Risks of Transferring Cache Ownership

[+AHSprite64]

I don't know if any of you have had this issue, or been affected by it. My wife and placed a cache here in our home town. The cache was VERY popular and visited by many people. I transferred ownership to a local educational group, who have since neglected it to the point that the cache has been missing for well over a year and nothing done to repair or replace it. Missing with it are tracking bugs, other trinkets in the can, and the can itself. We wish we had never entrusted the site to other, less invested people.

 

How often have people been affected by poor site maintenance, and issues of neglect?

[+Walts Hunting]

There is an old adage in the milotary "If two are in charge no one is." That is most likely wjat happened some boas wanted it and probably asaigned responsibility to someone who really doesn't So call the boss or write him/her about the problem mentioning you woild be glad to take it back. Also an email to the current email of the owner might help.

[Pup Patrol]

I don't know if any of you have had this issue, or been affected by it. My wife and placed a cache here in our home town. The cache was VERY popular and visited by many people. I transferred ownership to a local educational group, who have since neglected it to the point that the cache has been missing for well over a year and nothing done to repair or replace it. Missing with it are tracking bugs, other trinkets in the can, and the can itself. We wish we had never entrusted the site to other, less invested people.

 

How often have people been affected by poor site maintenance, and issues of neglect?

 

Have you posted any notes or "NM" or "NA" logs on the cache?

 

Has anyone posted NM or NA on the cache?

 

It's a risk you take when giving someone something. You have to deal with the fact that it's not yours, and learn to live with the fact that it isn't your problem any more.

 

You could try to get the group to adopt it back to you. If it's missing, seems kind of silly to do that, though.

 

If it's been archived, then you could put out a new cache in the same location.

 

B.

[+BCandMsKitty]

I don't know if any of you have had this issue, or been affected by it. My wife and placed a cache here in our home town. The cache was VERY popular and visited by many people. I transferred ownership to a local educational group, who have since neglected it to the point that the cache has been missing for well over a year and nothing done to repair or replace it. Missing with it are tracking bugs, other trinkets in the can, and the can itself. We wish we had never entrusted the site to other, less invested people.

 

How often have people been affected by poor site maintenance, and issues of neglect?

 

We get affected all the time by caches that are poorly maintained and neglected, but never on one that we have transferred to anyone else.

Not knowing the back story on why you would transfer a popular cache of your own, from my perspective the problem comes in that it was transferred to an "educational group". In our experience, most "group" caches, whether school classes, Scout groups, or whatever, usually degrade very quickly because there is no one person that takes on the role of "owner", and therefore no-one performs maintenance at all.

Maybe you can talk to the "educational group" that you transferred it to and if they are no longer interested, get them to archive it, or transfer it back so you can either restore it to it's former state.

 

If there's no contact there any more, post a NA on it and let the reviewers do their thing.

[+AHSprite64]

I don't know if any of you have had this issue, or been affected by it. My wife and placed a cache here in our home town. The cache was VERY popular and visited by many people. I transferred ownership to a local educational group, who have since neglected it to the point that the cache has been missing for well over a year and nothing done to repair or replace it. Missing with it are tracking bugs, other trinkets in the can, and the can itself. We wish we had never entrusted the site to other, less invested people.

 

How often have people been affected by poor site maintenance, and issues of neglect?

 

We get affected all the time by caches that are poorly maintained and neglected, but never on one that we have transferred to anyone else.

Not knowing the back story on why you would transfer a popular cache of your own, from my perspective the problem comes in that it was transferred to an "educational group". In our experience, most "group" caches, whether school classes, Scout groups, or whatever, usually degrade very quickly because there is no one person that takes on the role of "owner", and therefore no-one performs maintenance at all.

Maybe you can talk to the "educational group" that you transferred it to and if they are no longer interested, get them to archive it, or transfer it back so you can either restore it to it's former state.

 

If there's no contact there any more, post a NA on it and let the reviewers do their thing.

 

I transferred ownership in the belief it would help the educational group, and also bring attention to areas that are rarely visited even by locals. Thinking it would benefit the community at large. Boy! Was I wrong!!!!

 

I'd like to take ownership, and make the sites a little more secure in some way. Seems sad to me that people go so far out of their way to remove things that really cannot be found by pure chance. Muggles??? Possibly at one site, but certainly not at the other.

[+tallglenn]

The first time I adopted out caches was about 20 caches along a bike trail. Someone just contacted me out of the blue and offered to take care of them. I hate maintenance, so I was thrilled. The new owners never changed my name to theirs. They lived right off the trail but eventually dropped out of the game. The caches died a horrible agonizing slow embarrassing death. I did go back for maintenance once before a nearby event, but couldn't finish the whole trail. As far as I know, nobody ever did maintenance on them again. Next time someone adopted a popular/favorited cache I changed the owner name from mine to theirs before I clicked send. I haven't looked back at it yet. So that was the important thing for me - to remove my name from the cache and I was able to completely let it go. Now we travel so we aren't in one place long enough to keep a cache, so have archived them all as they've gone missing or muggles with apps can't find them.

[+niraD]

I don't know if any of you have had this issue, or been affected by it. My wife and placed a cache here in our home town. The cache was VERY popular and visited by many people. I transferred ownership to a local educational group, who have since neglected it to the point that the cache has been missing for well over a year and nothing done to repair or replace it.

