Dear BTG-riders,

in our today’s newsletter we want to inform you about the procedures regarding tracking.

Our new tracking partner for the 2018 edition is  www.followmychallenge.com from the Netherlands. From the replies that you gave us to our survey about tracking we learned that many of you own a SPOT and want to use it but we also found that even more of you are in need of an affordable solution for rental devices. We are glad that we found a partner who is able to deliver both of it. So basically:

  • The ones among you who own a SPOT will be able to use it in the event.
  • The ones of you that need a rental device will be provided with one. Btw these rental devices are not GPS- based SPOT trackers but GPRS-based units which offer the same level of tracking coverage as the SPOTs here in Germany.
  • Those of you who don’t want to be tracked are still free to go without although we encourage everybody to be tracked.

Here are the procedures and conditions:

  • A few weeks before the race followmychallenge will provide a web page for self registration. Each of you who wants to be tracked needs to fill in this form and pay the fees for the tracking in advance via a paypal button provided on the registration page. Fees are as follows:
  • For SPOT owners: EUR25 plus 21% tax.
  • For rentals: EUR40 plus 21% tax. Plus EUR50 deposit for the device. The deposit will be charged back to you on return of the rental device. Details below.
  • Everybody will need to provide some basic personal data upon registration so we can assign devices to names.
  • SPOT owners will need to provide the ESN-number of their device and the URL of a SPOT shared page which must not be password protected. Those of you who used trackleaders.com before know this procedure.
  • Registrations for tracking will close two weeks before the start of the event to allow enough time to have the units shipped to us. We will announce the dates as soon as possible.
  • The devices come with a Mini USB charging cable. You can charge them on every USB power-supply.
  • The devices will be shipped to us and we will take them to Basel and hand them over to you before the start.
  • During the event a friend of us will be ready to accept your status messages (via our Whatsapp group, Facebook message or E-mail) in case you have to drop out of the event or finish it. This status will immediately show up on the tracking page.
  • After the event SPOT-owners do not need to do anything. Users of rental devices need to send back their rental devices within one week after their finish or scratch. The deposit will be refunded to you via paypal on arrival of the device. For each week delay EUR25 will be deducted from the deposit. In case of loss or total damage of the device your deposit will be retained and you need to pay another EUR100 to cover the cost for the device.

Please read these terms & conditions carefully and please come back to us in case of questions.

We are very happy that we could acquire this tracking partner especially as we teamed up with three other German Bikepacking events who also use their solution so we could achieve better conditions for our participants.

So that’s it for the moment. No we have most of the administrative stuff covered and our next newsletters will focus on cycling 🙂

Best regards, Achim & Thomas