+Rye_and_Leigh Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 Just over 4 weeks ago I sent an email to contact@geocaching.com asking to adopt some caches owned by a member who's been banned. This is the email address the FAQ listed as the proper one for such an issue. I listed the waypoint IDs and noted that I'd spoken with the banned member regarding my adopting these caches. That was 11/29. I promptly received an email containing a tracking number for this issue and waited for a response. A week later (on 12/6) I sent a follow-up to contact@, as I expected to have heard back by then. Again, I promptly received an email containing a tracking number. Once more, a week went by with no response. On 12/15 I sent a second follow-up email to contact@ and again rapidly received a tracking number email. This time, I waited 2 more weeks, since everyone's busy during the holidays. It is now over 4 weeks since my original email was received by gc.com and yet I've received no response. I don't mean to be pushy about it, but this seems like much more than a reasonable amount of time to wait for one. Can someone please help me resolve my request? Thanks for your time! Link to comment
+Renegade Knight Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 You did it how it's supposed to be done. The banned member should email contact@geocaching.com as the owner of the caches (you own them even if you have been banned) and tell the site that they are in agreement with your adoption wishes. If GC has been trying to verify the adoption it's possible that they have not had success. However that's speculation on my part. I'd have the banned member email them wiht links to the correct caches giving permission and that should help the process along. Link to comment
+Rye_and_Leigh Posted December 29, 2004 Author Share Posted December 29, 2004 Thanks for your quick response, RK! You've brought up a couple of other points that I'm quite concerned about. 1) It seems to me that it's just plain bad business for gc.com to not respond to me in some way in this situation. As it is, three messages to them have gone completely unanswered. They could at least suggest to me that I should go bug the other party involved or that they're waiting on him. 2) I know that another person in the area adopted one of his caches in a very short period of time (1 or 2 days) without any intervention or email from the banned user. Why would one customer get quick service and another get ignored in this situation? Link to comment
+horsegeeks Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 We did it by just contacting the approver for our area. It was very simple that way. Link to comment
+Rye_and_Leigh Posted December 29, 2004 Author Share Posted December 29, 2004 We did it by just contacting the approver for our area. It was very simple that way. I thought about doing that, but I wanted to follow the information I found in the knowledge base instead. I figured that the method listed there would be the preferred method. It doesn't mention anything about needing an email from the person the caches are being adopted away from. If the process is something other than what's in the knowledge base, perhaps the KB article should be changed to reflect the proper process. The link to the knowledge base article is: http://Groundspeak.trakhelp.com/bin/answer...&topic=0&type=f Link to comment
+hydee Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 I will look into the emails. Adopting caches that are owned by a banned member can be tricky. Since the physical caches are owned by that person not gc.com. The cache owner may still be maintaining the caches and possibly have them cross listed on another site. Link to comment
+Rye_and_Leigh Posted December 29, 2004 Author Share Posted December 29, 2004 I will look into the emails. Adopting caches that are owned by a banned member can be tricky. Since the physical caches are owned by that person not gc.com. The cache owner may still be maintaining the caches and possibly have them cross listed on another site. Hydee, Thanks for looking into this. Please let me know if you need the tracking numbers and I'll send them your way. FYI, he has removed some of the caches I asked to adopt, but only because I wasn't getting any response. Those caches have been archived by Moun10bike. I've verified that he hasn't got any of the remaining active caches cross-listed on any other site. Link to comment
+OConnellz Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 (edited) Why would one customer get quick service and another get ignored in this situation? Rye, haven't we already discussed the favoritism exhibited by our local approver? If only you would just be NICE to Ron, you probably wouldn't get blown off! Edited December 29, 2004 by OConnellz Link to comment
