave it at a "no."

[+Chief301]

I asked them if they would go to premium as premium-cachers would see the new caches a months earlier then not-premium-cachers. And the answer was .... :-

 

There's no time period in which Premium caches become available to non-premium members. Premium caches remain premium until the owner decides to change them.

 

Also, if your friends love to go after FTF's, Instant Notifications would be a great advantage to them. I think that's another Premium feature.

Edited July 21, 2015 by Chief301

[Keystone]

I asked them if they would go to premium as premium-cachers would see the new caches a months earlier then not-premium-cachers. And the answer was .... :-

 

There's no time period in which Premium caches become available to non-premium members. Premium caches remain premium until the owner decides to change them.

 

Also, if your friends love to go after FTF's, Instant Notifications would be a great advantage to them. I think that's another Premium feature.

I think the OP's suggestion is that this time delay be added as a Premium Member benefit.

 

Among other issues, it would make things difficult for premium and basic members to go cache hunting together, it would make it difficult to release batches of new caches around the date of a big event cache, and it would be hard for a basic member to hide a new cache and maintain it as a premium cache during the delay period. As a reviewer and forum moderator, I would not want to deal with the backlash of those results.

[+cerberus1]

Older kids often like to break free from the rest of the family.

Your proposal could force a family (who wanted to let the older kids experience things on their own) to purchase PMs for their kids too.

Could be an expensive hobby quick if a family like the Bill and Sharon Edwards (20 kids) cached.

- Part of the reason we have back-door methods allowing basics to log pmo caches.

 

How would a basic member hide a cache?

Look at the older (10+ years) favorited hides everyone loves to find for stats, and you'll find many were placed by basic members.

[+niraD]

The difference premium versus not-premium is low.

Well, the monthly cost of premium membership is less than a cappuccino, so...

 

They told me they see no real difference between premium of not-premium. There are enough nice not-premium caches arround.

I've never really considered access to PMO caches to be a primary benefit of membership. Being able to ignore the PMO status of caches is a minor benefit, but the primary benefits are pocket queries, bookmark lists, favorites, full API access, and statistics. And maybe a few other tools that I'm forgetting right now.

 

Then they told me they also like the FTF,STF and TTF race. I asked them if they would go to premium as premium-cachers would see the new caches a months earlier then not-premium-cachers. And the answer was .... :-)

As others have indicated, maybe they'd be interested in instant notifications.

 

Some cache owners publish their new caches as PMO, and then remove the PMO status after the cache has been found a few times. I think that's fine for cache owners who want to do that, but as Keystone indicated, making some sort of delay an official PMO benefit would cause problems.

[+The A-Team]

They told me they see no real difference between premium of not-premium. There are enough nice not-premium caches arround.

I've never really considered access to PMO caches to be a primary benefit of membership. Being able to ignore the PMO status of caches is a minor benefit, but the primary benefits are pocket queries, bookmark lists, favorites, full API access, and statistics. And maybe a few other tools that I'm forgetting right now.

Here's a more exhaustive list of premium member benefits (keeping in mind that it's out-of-date; there are benefits with the new search tool as well).

 

There's definitely far more than just the ability to view PMO caches.