Just a quick note - If you haven't really sent a book, DON"T mark it sent! Contact the requestor and let them know. You'll find most people don't mind waiting a few extra days. Just voicing a pet peeve of mine! Happy Reading All :)

Actually, PBS recommends marking it mailed if you are right before the deadline. The order will automatically cancel if you do not mark it. You have two days after marking the book to mail it. After 4 days, we need approval from the receiver.

We can contact PBS to ask them to cancel the order.

From the Help Center:

Can I send a book later?

PBS is dedicated to the concept of timely swapping. While of course we understand that unexpected circumstances can delay an occasional shipment, chronic late mailing is not acceptable.   The longest timeframe for sending a book (from acceptance to marking mailed) is 7 days. 

• If you are away from your home and cannot send out books within this timeframe, your account should be on Vacation Hold to prevent incoming requests.

• If you have accepted a request but know you will not be able to mail a book within the allotted time frame, you can ask the requestor's consent to mail the book late. 

  • You can contact the requestor by clicking the button on the request for the book on your My Account page--that button will be on the Books to Mail tab after you accept the request, and before you have marked it mailed.

• If you accepted a request and something comes up unexpectedly, contact the sender to let him or her know that mailing was delayed, as soon as you have mailed the book. Most requestors don't mind a little delay, as long as they are kept informed of the situation. 

• If you do arrange late mailing with a requestor, you must mark the book mailed before the deadline to prevent the transaction from being canceled.

If you marked the book mailed but did not mail it and you want to mail it late (more than 4 days after the date you marked it as mailed),  you MUST contact the requestor using the PM button on the transaction, to be sure that the requestor still wants the book.  (If the book has already been declared "lost", the PM button is on the "lost in mail" transaction in your Transaction Archive.)

• If she replies that she does still want it you can mail it to her.  She can mark it received and you will get credit at that time.
  • If the book has already been declared "lost" she can mark it received from her Transaction Archive and you will get credit at that time.
• If she replies that she does NOT want it (she may have gotten a copy from someone else in the meantime), you should NOT MAIL - you should ask us to cancel the "en route" transaction and you can repost the book for someone else to request.
• If she does not respond to your PM, you should repost the book.  It will be offered to her automatically if she still wants a copy.
• You should not mail a "lost" book to the original requestor unless she has confirmed that she still wants it in a Personal Message.  If you mail it and she has already gotten another copy, she will NOT be obligated to mark the book received, or to return it to you.

If you mail a book very late without consent from the requestor, and the requestor has already gotten another copy when yours arrives, she will NOT be obligated to mark the book received, or to return it to you.

Please note that if you mail late without consent from the requestor, you risk losing eligibility for Instant/Guaranteed Credit for that swap and in your account - those are available only to accounts with good sending records.

I always mark the books mailed before I drop them in the box. I'm about a thousand times more likely to forget afterwards. No offence, but I follow PBS rules, not an individual member's preferences.

Marking it mailed right before mailing is one thing (1-2 days) - I do that. But not days and days before actually mailing it (if it's been mailed at all) and that's what I'm running into. If the sender would TELL ME that's what they are doing I'd be fine with it.

Please please please mark those as late postmark. If it is more than four days late, please mark them. Either using the small date box or the Received With A Problem. PBS depends on us recording this data.

Cool, so it is okay to mark as received with a problem. Thanks for your insight Emily

Annoying huh Michele?

There is a special RWAP category for Late Postmark. The credit is transferred as normal. It is just an extra flag on the account.

• Late Postmark
  • this means that the postmark on the package was later than the date the book was marked mailed.  See My requested book arrived with a late postmark! for more information about this problem.

The result:

• Late Postmark
  • You will have a text box - the text you type in will be included in an email, and sent as a Personal Message, to the sender.
  • You will be able to choose the postmark date.
  • The sender will get an email reminding him or her to mail promptly - so if the late mailing was agreed upon, or the sender got the book back in the mail and had to re-mail (and alerted you to this), you should not choose this option.

I routinely will mark a book asent the night/day before  as I am logging off PBS for the night....I will be dropping it in the mailbox in the morning. If something comes up, one of my daughters can mail it as well.

Real Life happens...so I try not to mark books mailed until I actually return from the post office (because you know, car accidents, forgetful hubbies, etc).  But once in a while things happen, or the date falls on a Sunday, etc., and I do use that part of the guidelines that says we have that 24-48 hour buffer.

A week or three late mailing?...yes, RWAP.

I agree with Emily and Denise on this.

Exactly! For instance, I have a book that was marked mail on the 30th, however it has tracking and just made it to the post office yesterday. There's a second one that also has tracking, also marked mailed on the 30th but has yet to scanned at the post office. Just frustrating and I'll mark them accordingly.

There have been some quirks in the PBS tracking lately.  If I choose a date farther out on the postage but mail it and mark it earlier than that, the tracking does not show up until the date on the label.  Also, none of the media mail is showing as delivered (only out for delivery or sorted) for the last 6 months.  Everything usually works out, so watching the tracking can cause unnecessary concern.

If that was the case, I would have had them by now, as I've ordered & gotten a book since these were supposedly mailed. I agree, it works out, I'll get them eventually. All I'm saying, as I did in the original post, is to let the receiver know - It's not a big deal.

Once I mailed a book in August and the recipient didn't get it until November (I'm still shocked that it actually showed up!). My post office has also been really, really foot draggy recently in terms of basically everything. Sometimes things happen in transit. You never know.

I had one book that arrived just days under four months. It had the correct mailing date. It was scanned about once a week at a sorting hub. I just had to wonder if it got stuck on the conveyor belt and kept going around and around.

I had a book that took a year to be delivered.  Someone must have found it on the floor one day in the sorting center and sent it along.  Arrived perfectly intact too.