Is there a way to see a person's profile before accepting a book request?

The reason I am asking is because I mailed out a brand new hardback to a person and it is now marked as lost. This would not bother me so much, except that I have sent this person a couple of PM's in the last week just checking to see if they were out of town or something or had forgotten to mark it received.

After being able to see their profile  I see that this person has had basically NO activitiy on their account. They have 9 books listed, and have both mailed and received 0. They have been a memeber since March.

I do not beleive this is a case of auto wishlisting because I listed this book manually.

It is completely possible the book was lost in the mail, and if that was the case fine, but when I look at the lack of activity on this person's account and that they can't even respond to a PM and said "sorry nope I didn't get the book" I am kind of feeling like I've been ripped off.

When your PMs are not responded to, and you have allowed at least a week for a response, that is enough cause to use the "contact us" link and let the owners know.

Responding to PMs is pretty much required. (I am too lazy to look that sentence up in help, but I think I've seen others quote it...)

I sometimes look at a profile AFTER I have agreed to mail a book. You could cancel at that point, if you are not comfortable with what you see there. Of course, they would have to have a public profile for that to work. Right now I am not showing the number of books I have mailed or received. (Can't remember why I decided to put it that way...)

Also, yes it can be an auto wishlist thing with the sender (doesn't matter how you list it)....and perhaps they are out of town, don't have access to a computer all the time, are sick and can't respond...etc etc.  Also, members do not have to list the # of books they send and receive...and I've had a sender repeatedly send me PMs about "have you gotten the book yet" and I find that harassment...keep in mind that PBS sends them PMs.

I'd have to look it up but, I'm not sure that members are required to respond to "every" PM that is sent to them...otherwise you'd have to respond when someone says "thank-you"

Help Center:

If a book you sent is declared Lost in the Mail at PBS:

• First, contact the requestor to confirm that the book was not received.

  • Sometimes the requestor just forgot to mark it received
  • Sometimes the requestor was away from home when the book arrived
  • If you don't hear back from the requestor within a week of sending a PM asking about the book, you should contact us to look into the situation.
  • You can contact the requestor using the PM button on the "lost" transaction in your transaction archive.

Wanted to also say that repeatedly cancelling transactions because you think they are inactive members from looking at their profile can also get you in trouble.

They have 9 books listed, and have both mailed and received 0

I know this was touched on, but to clarify: Did it actually say they had sent and received "0" or do both places have dashes "-"?  The dashes simply mean they have chosen not to show how many books they have sent or received.  Of course "0" would speak for itself.

As you can see from Christy's post, it's OK to contact the PBS Team if it has been more than a week with no reply to your PM.  While I also agree that it's not necessary to reply to *every* PM (such as Thank yous), it is expected that PMs about a transaction will get attention. 

Another thing to consider, beyond the possibility of getting in trouble, about declining based on profiles is they can be misleading.  Some members move very few books, but they *buy* credits.  Therefore, it would look like they moved very few books, but that doesn't mean they aren't an active member.  Others, as already mentioned, keep their profile, or portions of it, private so you can't read anything from that except they prefer privacy. 

I do hope your book turns up.  The majority of Lost books aren't actually lost, they are just delayed.  With Christmas approaching it bears pointing out that Media Mail is a lower priority to all the cards and gitfs (higher classes of mail) being sent.  If there is not room for everything, Media mail is going ot be left back until there IS room.

Edited twice for spelling.  Now I give up, lol.

I found the passage I was referring to.  It says, "If a requestor sends you a Personal Message about a problem swap, you do need to reply, and to resolve the problem if there was one. "

I located it the help documents under "A requestor says there is a problem with a book I sent!"

Yup, I had a lost book turn up just yesterday. Turned out it was mailed 3 weeks later than it had been marked.

But... if you don't hear back from this person after a week, definitely contact TPTB. They can look at the person's account and see the last time they logged in - if it has been more than a month they will probably agree to give you your credit.

I shipped a book to Hawaii and it went "LOST" but eventually got there - 6 weeks later - she says they send media mail by boat.  LOL.  Pat

Some members move very few books, but they *buy* credits.  Therefore, it would look like they moved very few books, but that doesn't mean they aren't an active member.  Others, as already mentioned, keep their profile, or portions of it, private so you can't read anything from that except they prefer privacy.

Privacy issues have been discussed lately after someone found that the forums are searchable from Google. So many have said they're going to turn off their profiles since they didn't intend to share that info with non members.

http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=140300

As for listing bookshelves, I don't have enough on there to worry about, and I'm not short of credits. (I'm having more trouble finding books I want to spend them on.) So FIFO is fine with me, and I don't feel the need to show my personal statistics, or my shelves. I also don't check profiles when I order, so I don't miss them being turned off by others.

As for books going lost, I'd give them a week after the PM and then use the 'contact us' page. You never know what's going on. I've had one where there was no reply and got a credit because they found the member wasn't active anymore. Another time I got a PM in reply saying yes, they'd received the book and thanking me for it. They didn't mark it received and didn't respond to my email explaining how to mark it from the transaction file. The site marked it received for me since they also got no answer when trying to get the member to mark the book received. In that case, I had the proof in the PM's that they got it.

Sometimes people don't understand how the system works, and it gets harder to explain once the transaction goes lost. Lately, I've had to remind people to please mark their book mailed so I could mark it received. Sometimes things like that just slip by.

Thanks for the responses everyone. Appreciate the feedback as you have all offered some excellent insight.