Premium only caches

[Gunner4T5]

What's up with long established caches, suddenly becoming "Premium" only? 

Edited May 7 by Gunner4T5

[Keystone]

A cache owner can change their cache's status to "Premium Members Only" at any time.  For example, if a popular cache goes missing or gets damaged often, the owner can reduce the "traffic" at that cache by changing it to PMO.

 

Your question might also be about "Advanced" caches, which are available to all players on the Geocaching.com website, but only available to Premium Members on the official Geocaching smartphone apps.  The difference in features on the app are explained in this Help Center article.  So, for a basic member using the official app, a cache can "suddenly" become inaccessible on the official app if the cache owner adjusts the Difficulty and/or Terrain rating to higher than 2 stars.

[+GeoElmo6000]

1 hour ago, Keystone said:

"Advanced" caches, which are available to all players on the Geocaching.com website, but only available to Premium Members on the official Geocaching smartphone apps

 

"Advanced" caches 

[+Max and 99]

8 hours ago, Gunner4T5 said:

What's up with long established caches, suddenly becoming "Premium" only? 

So many possible reasons.

[+cerberus1]

13 hours ago, Gunner4T5 said:

What's up with long established caches, suddenly becoming "Premium" only? 

We've only seen a handful of caches that were 'premium' in quality, most were like any other cache.

Sorta like Keystone said, most here that change to Premium Member Only had issues with 'weekend n done...' basic members. 

Kids mostly, lose a few ammo cans or have trackables go 'missing' from one cache and none around it, it's PMO time.  Can't blame them....  

To be clear, we see brand new PM members PM upon joining, so if kids are the issue, I'd up the terrain instead.

Over 2 D/T not shown in the app.  Of course that would mean if you can fix the cache for the change...

[+barefootjeff]

About a decade ago in a region north of here, someone created a free account and, calling themselves The Cache Smasher, went around and destroyed every cache they could get to. The caches that were PMO at the time escaped the carnage and since then most of the new caches there have been made PMO.

 

My caches generally aren't PMO but most are terrain 2.5 or higher (and the two that aren't are non-traditional) so they don't appear on the app without a premium membership. A few years back one was taken from its hiding place and put inside a hollow tree some 50 metres away, which I suspect might have been someone just downloading the app and thinking they had to hide caches somewhere else after they find them, so I made that PMO and it's been fine ever since. It seems to have been a one-off inicident so I'll probably set it back to basic access eventually.

Edited May 7 by barefootjeff

[+Viajero Perdido]

Years ago, Groundspeak surprised everyone by selling the coordinates of those little things that are our property, by the millions I think, to be included in a toy GPS unit.

 

Some didn't appreciate that, and have a long memory.

[+ecanderson]

47 minutes ago, Viajero Perdido said:

Years ago, Groundspeak surprised everyone by selling the coordinates of those little things that are our property, by the millions I think, to be included in a toy GPS unit.

 

Some didn't appreciate that, and have a long memory.

A certain Apishpere product?

 

[+Weber_and_Sons]

I hate when a cache is not made as premium member only but it still becomes a premium member only cache.