This group was created on October 4, 2007 without any rules to belong to it. All the rules that we have today have been decided to avoid problems that happened in the past.
The Organizer pays a monthly fee to Meetup.com to maintain the group and also this site. To cover this costs all members can make donations to the Event Organizer when they take part in any event or they can buy any products from our online store (click here).
1. General Membership Rules
- 1.1. You have to be at least 18 years old to join this group.
- 1.2. It is recommended that your profile to have a unique profile, this means that your user name can be easily identified. This will help communicating with you and identifing you at the event venues. Using your firstname is usually a bad idea.
- 1.3. This is a non-profit group and membership can be denied and cancelled at any time with the Organizer’s discretion, usually, for the reasons that he thinks are harmful/problematic to the group (such as negative attitude/behavior towards other group members, disturbing the harmony of the group, etc.). These members will be banned to rejoin the group.
- 1.4. Members who send advertising or spam, or use the group to reach potential customers, will lose his/her membership and will be banned. Therefore usernames with a commercial meaning are not allowed. It also includes promoting other groups, Meetup Groups or on other platforms.
- 1.5. This group has no intention of positioning itself politically. That is why it is strictly forbidden to schedule events or send messages to group members that have any political content or promote events of a political nature. Not complying with this rule entails the immediate expulsion of the group.
2. Rules for Events
- 2.1. The Event Host can reserve the right to publish an event with the maximum number of members that he/she decides.
- the difficulty of the event,
- the need of going all together to avoid getting lost
- or other reasons that the Event Host may consider.
- 2.2. The Event Host can set specific criteria for the members to attend a meeting:
- a) They can refuse a member’s participation for the reasons that he/she thinks are harmful/problematic to the event (such as physical condition, insufficient hiking gear/equipment, negative attitude/behavior towards other group members, disturbing the harmony of the group, etc.). This decision has to be justified by the Event Host in person (if this happens at the meeting point) or writing a message to the person (if the decision was made before the event happens).
- b) They can also define objective criteria for the members to join, such as, “event for people that never attended an event before”, “event for people that he/she knows that will be able to keep the pace”, etc. In no case, these criteria can be of a subjective nature, such us, “I like this person”, “My friends have priority to join”, etc.
- 2.3. Before you were allowed to join Meetup, you had to check a box saying you read and agreed to Meetup’s Terms of Service. One of the most important sections in these terms as an Event Host, is Section 6 which refers to liability. Here is a link for your review. In simple language, YOU and only you, are responsible for your safety at all times if you participate in a Meetup event. By joining an event you are accepting the following disclaimer.
- 2.4. Car trip costs:
- a) The Event Host will set the travel costs for each vehicle, based on its maximum capacity using the following formula: Price of all event trips (to be split between all people travelling in the car) = P + KM * F, where:
- P = costs of all tolls on the way
- KM = Kilometers of all trips to be done
- F =
- 0.25 (capacity of 5 passengers or less)
- 0.35 (capacity of 6-7 passengers)
- 0.45 (capacity of 8-9 passengers)
- b) It is mandatory to use the formula of the previous point when publishing an event to calculate travel costs. These costs will be divided among the passengers of the vehicle, not including the person who shares it. Therefore, the person who shares the vehicle gets free transportation.
- c) The Organizer can decide that each driver is responsible for charging the cost of his vehicle to each of its occupants or if a common bag is made to distribute among the drivers.
- d) The Event Host can decide to publish the route to the destiny, in order to be sure that all cars arrive approximately at the same time. All drivers must follow the indicated route.
- e) In case of a fine or car accident, the law and traffic regulations of the country will count. The following situations have to be considered too:
- A speeding fine will be paid by the driver.
- In case of car failure, the cost of repairing the car will be paid by the owner.
- In the case that a car cannot be used anymore, every person has to pay his/her return trip. There is no liability for the driver.
- f) A participant who does not pay the cost of the trip to the driver cannot participate in any event until he pays the appropriate amount to the driver. The driver should report this incident to the Event Host.
- g) In the case that a member does not travel all the way in the assigned car (e.g. only one-way), if the driver or any person in the same car decides it, that member has to pay the full trip (in order to avoid more costs than expected to the driver and the rest of the people in the car). This rule will be ignored if the event costs are being split between all people attending the event.
- a) The Event Host will set the travel costs for each vehicle, based on its maximum capacity using the following formula: Price of all event trips (to be split between all people travelling in the car) = P + KM * F, where:
- 2.5. In some events guests are allowed.
- a) These guests cannot be former members that have been banned.
- b) The Event Host can decide not to allow guests of members that are attending for the first time an event.
- 2.6. For events (especially for those lasting more than one day), the Event Host can require an inscription fee.
