Strava and Competitive Cyclist will pay you to ride your bike

[americancyclo]

A new thread for what is sure to be a fun topic. I’ve pasted some text from the Competitive Cyclist webpage about this.

post your experiences, questions, big data fears, and what kind of gear you get!

[h=3]How it works[/h] Sync your Strava account with your Competitive Cyclist account from this page or your My Account page. If you don’t already have an account, you’ll need to create one. You will start to accrue credits once you’ve linked your accounts.
Each credit is worth $1.00 towards any purchase and may not be redeemed for cash. You can always check your balance in My Account on Competitive Cyclist.

• Each hour ridden is worth $1.00 in store credit, in half-hour increments. So, a 1:45 minute ride would receive $1.50
• Credits will be deposited into your Competitive Cyclist account within 24 hours
• Credits will expire at 11:59pm MT on the last day of the following month. For example, credits earned for a ride in March will expire on April 30th
• You can receive up to 40 credits per month
• Credits are non-transferable
• Multiple credits can be combined when placing an order
• Time is measured in moving time
• Manual entries do not count
• Only the Strava activity of ‘cycling’ will count
• Activity completed prior to syncing accounts does not count

It also seems like there is a tie in to the competitivecyclist.com review system where you can “back up your claims” by showing how much you ride according to Strava when you post reviews on competitivecyclist.com

[h=3]Make It Known[/h] Riding gives you fun, fitness, and adventure, and now you can add credibility to that list. By highlighting how much you’ve been riding on your user profile, you can back up every community interaction with the knowledge that you’ve been putting in the miles, and you know what you’re talking about.

Topic

[mstone]

@americancyclo 113837 wrote:

I think it’s a business decision. The website is called “Competitive Cyclist” not “Commuter Cyclist”

I think that’s because “poorly thought out boondoggle” was already taken.

[Raymo853]

@mstone 113853 wrote:

I think that’s because “poorly thought out boondoggle” was already taken.

I have noticed one can no longer join the offer.

It would be oh so easy to scam this. I have gathered credits for rides I used my old fashioned GPS to record and only uploaded to Strava the next day. It is very easy to modify the ride data for such files, they are plain text. I checked with one of my other Strava accounts, and Strava falls for that. Of course I assume doing that to a linked account with the purpose of gathering credits would be fraud.

[Steve O]

@Raymo853 113863 wrote:

I have noticed one can no longer join the offer.

And I’m wondering what they’ve done about their algorithm. I put in this ride:
https://www.strava.com/activities/286273059
[IMG]http://bikearlingtonforum.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=8384&stc=1[/IMG]

3+ hours moving time over 58 hours of elapsed time (combining a few days of rides). No credit awarded.

At this point it seems I might get credit for 20% of my hours riding, since the vast majority of my rides are under an hour long.
OTOH, as americancyclo points out, I’m not really their demographic anyway, since I’m not going to buy a $170 bib short, even with $40 of credits.

[hozn]

My first guess would be that it only counts rides that start/end on same day. They may also have a moving/elapsed min ratio to prevent gaming the system.

[Terpfan]

And this didn’t last long. Got this e-mail tonight:

“What an incredible few weeks it’s been here at Competitive.

When we came up with the idea to pay you a dollar an hour to ride your bike through our partnership with Strava, it was pure, it was simple and it represented everything we stand for. Apparently you liked it too, because you signed up by the tens of thousands and told everyone you knew. We had expectations and you blew them out of the water.

Because of this we’ve had to pause new sign-ups, and we must stop issuing new credits beginning tomorrow, April 21st. We’re already hard at work on a revised program that can support many, many more people. We will update you with the details of this revised program on May 19th.

If you have earned money, it’s yours to keep and we encourage you to put it towards something great. Those credits will expire on May 31st at 11:59 pm MST.

Because you’ve already connected, when the program resumes, you’ll be ready to roll. We won’t do anything with your data and we’ll maintain the privacy policy we’ve always held.

Enjoy the ride and we’ll speak soon.”

[TwoWheelsDC]

Gonna have to think carefully how to spend my $9 in credits…

[cvcalhoun]

@TwoWheelsDC 114141 wrote:

Gonna have to think carefully how to spend my $9 in credits…

Of course, if you only have $9 to spend, you don’t get the free shipping. I’m thinking we could use the money to pay for the shipping, if you don’t mind not having anything in the box.

[Raymo853]

@Terpfan 114140 wrote:

And this didn’t last long. Got this e-mail tonight:

“What an incredible few weeks it’s been here at Competitive.

When we came up with the idea to pay you a dollar an hour to ride your bike through our partnership with Strava, it was pure, it was simple and it represented everything we stand for. Apparently you liked it too, because you signed up by the tens of thousands and told everyone you knew. We had expectations and you blew them out of the water.

Because of this we’ve had to pause new sign-ups, and we must stop issuing new credits beginning tomorrow, April 21st. We’re already hard at work on a revised program that can support many, many more people. We will update you with the details of this revised program on May 19th.

If you have earned money, it’s yours to keep and we encourage you to put it towards something great. Those credits will expire on May 31st at 11:59 pm MST.

Because you’ve already connected, when the program resumes, you’ll be ready to roll. We won’t do anything with your data and we’ll maintain the privacy policy we’ve always held.

Enjoy the ride and we’ll speak soon.”

Suspected something like this might happen. Well I got nearly 20 dollars to spend. Plus it will keep me from Strava-ing my commutes as the security folks here at D. of Comm cited Strava specifically as a security risk along with a list of things like Waze and Endomondo.

By the way as a GPS user and not a smartphone user, I have begun to notice selective availability or some other signal degradation is on sometimes in various portions of the DC area. You can guess where.

[vvill]

No surprises to see that email.

Don’t spend it all at once:
http://www.competitivecyclist.com/kask-k50-evo-team-helmet-decal-kit

[Vicegrip]

Fully expected it to blow up in CCs face but not quite as fast as it did.

[Terpfan]

@Vicegrip 114176 wrote:

Fully expected it to blow up in CCs face but not quite as fast as it did.

Ditto, but it went so fast that I only racked up $14. Bah. At least I got some new gatorskin tires for under $40 with free delivery. Can’t really complain there.

[Author]

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