+Mopar Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 Why would one customer get quick service and another get ignored in this situation? Rye, haven't we already discussed the favoritism exhibited by our local approver? If only you would just be NICE to Ron, you probably wouldn't get blown off! Man, that seems like an unwarranted shot! What does your local reviewer have to do with emailing gc.com directly? I don't know the exact situation there, but I would assume it's like others have said. Just because a user is banned or whatever here, doesn't automatically make his caches abandoned. He still owns them and they could still be maintained and listed elsewhere. If this person is "banned" from this site, he's probably not being very cooperative in answering their emails either. I know if I was banned from someplace I wouldn't be going out of my way to help them. Link to comment
+OConnellz Posted December 29, 2004 Share Posted December 29, 2004 Man, that seems like an unwarranted shot!What does your local reviewer have to do with emailing gc.com directly? It may have been unnecessary, but there are a few of us in the local group that have witnessed what we felt to be sketchy behavior from the local approver- not quite Texas level, but I am sure that it had something to do with the rise of terracaching.com. I wouldn't attribute the new site in a major part to the local approver, but more of a straw that broke the camel's back kind of thing. I don't want to start a war, or dig up old bones, but when I saw Rye's comment, I couldn't resist. I am sure he had to be biting his tongue so hard it may have drawn blood. I did post the archive requests for the other caches that Moun10bike archived before. I thanked him for that. It is reassuring to know that in some places, the community does actually like and support their approver. Link to comment
+Rye_and_Leigh Posted December 29, 2004 Author Share Posted December 29, 2004 If this person is "banned" from this site, he's probably not being very cooperative in answering their emails either. I spoke with the person in question earlier today and he assured me that he'd received no email from gc.com regarding any cache adoptions. This statement includes the one cache that someone else was able to quickly adopt. I have no reason to doubt him. I've never known him to lie. Frankly, neither one of us ever had any idea that he should be receiving any email from gc.com about this. We were just trying to follow the KB article on how to properly adopt, as listed above. Link to comment
+Jennifer&Dean Posted December 30, 2004 Share Posted December 30, 2004 I actually have been wondering about this for a while as well. Dean and I were able to adopt the Travel Bug Depot really quickly. I believe Co Admin was the one who did the transfer for us. We knew Rye and Leigh were requesting the other caches to be transferred into their name and have been waiting for that to happen. Is this some type of favoriteism? I can't say. Mt Fellwalker wasn't the one who transferred our cache over, it was CoAdmin. I respect that MTF is trying to stay out of the TC.com/Skydiver associated stuff. But come on GC.com, lets see a little fairness in how you treat cachers. -Jennifer Link to comment
+Rye_and_Leigh Posted December 30, 2004 Author Share Posted December 30, 2004 I will look into the emails. Hydee, I don't mean to be a pest about this, but it's been well over a day and I haven't heard anything from anyone on this. I just checked with the banned person and they also haven't heard anything from GC.com. Can you give me some idea when I should expect to see something back from you on this issue? Thanks! Link to comment
Jeremy Posted December 30, 2004 Share Posted December 30, 2004 This has been an unusual situation since it is very rare that we have to ban an account from using the site. We didn't have a policy in place but after some discussion we have decided that banned members will now have their cache listings archived on this web site. We will not be transferring any existing listings in the future for banned members. Link to comment
+GrizzlyJohn Posted December 30, 2004 Share Posted December 30, 2004 So won't that just create geo-litter? Link to comment
Jeremy Posted December 30, 2004 Share Posted December 30, 2004 So won't that just create geo-litter? The lister still owns his caches and has not abandoned them. Link to comment
+GrizzlyJohn Posted December 30, 2004 Share Posted December 30, 2004 (edited) Yea but I was thinking that if they are archived then nobody is going to go out there after them. Are you saying that you would expect the banned cacher to either list them somewhere else or to go out and get them? Are people allowed to adopt an archived cache? I guess I am not understanding why not let someone else take it over if the banned member is ok with it and someone wants to claim it. Or could someone just create a new cache and use all the information from the archived one? Edited December 30, 2004 by GrizzlyJohn Link to comment
Jeremy Posted December 30, 2004 Share Posted December 30, 2004 I did not respond to this topic to spark a debate over policy for banned members. Since the initial request has been responded to I am locking the thread. Link to comment
Recommended Posts