- 2.7. Help the Event Host as much as you can. Try to adapt yourself to the event, and not the event to you. This is not a travel agency and to organize an event takes a lot of time. Keep the amount of work for the Event Host as reduced as possible. The Event Host can refuse to change anything you ask for.
- 2.8. Any member of the group suggesting or organizing an event is not allowed to earn any money with the event. All the charged money has to be used to cover the costs of the event.
- 2.9. An Event Host can add as many car drivers to the event (ignoring the Waiting List order) in case that cars are required to open new spots or to have some replacement cars.
- 2.10. When a driver (without a guest) joins an event, he/she can request that somebody jumps to the first position of the Waiting List. This has to be informed in the text of the RSVP.
- 2.11. All people have to join the events using the Meetup functionalities (even guests). You must avoid comments or emails like “I’m interested in this event, please let me in”. The Event Host can ignore or delete all similar emails and comments of the event.
- 2.12. You can join as many Waiting Lists as you want, but once you could join an event, take care of change your RSVP to No in the rest of Waiting Lists of events taking place at the same time.
- 2.13. If you could not join the attendance list of an event, then you are not allowed to participate.
3. Attendance rules
- 3.1. In this group, respect to the rest of members is a basic principle. With the goal of avoiding wrong attitudes or problems, it is introduced the concept of No-Show. A No-Show is not only not coming to an event, you’ve booked previously. In the following situations, a member of the group can get one or more No-Shows:
- a) (+1 No-Show) Not attending to an event when you said that you would come.
- b) (+1 No-Shows) If a driver of a vehicle does not show up to an event or cancels without a reasonable explanation during the 48 hours before the event,.
- c) (+1 No-Show) Not paying on time (the time that the Event Host told you) a reservation fee can count as a «No show», if the Event Host added this information to the event description.
- d) (+1 No-Show) Changing your RSVP from Yes to No during the payment period (this means: after you receive the e-mail with the payment information until the payment day limit), can also count as a «No show», if the Event Host added this information to the event description. This rule does not apply if you were in the Waiting List and your RSVP was changed because a free spot opened.
- e) (+1 No-Show) Changing your RSVP from Yes to No during the 48 hours just before the event starts, counts as a No-Show.
- f) (+1 No-Show) If your guest does not show up. If you do not show up either, you get 2.
- g) (+2 No-Shows) If an Event Host does not assign No-Shows or allows to people with 3 or more No-Shows to attend events.
- 3.2. Some clarifications:
- a) Joining events taking place at the same time will lead to get No-Shows, even if you take part in one of them. If an Event Host realizes it previously, he/she can change the RSVP of that member to No in his/her event without an explanation.
- a) It is not forbidden to be in several Waiting Lists of events taking place at the same time. But you should change your RSVP to No of these Waiting Lists, once you get in one of these events.
- b) A No-Show cannot be removed because of explanations received after you received the e-mail communicating the No-Show. All explanations have to be sent before this e-mail has been sent. If you can prove that an Event Host made a mistake assigning you a No-Show, it can be deleted.
- c) The No-Shows for the reasons a), c), d), e), f) of Rule 3.1, shall not be forgiven when force majeure (accident, illness, etc.) is invoked. Organizers of this group do not want the responsibility to judge whether someone is telling the truth or not. It is for this reason that the No-Shows can be deleted (see below).
- a) Joining events taking place at the same time will lead to get No-Shows, even if you take part in one of them. If an Event Host realizes it previously, he/she can change the RSVP of that member to No in his/her event without an explanation.
- 3.3. Managing No-Shows:
- a) An Event Host must assign No-Shows as described previously.
- b) After the event, the organizer will edit the attendance list and indicate when a person has a No-Show (using Meetup functionality). You must remember those No-Shows that happened before the event and not on the actual list of attendees, should be allocated also.
- c) The No-Show will be indicated by the Event Host in the field Nickname as follows: it will be added to the existing text in the Nickname the character «#» (2 if wins two noshows stroke) and the date on which happened the no Show (not the event) in yymmdd format). For intance, for a person with a guest when both did not come to an event on the 5th of November of 2016, the No Show will be recorded with ##161105.
- d) If the Event Host cannot modify the nickname of a member, he/she will notify it to the organizers of the group .
- 3.4. Those members of the group with 3 No-Shows or more are not allowed to attend any event during 6 months. It is the responsibility of each Event Host not to accept members with 3 No-Shows or more (###).
- 3.5. There is no automatic procedure for the removal of No-Shows. If you want your No-Shows to be deleted, you have to request it to the organizers of this groupl.
- They will review your case and if you have attended 6 events in a row without a No-Show, the last one will be removed.