Premium Membership Gift Card

3.8k · January 11, 2005

Over in the Geocaching Forum, Milbank has offered to give away a premium membership, winner to be chosen by drawing among people expressing an interest.

In a reply, Briansnat said

Hmmmm, you know if they had premium membership "gift cards" it would be a pretty cool thing to leave in caches.

I know the GC.com just got its credit card deal worked out, but I think this would be a great idea! I would likely buy some to leave in caches, maybe as a FTF prize, or an Nth TF prize for the first non-member to find the cache.

Is this idea doable? Practical? Is there any interest?

9.4k · January 11, 2005

The only way I would allow this is if the recipient of the gift card had to enter in their own credit card information. The reason behind this is responsibility for that membership needs to be tied to a reasonably identifiable piece of ID. Otherwise you are responsible for the recipient of that membership.

In other words if the recipient of your membership does something, it may impact your good standing on the site.

January 11, 2005

Maybe if during the process of them using the gift card to obtain membership, they would have to enter their credit card number for verification purposes... Then the responsibility falls back on them instead of the purchaser. Just a thought.

2k · January 11, 2005

The only way I would allow this is if the recipient of the gift card had to enter in their own credit card information. The reason behind this is responsibility for that membership needs to be tied to a reasonably identifiable piece of ID. Otherwise you are responsible for the recipient of that membership.

In other words if the recipient of your membership does something, it may impact your good standing on the site.

:huh: email sent....

3.9k · January 11, 2005

I wondered where this idea went when it was brought up a couple months ago.

After Jeremy's explanation, I would worry that my money towards the gift card would go unused. Many folks would see that in the same way we see the free AOL CD's.

9.4k · January 11, 2005

Hmm... Maybe not the only way, but if you can suggest a way where someone could use a membership and disclose some kind of identifier for that membership...

3.9k · January 11, 2005

Hmm... Maybe not the only way, but if you can suggest a way where someone could use a membership and disclose some kind of identifier for that membership...

Are you talking a way to ID the person you are giving the card to? Or who the card is from?

If it's from, then you could use a number similar to how the TB's work. If I were to activate the card, it would be tagged to my account. The reciever does not need to know this number, but when it's used... it would be tacked to thier ID (or GUID)

Still doesn't solve the positive ID issue. Just how much of an issue is that? I am not knowledgeable in these areas....

Also, I am not sure it would be cost effective to do less than 3 months, would it?

Edited January 11, 2005 by Moose Mob

9.4k · January 11, 2005

Also, I am not sure it would be cost effective to do less than 3 months, would it?

You'd probably have to purchase a pack of them, like 10. The issue with $3 memberships is the per transaction fee by the credit card companies.

I suppose the issue on my end is you're tying your personally identifiable information with someone you can't vouch for. I'm pretty worried about the implications of a paid membership from a random user, but I'll have to consider it further.

Edited January 11, 2005 by Jeremy

3.9k · January 11, 2005

Yes, I would hate for unknown people to "cache in" the vouchers and end up with 10 recurring $3 monthly charges on my card.

Also, I would also note that in 3 months, a person would have more of a chance to realize the value of a premium membership. One month might not be enough.

(edit for massive typos)

Edited January 11, 2005 by Moose Mob

9.4k · January 11, 2005

Yes, I would hate for unknown people to "cache in" the vouchers and end up with 10 recurring $3 monthly charges on my card.

Oh don't get me wrong. I understand the concept as being 1 time 30 day vouchers. You wouldn't get additional charges.

It's just applying a membership indiscriminantly to people you don't know.

3.9k · January 11, 2005

Yes, I would hate for unknown people to "cache in" the vouchers and end up with 10 recurring $3 monthly charges on my card.

Oh don't get me wrong. I understand the concept as being 1 time 30 day vouchers. You wouldn't get additional charges.

I wouldn't expect that either, but things do go wrong.

It's just applying a membership indiscriminantly to people you don't know.

Prior to Christmas, I had made a post about wanting to give a 1 yr premium membership to a young and energetic cacher who is starting college. I had several responses of how I could do that, but none seemed to be "safe". To do something like this would be my goal. If we had the ability to leave a voucher or gift certificate in a cache, that would be an added bonus.

January 11, 2005

This does sound kind of interesting. Some thoughts.

GC.com sells a gift certificat that has an identifying number.

That number is required for activation.

Once activated the account is terminated at the end of 3 months.

The reciepient at that time would either have to let it go or provide necessary information for a standard account.

The difference between this account and a standard account is the gift account is terminated and cannot be reactivated

The account is not tied to the purchaser of the gift certificat.

This would require some work on gc.com's part.

Questions:

1. Is a gift account more likely to cause trouble than a standard account?

2. Would gc.com sell enough gift accounts to make it worthwhile?

I'm sure there other questions. But it's getting late and the brain cells are working too good.

3.9k · January 11, 2005

gift account is terminated and cannot be reactivated

What happens to hides & finds?

