I offered a deal in the BB.

Then I messed up when I printed out the postage. I forgot to adjust the weight to include the weight of the freebie. It's a heavy book and I didn't want to guess the weight and I also never want to go to the post office if I can help it. So, I wanted to print out postage in the convenience of my home.

So I posted the freebie book to my bookshelf, then I went to the "send it to a friend" feature. I printed out the postage. That's not the problem.

Then I went to my account and clicked on the Books to Mail tab and saw that it's treating the Send To A Friend book as if it's a normal book request complete with credit. So, I am worried that if I mark it mailed it will take a credit from the member I made a deal with. I don't want a credit for it. It's the freebie!

What should I do? Should I mark it sent (yes, I sent it today) or should I let it sit there? Will it, in fact, take a credit from the member? That'd be so embarrassing.

Thanks for the advice. I hope this post makes sense.

I do this for game books. There's no credit involved even though it looks that way.  When you mark it mailed it'll go in your Enroute to Me and Books I've mailed tab.When they receive the book you have to mark it received from your Enroute tab and It'll say Did Your Friend Recieve This Book?  That'll clear it from both the Enroute and Mailed tabs. 

You know you can add stamps to the printed postage and still mail from a blue box.  They can still track it from the printed postage and you could have saved yourself some postage and the postage printing fee.  If you didn't have a small scale you could have just weighed the packed box and yourself and then just yourself to see the difference.  You can look up postage rates on the post office website.  

I never trust the weight PBS has because it is frequently wrong. So I always weight them myself when using the printed postage or stamps.

Ahh, I see. I listed it as sent and, yes, a special tab came up for "Mailed to a Friend."

Very cool.

Thanks for your help, Mary

You know you can add stamps to the printed postage and still mail from a blue box.  They can still track it from the printed postage and you could have saved yourself some postage and the postage printing fee.

Yeah, but I don't have enough postage here at my desk.

If I use the "send to a friend" feature to send a book to a PBS member, does that member know beforehand that I am sending something? In other words, can I use this feature for a "secret Santa" gift and maintain the secret until the book actually arrives at her door? I want my identity to be a secret until she opens the package.  Thanks.

I usually use it to add a book.  Such as in a deal.  (Keeps the book's history footprint.)  But you need to type in the address rather than use a member's nickname.  So I think it will be blank on the receiver's end.

I do the same as Emily E especially when doing a deal as I like to keep the book in the system.

What I don't like is that the Transaction Archive shows that I sent it to myself!! I would prefer that it showed the recipient instead.

Deb B - I've wondered about that too, but as I've yet to have a member use the 'Mail to a Friend' option for me, I don't  know how it works.

I don't think they see anything. I think it assumes you are sending the book to a non-PBS member and just want the nice label and maybe the printed postage.

Yes, it won't show anything on the other person's account.