A local Open Space District did something similar for their series of caches (one in each open space that allows cache). The district account adopted and owns the caches that are part of the series, but local cache owners placed and maintain them.

 

I think that's the difference. From the beginning, it has been clear that the district employees would not be visiting the cache sites to do maintenance, but that all on-site maintenance would be done by the "volunteer stewards" of the caches. I haven't seen any significant problems with this arrangement.

[+AHSprite64]

I don't know if any of you have had this issue, or been affected by it. My wife and placed a cache here in our home town. The cache was VERY popular and visited by many people. I transferred ownership to a local educational group, who have since neglected it to the point that the cache has been missing for well over a year and nothing done to repair or replace it.

A local Open Space District did something similar for their series of caches (one in each open space that allows cache). The district account adopted and owns the caches that are part of the series, but local cache owners placed and maintain them.

 

I think that's the difference. From the beginning, it has been clear that the district employees would not be visiting the cache sites to do maintenance, but that all on-site maintenance would be done by the "volunteer stewards" of the caches. I haven't seen any significant problems with this arrangement.

 

I would really like to reclaim the sites so that they can be maintained and monitored by me. The site "Rock of Ages" was VERY popular with people who wanted something a bit different, and to see one disappointed person after another was disheartening, especially after going to the trouble I did to find and select the cache location.

[Pup Patrol]

I would really like to reclaim the sites so that they can be maintained and monitored by me. The site "Rock of Ages" was VERY popular with people who wanted something a bit different, and to see one disappointed person after another was disheartening, especially after going to the trouble I did to find and select the cache location.

 

If it's this cache http://coord.info/GC23TFQ, then your notes to the cache page are a waste of time.

 

CEC2010

Member Since: Friday, 19 February 2010

Last Visit: Monday, 29 November 2010

Status: Inactive Member

The "Send Email" feature is disabled because this user is currently inactive.

 

Looks like the only process left to you is archival of the cache(s) and then you would be able to put new caches in those locations.

 

Why has no one posted a "NA" on this?

 

B.

Edited February 2, 2016 by Pup Patrol

[+hzoi]

This is why I've never adopted out our caches.

 

The Army moves us around every couple years or so (or less, for the last two moves). What I've done is put the word out ahead of time that we're leaving to see if anyone was interested in adopting our cache listings. I then had them create new cache pages under their own profile and submit them for publication, contacted the reviewer to let them know that our existing containers would have new owners, and then the reviewer archived our listings and published the "new" caches in rapid succession. The community gets another chance to log finds, if they are so inclined, the "adopting" cache owners get a chance to expand their inventory and make the new caches their own, and I don't have to worry about my name being associated with a cache that falls into disrepair.

 

(And, since I like having credit for the old credits for my caching karma, the old listings and their finds are still attributed to me.)

 

I only have a handful of caches (other than earthcaches) in places I no longer live, and I ensured that they are (1) low maintenance and (2) maintained by active local cachers who have the caches on their watchlist.

Edited February 2, 2016 by hzoi

[+noncentric]

I don't know if any of you have had this issue, or been affected by it. My wife and placed a cache here in our home town. The cache was VERY popular and visited by many people. I transferred ownership to a local educational group, who have since neglected it to the point that the cache has been missing for well over a year and nothing done to repair or replace it.

A local Open Space District did something similar for their series of caches (one in each open space that allows cache). The district account adopted and owns the caches that are part of the series, but local cache owners placed and maintain them.

 

I think that's the difference. From the beginning, it has been clear that the district employees would not be visiting the cache sites to do maintenance, but that all on-site maintenance would be done by the "volunteer stewards" of the caches. I haven't seen any significant problems with this arrangement.

 

I would really like to reclaim the sites so that they can be maintained and monitored by me. The site "Rock of Ages" was VERY popular with people who wanted something a bit different, and to see one disappointed person after another was disheartening, especially after going to the trouble I did to find and select the cache location.

Your best bet is likely to contact the publishing reviewer (HighCountryAdmin) and let him know about the situation.

[Pup Patrol]

Your best bet is likely to contact the publishing reviewer (HighCountryAdmin) and let him know about the situation.

 

Posting the long overdue "NA" logs is the quickest way to notify the Reviewer, and the OP has done that.

 

B.

[+bflentje]

Your best bet is likely to contact the publishing reviewer (HighCountryAdmin) and let him know about the situation.

 

Posting the long overdue "NA" logs is the quickest way to notify the Reviewer, and the OP has done that.

 

B.

 

Looks like it was only a NM. And the CO is suggesting ownership be "passed back", which we all know isn't going to happen unless the current CO allows it.

 

BTW, love the log..

 

Found It

Found the spot where the box use to be, but no Box found.

[+noncentric]

Your best bet is likely to contact the publishing reviewer (HighCountryAdmin) and let him know about the situation.

 

Posting the long overdue "NA" logs is the quickest way to notify the Reviewer, and the OP has done that.

 

B.

The OP did not post an "NA" log. Also, the OP's posts suggest that s/he doesn't want the cache archived, but rather transferred back to her/his ownership. If that's what they want to attempt, then contacting the reviewer directly (rather than posting that request in an NM log) is the OP's best course of action.