The worse experience i've had here

[+pepash13]

i've been a member for  quite some time. i"ve never seen such bad customer service and not a way to make contact to resolve it. I have never had a credit card or debit card attached to my account. This year I paid my membership with a visa gift card. They stated " it wasn't a renewable card" or something like that.. they canceled my premium membership.  I also had on hand a card I won at an event for a full year of premium service. There is no option to use this card. I sit here and wonder what I want to do with this bs. I have over 150 caches active. I"m thinking just shut them all down. I can no longer use the quick access of maps, and information to find my caches and maintain. They only seem to appear randomly.  How does HQ decide that I can't use a visa gift card to pay my membership. How do you shut down my premium account? NO , card was attached. I"m trying not to get to aggravated and shut down all the caches.. it's not what the game is about. Yet, there is no contact number.. now the great deal that I can renew it if I use a card,. I don't want a  card attached with an automtic draft on it. I would have my siblings to gift me and I would pay them. I used a freaking gift card and HQ found it unacceptable and shut me down. IT's a game I thought.. nope apparently a business.  I 'm the co of most caches in this county and people have travel from all over to get their nuimbers.. HQ just didn't like my payment method. Screw what we thought was a game it's a business. BUt wait.... they are offering to renew for my same price.. WTF.. YEt I"m sure that give card nor the one I won can be used. I"ve sent a message to captainmath but it's not really his issue. HOw doe the little person deal with HQ on bs like this... I can see the future of frustration and shutting down the caches.. I suppose the " lack of seeing on the map" is due to them all being premium caches and I"m not longer a premium member. How did something I love doing turn out so crappy

[+pepash13]

since the " won" membership can't be used by me.. Anyone can have it dist. Bvom81nowd.. scan  bar ' dist020470

[Moun10Bike]

@pepash13, HQ is in the midst of a migration from an old payment provider to a new one. There have been a number of issues as a result, and one is that gift cards are currently not working.

 

Please contact our customer support team via Help Center contact form at https://www.geocaching.com/help/index.php?pg=request. They will definitely be able to help you out.

[Rock Chalk]

I see that you contacted HQ earlier this month, but did not respond to the reply where questions were asked to help troubleshoot the situation. If you could respond to that email, the staff can help take care of things.

[Ptld2016]

Not sure where to post this. I'm having a very similar experience. I also have not had a card associated with the account. I've had people gift me subscriptions. Couldn't do that this year, with the price difference. So, we renewed by credit card. I can see that the credit card is associated with the account. It didn't run the card at the time, but we assumed it would run it on the renewal date.

 

Flash forward to the renewal date. I'm still getting nastygrams saying to renew. Something's clearly not right. I figured I should try renewing again, and watch to be sure I'm not double-billed. This time, it doesn't accept the card. Tried a different card, and same message. I know the cards are both good because I've used them elsewhere. Tried for about an hour with both cards on different computers and different browsers, with no luck.

 

With all that trouble, I emailed customer service. Response is it would be at least 24 hrs, so I knew I'd be cut off. Sure enough, I got the email about 4 hrs later, in the early afternoon. Pretty annoying since I assumed it would be midnight, and there were a few things I wanted to do.

 

So, now it's 5 days later. Still crickets. I get that there's an upgrade in progress, but cutting people off when they're trying to give you money, then not providing any communication other than it might take over 24 hours doesn't seem like the right answer.

[+kunarion]

On 3/19/2025 at 8:05 PM, pepash13 said:

This year I paid my membership with a visa gift card. They stated " it wasn't a renewable card" or something like that.

 

I have several VISA gift cards, and have not tried them on Geocaching.com, but they don't work on any subscription site I've tried.  The card seems OK, til it's rejected soon afterward.  My guess is that "non renewable" VISA cards can't be done automatically.  Or at least a company must specially set up the function.  My plan was to pay for a short subscription to whatever service, with no "cancellation" headaches.  No can do.  OTOH, I'm able to load these cards into an online shop without issue.  Anyway, avoid the disposable VISA cards.  They have a lot of gotchas, beyond the OP's issue.

 

But with Geocaching.com, there are real people to contact.

Edited May 17 by kunarion

[+JL_HSTRE]

4 hours ago, Ptld2016 said:

I'm still getting nastygrams saying to renew.

 

The term "nastygram" gets thrown around far too freely on these forums.

[Ptld2016]

I'm not sure how to get anyone's attention. I had my issue 11 days, and all I got from my help desk was the auto response saying someone would get back to me. I wrote to them again a few days ago, once again, got the auto response, and once again, no one's gotten back. I tried calling, and got the response that the payment issues line is not being monitored. I have no idea how else to get customer service to help me with my problem. Does anyone have any suggestions what else I can do?

