Over the last two months or so I have made requests for books that were listed as available, and the owners of the books did not respond within the five day window.  In two instances, three requests were submitted (for a total of 15 days waiting period) before someone agreed to send me the book. I'm just curious as to how many other members there are out there that have had the same experience. It seems to me that in joining the club, we should all make it a priority to check our e-mail every couple of days or so. It's a matter of courtesy to others! Anyone else have any input/thoughts on this issue?

It can be frustrating waiting for members to respond to a request.  I have to admit to being guilty of that once...a trip out of town lasted longer than expected...and no internet access.  I did apologize for the delay in responding to the request as I considered it rude on my part.

There could be all kinds of reasons for the delays.  It is unusual that you have had such bad luck.  At least you have perseverance with a heavy dose of patience!

I hear you.  It is happening with more and more frequency of late.  It's been driving me crazy.  It seems like every time I've requested a book this summer there has been some kind of issue, either it goes through 2 or 3 people before the request is honored or the book doesn't come, or the person didn't mail it until 3 days before the system was to take action, almost a full month from the time they marked it mailed.  

Right now I'm waiting on the 2nd person to respond for a book I requested.

I've been on here for a couple of years and for the most part I love it, I tell people about this site all the time but if people don't honor their commitments this can't work. 

Most of my book requests are accepted pretty quickly, but one book went through four people before the fifth finally accepted instead of letting it time out.  I was really starting to wonder...

I have never had any trouble. If I have to wait on a 2nd reply, it's usually because of my requestor's conditions. I have been so happy with this swap. If I could just rent out another person to help me read!!!! I have over 200 books on my shelf to read!!!!

I know it happened that I accidentally did that a couple of times. Once, the request got filtered out by my spam filter and I never would have known about it at all if I hadn't happened to check my spam bucket for something else. (I reconfigured my filtering to prevent this from happening again.) The other time I got the email when I had just left for a longish vacation, and while I did receive the email, I didn't have web access to do anything about it. I hadn't at the time received anything from PBS in so long that I had frankly forgot about it, and consequently didn't think to sign in and place my account on vacation hold.

For those who only have a few books listed and aren't getting or making requests on a regular basis, PBS can be a little too easy to lose track of. (I just listed a pile of additional books, so suddenly it's much more of an active thing for me, which is interesting.)

Anyway, my point is that these things can be innocent and happen despite earnest intent on the part of people who are making their best efforts.

I am a frequent PBSer ( as in a I'm on usually twice a day AND if a receive an email on blackberry from PBS I will probably go online as soon as I can). I had this happen to me once. I waited about 3 days, and then sent a PM to the person I was requesting from. When I got no response the next day, I cancelled the request and requested from someone else.  

I'm pretty new to the site, but I've responded within about a day and mailed the following day for the few requests I've had. My problem seems to be the opposite. I mail the book immediately, but then the reciever waits a couple weeks before they'll mark that they got it... if they mark it at all. I was so excited when i found this site because i go through books so quickly, but its not worth it to me if i'm just giving my books away.... If that were the case I would just give them to the local library.