Hi, I have just hds a situation develop and I dont know what to do. I had a lady order a book on Fri at 12:39 am (just after midnight) and cancel it at 10:57am  on Fri. I picked the book off my list on Fri am and mailed it on Fri before noon. I marked the book as mailed early afternoon. I did not get the cancel until Sat am. What do I do now. ??? It was an almost new book. I dont want to lose my book and get no credit. I emailed the lady and told her she should reorder the book or just refuse it when it arrives. Help me....I dont want to make her mad so she wont do anything but keep the book. The help docs were no help.

linda c

You could ask her to transfer a credit to you when it arrives. That would be easier than processing a reorder. If she refuses, I am not sure if the PO returns media mail without additional charges. Think you are pretty much at her mercy. Marking mailed just before heading to PO might be the better way to go in the future.

Once you print a label the person ordering 'cannot' cancel. Did she cancel by sending you a PM?  If somehow she actually did cancel the order in the system would have disappeared from your main account page (showing up only in your transaction archive) and there would be no possible way for you to mark it mailed or if it were WL, it would have gone to the next person. This sounds like a glitch and you should contact PBS about it. Unless by some chance this is an order from someone else. Was it a WL book that rolled to the next person? Make sure the first person who cancelled is the same one you mailed it to.

The best possible route is to wait for her to accept it when it arrives.  You will then get your credit & you can refund it to her (& give her a second one so she can mail it back to you, if that's how you would like to proceed or she could post it and you could order it back; if a WL then  you should add to your WL & they would post directly to you). If you used printable postage you would already have your credit for the transaction (credit assurance) but in that case I think you should still wait for it to be delivered.  If it goes lost because she does not mark it received then she gets her credit back automatically but she would have your book anyway and she could get in trouble for not marking it received.

Her credit would have been paid when she ordered. If she doesn't mark it received, as you said, you can tell her to refuse it, but 'sometimes' that means the book might not come back to you, as the USPS is not obligated to give media mail return service. So refund after she gets it and send a credit to have her send it back or order it back from her.

Linda C.

If you have not done so already, then send PBS a message via the Contact Us link (on this page bottom right under "Company" - 3rd link down)..

Seems you did everything right and something in the 'system' allowed the other person to cancel after you had marked the book sent.
 - If the other person had canceled the order properly then the "Book Order" portion your end should have 'disappeared' - meaning there would have been no 'button' for you to press indicating that you had "Mailed The Book" - by the same token once you had pressed the button that you had mailed the book then the other person should not have been able to cancel the order as there should not have been a "Cancel This Order" button on her end.

The PBS folks will look into the time stamps on this transaction and figure out what needs to be done - even if they (PBS) lose out by giving you a book credit and allowing the other to keep their credit (as well as the book when it arrives).

In the future you may want to ensure a book order from you by doing these steps:
 - when an order comes in ~> go get the book and make siure it is still 'there' as well as it still meets PBS requirements for posting. 
- if you are sure you want to send it then mark it either "I Can Mail In 2 Days" or I Can Mail It At A Later Date" and select a later date 
-  Print a Label if you are going to put stamps on it, you can always put the stamps on later, just prior to mailing.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This locks the book order in so that it cannot be canceled out.
It should be understood that when a person orders a book that the PBS System will 'Hold' that book order for 1-hour - this gives a person enough time to reconsider wether they want to change their mind or not - plus they have any additional time between when they order a book and the book request is viewed and either accepted or rejected by the next person in line that has that book. 

I hope that the PBS team can work this out between the two of you guys, but they can't do the right thing until you tell them what went wrrong. Good Luck and let us know how it worked out.

Danny N (Alameda) - Havelock NC 

Once you look at the requester's address, there is no possible way for her to cancel. This is true even if you don't print the wrapper but just open it up on your screen or if you click the button that says you'll handwrite the address. 

Is there any chance that you had multiple requests on your My Account page and accidentally printed one wrapper twice and sent two books to the same person? If that's what happened, then you should be able to tell by looking at the details for the active transaction(s) on your My Account page. The one that you printed twice will have two time stamps next to "Label Print Date(s)". You can contact that member by PM and let her know that she'll be receiving an extra book. The Help Center has a doc called "I sent a book to the wrong person!" that explains what to do in this situation.

Yes there is definitly a glitch somewhere. I marked it mailed but the lady says that she cancel before I ever accepted the request and that I could not have marked it mailed. I wonder what I marked mailed????  The request for cancel did not show up to me until Sat a.m. I contacted pbs and will see what they say. This is the crazyest thing to happen to me. I usually wait a day just to make sure the book isnt cancelled but I was in a hurry to go to town and just mailed it anyway. 

linda

Do not ever ask for a book to be refused at the door. Media mail does not qualify for returns.

The receiver cannot cancel an order after you print the wrapper. It will cancel if we do not click Sent within the time frame. But something is off.

Cancelled orders will be in your Transaction Archive. It is possible that you had two orders, that the first one sent you the PM. You can find the Transaction Archive on both your pull down My Account menu and on your My Account main page.

You have to be VERY CAREFUL in the Transaction Archive. That has both canceled orders (folks who never responded) and active orders. Always double and triple check the sender before marking a book in your Transaction Archive. In addition, a credit will be taken from your account if the book is in the Transaction Archive. (Your credit would have been returned when the book was canceled.)
 

Well pbs says that I never accepted the request or printed off an address. Guess I will have to see what I did. Some one somewhere is going to get a book. It will be interesting to see what I did. Getting old is really no fun, I just keep going stupid stuff.. OH well l will wait and see what I did.. no telling. I will let you know if and when the book appears.

linda

Di dyou mail it to a Susan W (alexcat)? If you did she posted in this forum. Maybe you two can work it out?

Linda, did you mail other books at the same time? Check for an address label printed more than once in the details. I've done that by accident before, but caught it when I couldn't mark the book mailed.

If you are computer savy, you should also be able to find that label saved to a temp file on your computer for printing. It would be saved on that date and show who you mailed to.