Or is this to prevent a person from perpetually extending an account through multiple gift cards?

January 11, 2005

I am not sure why there should be any issue with identifying the user of a trial membership. The finder obviously already has a GC userd ID. It is just a matter of creating a gift certificate field on the My Account Details page and the user of the cert has to add the usual info that is required when anyone upgrades to premium status. The difference being that their account will revert back to basic in X days.

To be honest I don't even know why GC would charge for such an item as it really is the ultimate in direct mail marketing. Only PM's could download the pages and since PM's don't have any use for them only basic members could use them. Use could be limited to one or more certs per basic membership. The recipient is definately an interested prospect. Once the cert has been activated GC gets to do all that nifty targeted email to a qualified prospect (ie. "Your Premium Membership is about to expire. To continue all the wonderfull benefits of PM click here"). Best of all it costs GC nothing, if the certs are printable by PM's, other than a little programing and some increased traffic to the database due to PQ requests, but if it results in another new PM it is a sound investment.

One issue could be a flood of certs to the system but this could be managed as any good direct mail campaign would be (eg Limit of 5 cert printouts per PM account per campaign period). I can hear the roars already about people wanting certs for gifts and such so perhaps their could be a purchase option as well. These may be something that is actually printed on premium cardstock with a Frog envelope or some such that GC would ship out.

Another issue would be to have an expanded basket of goodies for PM's so that there is a sense of need created to renew to a full fledged PM.

JMTC

3.8k · January 11, 2005

I appreciate the willingness of Jeremy and TPTB to explore this idea further. Without getting too deep into their business model, I think it would help if we understood the need for some independent means of identifying premium members, so that we could address that need.

Right now, I believe that if I want to join the site as a regular member, all I need to provide is a valid e-mail address. In addition, I assume that the system sees IP address of the site from which I log on. No financial or other identifying information is given.

If I become a premium member, the site also receives my Paypal information or credit card information. Disclosing that info (and paying the fee) grants me access to Pocket Queries, certain map features, and the wild adoration of my peers in these forums (since I can change my avitar quote to something clever).

The system keeps me from abusing my PQ requests. I guess if I hit all the caches with free memberships, I could get a dozen premium member accounts, and run PQs all day every day, but so could a dozen regular members who find those cards and sign up. The server would be taxed, but it would be paid for. Presumably, I could do the same thing now by shelling out $36 for a dozen Premium Memberships, sending PQs to a dozen different hotmail accounts.

By the way, I'd pay $10 for a 3 month gift card, which is a premium price, but the extra $1 could help defray the cost of the program. Maybe you could offer a one- year card for $30 for those willing to go that way.

No disrespect intended, Jeremy, but if we could understand the need to tie a piece of identification to a premium membership, it would help us all to offer suggestions that address your concern.

38.2k · January 11, 2005

Yes, I would hate for unknown people to "cache in" the vouchers and end up with 10 recurring $3 monthly charges on my card.

Oh don't get me wrong. I understand the concept as being 1 time 30 day vouchers. You wouldn't get additional charges.

It's just applying a membership indiscriminantly to people you don't know.

I'm not sure why that's an issue. Its not like a member can do anything to the site to hurt it unless they were out to steal some MOC's. But they can do that anonymously even if they pay the $3 on their own. If they violate TOS as a member they would be banned just as anybody else.

How does knowing a member's name and address make any difference.

1.9k · January 11, 2005

How does knowing a member's name and address make any difference.

in the case of legal action being taken against a user...

3.8k · January 11, 2005

How does knowing a member's name and address make any difference.

in the case of legal action being taken against a user...

But only against premium members? All they have from basic members is an e-mail address and an IP address (or two or three).

January 11, 2005

Tried to brush up on this thread before the post, please excuse me if it's redundant. What if a GC generic gift certificate is made and the person that it is going to uses it just anyway they see fit. The could buy anything on the GC site, including a membership. This seems do-able and the gift card is then tied to just the recipient, not the giver. Of course there is an upfront credit card charge, but that is it. This would be great for GC because they could add a decay rate to the gift card if they desire. The giftcard is the bearer of the identity of whoever posesses if since if they use it for a membership they would have to input their personal info. anyway. Am I missing something?

2.1k · January 11, 2005

Tried to brush up on this thread before the post, please excuse me if it's redundant. What if a GC generic gift certificate is made and the person that it is going to uses it just anyway they see fit. The could buy anything on the GC site, including a membership. This seems do-able and the gift card is then tied to just the recipient, not the giver. Of course there is an upfront credit card charge, but that is it. This would be great for GC because they could add a decay rate to the gift card if they desire. The giftcard is the bearer of the identity of whoever posesses if since if they use it for a membership they would have to input their personal info. anyway. Am I missing something?

Lovely idea . Yeh, some kind of "Points" that you buy with real dollars using your premium account and then apply to wards merchandise, membership or transferable printable "point cards".