[+kunarion]

On 3/19/2025 at 8:05 PM, pepash13 said:

i've been a member for  quite some time. i"ve never seen such bad customer service and not a way to make contact to resolve it. I have never had a credit card or debit card attached to my account. This year I paid my membership with a visa gift card. They stated " it wasn't a renewable card" or something like that.. they canceled my premium membership.  I also had on hand a card I won at an event for a full year of premium service. There is no option to use this card. I sit here and wonder what I want to do with this bs. I have over 150 caches active. I"m thinking just shut them all down. I can no longer use the quick access of maps, and information to find my caches and maintain. They only seem to appear randomly.  How does HQ decide that I can't use a visa gift card to pay my membership. How do you shut down my premium account? NO , card was attached. I"m trying not to get to aggravated and shut down all the caches.. it's not what the game is about. Yet, there is no contact number.. now the great deal that I can renew it if I use a card,. I don't want a  card attached with an automtic draft on it. I would have my siblings to gift me and I would pay them. I used a freaking gift card and HQ found it unacceptable and shut me down. IT's a game I thought.. nope apparently a business.  I 'm the co of most caches in this county and people have travel from all over to get their nuimbers.. HQ just didn't like my payment method. Screw what we thought was a game it's a business. BUt wait.... they are offering to renew for my same price.. WTF.. YEt I"m sure that give card nor the one I won can be used. I"ve sent a message to captainmath but it's not really his issue. HOw doe the little person deal with HQ on bs like this... I can see the future of frustration and shutting down the caches.. I suppose the " lack of seeing on the map" is due to them all being premium caches and I"m not longer a premium member. How did something I love doing turn out so crappy

 

What did you do to renew your membership?  How did the issue get resolved?

 

[+kunarion]

57 minutes ago, Ptld2016 said:

Does anyone have any suggestions what else I can do?

 

You could try to renew through the Apps.  I do not recommend doing that, for a couple of reasons, but the payment system is different (you would pay the App store who then pays Geocaching.com).

 

The OP had similar problems, and I guess somehow resolved them.

 

I checked just now, and it looks like the only way to subscribe is by a credit card that is connected to a bank account.  That the system doesn't accept the "non-renewable" Visa gift card kind.  Can that be?

 

I've experienced this same thing on every "subscription" service I've tried.  I had to use my gift cards in online shops instead, and they work fine there.

 

If the gift card is the problem, it's Internet-wide, not just on geocaching.com.  Guess I need to research the issue.

 

Edited May 23 by kunarion

[Ptld2016]

I'm not using a non-renewable. That was the other person. I'm using a regular credit card. At this point, I'm wondering if my emails to customer service aren't going anywhere, even though they're being acknowledged? I used the link moun10bike posted here in March, only 2 months ago. At this point, I just would like to communicate with someone from Geocaching to at least acknowledge my issue. It doesn't seem like it should take 2 weeks to get a non-automated response.

[+kunarion]

9 hours ago, Ptld2016 said:

I'm not using a non-renewable. That was the other person. I'm using a regular credit card.

 

But when you mentioned testing "cards", I wasn't sure what you meant.

 

========

"Tried a different card, and same message. I know the cards are both good because I've used the elsewhere."

========

 

I don't do any card testing.  If it doesn't work, I check my bank first, because my cards do get blocked at times.  When they work, they work everywhere.

 

So anyway, if you're sure you haven't gone over your limit, and they are Visa cards connected to your bank, it may be a payment service outage (as Moun10Bike mentioned, switching providers or something).  But I'd be surprised if it only affects 2 people (or now maybe just you?).  That is, why aren't there a lot of these threads?

 

My subscription renews at the end of July.  I have never done anything but watch the charge occur.  So at that time, I'll update what happened.  Assuming it still doesn't work then.

 

Did you respond to the email from HQ?  I guess when you ask them, they have to ask the payment service, and who knows who the payment service asks.  That's no excuse, but it's a reason for a delay in the response.

 

Edited May 24 by kunarion

[Ptld2016]

I've not heard boo from HQ, other than the automated email saying they received my message, and they hope to get back within 24 hrs (x2). Maybe they're just slammed, but even so, it seems like they could get back and say when they can look into the issue. That's why I'm starting to wonder if anyone has even seen my message. Since it looked like people from hq were monitoring this forum since they replied to the other person, I was hoping I could get some response. Maybe not though.

[+TeamRabbitRun]

There are moderators on these forums; could one of them, as some kind of rep from the company, at least come in and tell this guy that someone acknowledges the problem?

 

For goodness' sake, he's trying to give you money!

[+niraD]

1 hour ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

There are moderators on these forums; could one of them, as some kind of rep from the company

Forum moderators are volunteers, and are not representatives of Groundspeak (and certainly not when money is involved).

