If I have a bookon my wishlist and it is on auto-request,-NO and my FIFO turns comes up, what happens if I DO NOT respond at all. Let my 48 hours pass. Do I remain in the line where I was, or do I get kicked out of line? I don't plan on DOING this, but a lot of other people seem to. I was curious as to why?

If you don't respond the book is taken off your wish list.

OK so a person has to accept otherwise they lose their place in the wishlist line?

Yes, the system assumes that if you still wanted the book you would accept an offer, so they remove the book from your WL completely.

As to the why ... sometimes people join PBS and then they don't keep up with the membership for whatever reason. So, PBS will suspend an "inactive account" after a certain number of WL offers or book requests that they don't respond to. This helps to weed out those inactive accounts.

So, if it happens that you order a book and the request times out and rolls over to a new member, or you offer a WL book and it times out, while it is annoying, it helps to keep things rolling for everybody by weeding out these inactive accounts. 

I had one i couldn't afford at the time and I hit that i didn't want it .  It left it on my wish list and I was in the same position.  So maybe you have to actually respond to it instead of just letting it go after the time. 

Also if you don't have the credits or you dont want it at that time you can put it on hold.  I'm not sure if the hold opiton leaves you in line or what.  But its still an option instead of taking it off your wishlist.

You got lucky and found a glitch somehow, Elizabeth, because the system is designed and programmed to take you off the list whether you don't respond or refuse. You lose your place and have to re-add it to your WL. You are the first I've ever heard of that got to keep their place after turning down a WL.

If you're on hold you stay at your place in line, but until you take it off hold you're just passed over.  Pat

You have to put your whole account on hold, you can't hold just one wish list OR just your wish list.

You can only put individual books posted to your shelf on hold-not WL books.  Not yet anyway.

Elizabeth - are you a member on the sister CD or DVD sites? Because that's how the WLs work there with holds on individual books and skipping you if you have no credits, but it is definitely NOT how it works on PBS. They are part of the planned WL upgrade, but that is not in place yet and may not come to happen for a long time here. If those things happened for you on PBS, they were definitely site glitches.

Yep I was thinking about DVD swap I went back last night to see if the hold was here and I realized I was wrong.  Sorry I made a mistake you can't hold on your wish list. 

Your right I read that on the post for the new wish list, I think I read it a couple of weeks ago.  So sorry when the new wish list is done we will be able to hold them.

Are you saying though that it was a glitch when I said I didn't want it and it left it on my wish list.  If it was I wont be doing that again.  Any one know the answer to this tell me I need to make sure I don't do this again if it will take it off.

I wont be refusing a WL item again if I can help it.  Since everyone says it was just a glitch.  I dont want to lose my place if I dont have to.  Thanks guys.

THey've been talking about adding that feature to the PBS WL for at least 2 yrs now. 

Did you go back and double check that you are still in teh same place? You didn't have more than 1 version of that book on your WL?   Sometimes when you WL a book it'll show you as #1 for a couple of minutes when you are really at the end of the line. It takes it a minute or two to put you in the right spot I think.  I don't normally check right away but I've seen people post on ehre that they added a book to their WL expecting to be #152 and when they immediately checked their WL it said you are 1 of 152 and then when they went back they were indeed 152. 

I've had this problem (if it is a problem and not just me misunderstanding the system) that while last month one of my WL books might  have had rank of say 22 of 189 while the next month the ranking is now 24 of 209. ( I've been tracking my WL to see how fast a rank is changing as a tool to help me weed out those books I have a low chance of receiving.  I've been doing this for about a year now.) 

At present 29 of my 200 WL books show that I've lost 1-4 positions since the last month.  I can understand that if the book is already published/released that someone else may have been put back into the ranking because their WL fulfilled book got lost in the mail or was otherwise unacceptable.  But what could be the reason when the book is months away from being published/released?  This has been driving me crazy trying to figure out what I'm not doing.  As you all can imagine being moved backwards on the list is very frustrating...

Any possible explanations would be appreciated, even educated guesses!!!  Thanks in advance for trying to help.

Well, this is a guess, but even if the book isn't published yet and shows 0 wishers, someone who has their account on hold could have it on their wishlist.  Then their account is taken off hold, and they show up as 1 of 2, you are 2 of 2.

I think it's been particularly noticable recently because between August/September so many people come back from vacation.

If you refuse a WL item it is taken off your list and you lose your place in FIFO.  The expectation is that if you put a book on your WL, you will accept it if it is offered.

You know, in thinking about the subject of vacation holds not showing up in the wishlist numbers, I wonder why it's tallied that way--if the programming is easier or was it done that way purposely.  I would prefer that the wishlist numbers show the actual number of people waiting for the book.  I would rather be pleasantly surprised that the first 3 people waiting for the book are on hold, so I get my book sooner than expected, rather than see that I'm next in line, and 2 days later I'm number 4.  The only down side I can see to showing actual numbers would be for people who usually have only 1 or 2 credits, it would be harder for them to watch the wishlist and save credits for books coming up to number 1.  Assuming the programming effort is the same, of course.

I thought it didn't show the ones on hold when you pulled up the book description page or did a search for it-but it did show them when you look on your WL.  So then when you are looking up a book to post it-you only see the # actively wishing it right now.  So if there's 5 people on hold and 10 wishers total it shows 5-so you don't wonder why if all 5 let it time out or decline it-it's not getting offered to anyone else.  (and yes I've had WL books I've posted go through more than that before being accepted). 

But then when you look at your WL you see where you are in line at that moment.  So you can plan your credits somewhat.  If you were say #5 of 10 but 2 people ahead of you went on hold-then you need to be prepared to be in the 3rd position so you have the credit if that book gets to you before the other 2 people come off hold. 

Thank you all.  I'd never thought about the vacation holds, that totally makes sense.  I have to agree, I'd rather see my actual place in line including holds than having my ranking moving backwards because a hold comes off.  Good news first....

But Mary, it's on the wishlist that you notice that you've moved back a couple of places, so that has to be where vacation holds show up.  I have noticed that the number on the book description is sometimes different than the wishlist number, but never noticed if one was consistently higher than the other--I'll have to pay closer attention next time I see that.

Mary - than seemed to change when they did the big changes with the estimates and stuff on the WL. It used to be that way I know, but after all that changing, when everyone was commenting on the big jumps in their positions in the WL lines, I noticed that the wishers on the book pages matched the total wishers in the #out of #wishers listing.