4.1k · January 12, 2005

I must be missing something here. If I receive a gift certificate from Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Best Buy, or whomever I can just go to that store and "spend it" without any ID of any form. If I buy one, then the person to whom it is sent, can redeem it without ID.

The place where it is purchased doesn't ask for anything other than the money when it is purchased and it is accepted the same as "cash" when it is used.

A one year membership would be a fantastic FTF prize, but to be required to give a Card Number would raise the red flag.

John

2.1k · January 12, 2005

Jeremy -

I have not read the whole thread here - just decided to jump in-

When Brian posted that Idea (which I think was very good) I immediately thought of something like a gift card or a phone card -

write in - verify who you are (fill out a web form?) - give the number on the card and get a free month as a PO.

After that you get the std 30 day dunning (or whatever you do for monthies) to keep sending $3 or $30 for the year.

Don't see why even the buyer has to be involved - except to buy em.

do it like you do travel bugs ???

Edited January 12, 2005 by CompuCash

January 12, 2005

If the logistics could be figured out, I would buy! Great FTF prize.

January 12, 2005

A geocaching.com gift card to be redeemed on this site, like an amazon.com gift card, would probably be a pretty good idea. I've read logs where the FTF prize is a $20-50 gift card to a restaurant, Best Buy or whatever. I suppose a gift card that would actually support this site would be a choice many people might use instead.

January 12, 2005

Just make it a generic gift card for anything on the site. I would love that and could use it for Travel Bugs. <_<

2k · January 12, 2005

Just make it a generic gift card for anything on the site. I would love that and could use it for Travel Bugs.

A generic gift card for anything on the site would be great!

January 13, 2005

I still do not understand why a premium membership needs to be tied to a Credit Card. Really the only difference in the accounts id the MOC's, PQ's and access to the "Off Topic" forum. If there is something else, someone please tell me, because I am missing out on something. Why does GC.com need credit card info for those 3 items? Can someone explain why that is necessary in laymans terms?

3.8k · January 13, 2005

Any more input on this idea? Jeremy? Bueller? Anyone?

3.8k · January 13, 2005

Maybe I've made this too hard. GC.com already offers gift certifcates on their products page. I guess the question then is, can I use a GC.com gift certificate to pay for my Premium Membership?

2.1k · January 14, 2005

Hmm... Maybe not the only way, but if you can suggest a way where someone could use a membership and disclose some kind of identifier for that membership...

Maybe if the recipient of the gift had to 'check in' with the person giving the gift, and in doing so, the sender acknowledged some sort of responsibility for knowing who the recipient was.

I can understand to some degree right now people's ability to behave anonymously is lost when they purchase a premium membership, hence the MoC are somewhat protected from cache magots and what not (one big advantage of a MoC in some areas). Now if there was a way for someone to go trash Members only Caches, without destroying their ability to hide their identity, well it could cause problems in some areas.

Such a system would of course require that the issuer of the certificate had the ability to re-print unused certificates so if they didn't approve of who took the certificate, they wouldn't OK the use of it.

The other thing you could do is just have the ability to view Members only Caches restricted until you provide a credit card, with some kind of explanation as to why you want a card number.

So basically this is how I see it working.

Scenario A:

Premium Member has the ability to print 'n' one month gift cards, only usable by current non-premium members.

They go in cache (or many caches). Regular member takes the card, and signs up a request to use it. The premium member who sponsored the card gets a request notification. They approve or deny the request (include some kind of imperative to review the profile of the user looking at it).

Premium membership is activated for 30 days or whatever with the exception of viewing of MoCs.

Recipient of Card has to enter a credit card if they want to view MoCs.

Scenario B:

Gift Card is purchased, and associated with a particular ID (details of how this is done would have to depend on how the 'card' was purchased.

When someone attempts to use the card, the 'owner' of the card receives a notification. They can approve or deny the use of the card for that person (that way they can put arbitrary restrictions on who can and can't use the card).

If the card use is approved, again, the site is unlocked for the user of the card, with the exception of MoCs. Which requires a CC # to be on file (if a # is already on file for that user ID, the account activates fully).

I assume that I've understood the reason for not wanting anonymous premium members. If not, maybe some further explanation would help.

January 16, 2005

After going thru a simulated 'purchase' from Geocaching.com, it looks like purchasing a normal GC gift certificate would work if GC can add "Memberships" as purchaseable items.

Anyone who wanted to place gift cards in caches would simply have to purchase gift certificates and have them emailed to THEMSELVES.

A cacher who finds a gift certificate in a cache would be able to come back to GC.com and purchase a membership, using the gift certificate towards the purchase price. The ONLY catch I really see is that even if the gift certificate covers the full purchase price the buyer would still need to enter their own credit card info which should be no big deal if they feel they can trust GC.com as a reputable business.

2.1k · January 17, 2005

My impression from ready Jeremy's post is that it isn't an oversight that you can't purchase memberships with a gift certificate. It seems they want every premium member to have provided a somewhat reliable form of ID before granting premium membership (see my previous post for speculative reasons why this might be so)...

Premium Membership Gift Card

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