[Keystone]

3 hours ago, TeamRabbitRun said:

There are moderators on these forums; could one of them, as some kind of rep from the company, at least come in and tell this guy that someone acknowledges the problem?

 

For goodness' sake, he's trying to give you money!

As a volunteer moderator, I have no access to the help center ticket system.  I also have no access to anyone's payment details, which is a good thing.  I also don't think that anyone is trying to send me money.

[Rock Chalk]

11 hours ago, Ptld2016 said:

I've not heard boo from HQ, other than the automated email saying they received my message, and they hope to get back within 24 hrs (x2). Maybe they're just slammed, but even so, it seems like they could get back and say when they can look into the issue. That's why I'm starting to wonder if anyone has even seen my message. Since it looked like people from hq were monitoring this forum since they replied to the other person, I was hoping I could get some response. Maybe not though.

 

I suspect there may be an issue with your email provider, because I'm looking at your message(s) to HQ right now and a Lackey has responded to you twice -- once on May 12 and again on May 21. I can only suggest that you check your spam folder for those responses. 

[Ptld2016]

11 hours ago, Rock Chalk said:

 

I suspect there may be an issue with your email provider, because I'm looking at your message(s) to HQ right now and a Lackey has responded to you twice -- once on May 12 and again on May 21. I can only suggest that you check your spam folder for those responses. 

Thank you very much for checking that! I checked my spam filter, and there's nothing. So yeah, there's obviously something wrong with email. Not sure why the automated replies would get through and not the actual replies, but that's a different issue. If that person could get back to me through the Geocaching message center to try and troubleshoot the payment problem, or I guess I can send another help center message asking to communicate differently.

[+TeamRabbitRun]

On 5/24/2025 at 8:40 PM, niraD said:

Forum moderators are volunteers, and are not representatives of Groundspeak (and certainly not when money is involved).

 

On 5/24/2025 at 11:12 PM, Keystone said:

As a volunteer moderator, I have no access to the help center ticket system.  I also have no access to anyone's payment details, which is a good thing.  I also don't think that anyone is trying to send me money.

 

 

Well, I know that, but I was just thinking that even moderators, as at least tangential reps of HQ, being more closely connected than we more-remote people might have some sort of better communications pathway to nudge someone and say, "Hey, somebody should look at this unhappy player with $$ in his mitt!"

[Ptld2016]

On 5/25/2025 at 8:45 AM, Ptld2016 said:

Thank you very much for checking that! I checked my spam filter, and there's nothing. So yeah, there's obviously something wrong with email. Not sure why the automated replies would get through and not the actual replies, but that's a different issue. If that person could get back to me through the Geocaching message center to try and troubleshoot the payment problem, or I guess I can send another help center message asking to communicate differently.

I don't mean to keep complaining, but I just can't seem to get any response. I made help center requests on Tuesday and Wednesday, the 27 and 28, specifically saying that I'm not receiving their emails, other than the automated responses, and to respond through the geocaching message center. I've heard nothing back. I'm just trying to give them money for a renewal, and I've been trying for almost 3 weeks, and I really wish someone would contact me directly to resolve the issue. I can send my phone # in yet another help center request if that would be easier. At this point, this message center seems to be the only way I'm hearing anything at all.

[Ptld2016]

Does anyone have any idea how to get through to Groundspeak by phone? I'm trying 866-436-2224. I also tried 206-302-7721. When I call, it says to enter a valid extension, or press 0 for assistance. I've tried every hour or so both Monday and Tuesday, and let it ring 20+ times, and get no answer. Does anyone have a better number, or a valid extension I can try? Oddly enough, I tried several weeks ago and got a phone tree. That option appears to have disappeared. I feel like I'm missing something -- doesn't seem like it should be so difficult to reach a company by phone.

[wandrewlust]

Hello Ptld2016, 

It seems like there's a communication error with your email address, due to the unique domain its attached to. 

We do not offer phone support but we can support through here or if you reach out to us via email, try doing so from a more common email domain to ensure we stay connected. 
--
I made a change to the background of your account - I believe I reenabled the portal for you to purchase a Premium membership. Please note that we do not accept Pre-Paid cards for Premium membership. 

[Ptld2016]

22 hours ago, wandrewlust said:

Hello Ptld2016, 

It seems like there's a communication error with your email address, due to the unique domain its attached to. 

We do not offer phone support but we can support through here or if you reach out to us via email, try doing so from a more common email domain to ensure we stay connected. 
--
I made a change to the background of your account - I believe I reenabled the portal for you to purchase a Premium membership. Please note that we do not accept Pre-Paid cards for Premium membership. 

It looks like the change worked. Thank you very much!