I was set up automatically to receive notification when this book was posted, 'Winning Scholarships For College, Third Edition: An Insiders Guide (Winning Scholarships for College)' by Marianne Ragins. 

I received an automatic notice stating:  This is just a friendly email to confirm that your request for the book 'Winning Scholarships For College, Third Edition: An Insider's Guide (Winning Scholarships for College)' by Marianne Ragins has been accepted into our system at PaperBackSwap. In the next couple of days you should receive an email stating that the book is on its way!

Today I received an email from the poster saying:  have mailed it to another member already.  Sorry.  They requested it a few minutes before you did.  :(

How could a person request before me, when I didn't do it.  The system automatically did it?  I'm so disappointed.....I had not control over this.....

Can anyone explain this to me?  I can't even reply or send a PM to this person, since I don't know who they are.  The email said I couldn't reply to the email, yet when I went to the PM this message isn't there.  I'm so confused.

Thanks, Robin

Have you checked your Transaction Archive from your Main Account page?  It would show the transaction cancelled, and give you a PM button for messaging.

Evan K.  -  Thanks so much for your reply.  I just emailed the member seeing if she know what happened and also PBS.  Thanks again!  I never would have looked there.

Happy Reading!

Robin

You're welcome!  Sorry this happened to you.  We've all been there. :(

It wouldn't have been so bad if it didn't say something like....it will be on it way!  :) 

I was going to saw what Jeri did...she must have posted it to two sites because if you had your book on auto-accept, if she didn't look at her shelf in that first hour to see the exclamation point in the grey circle, she wouldn't have known it was on hold

Hi!  I would have throught the same thing, an error on the sendors part.  But this is what her reply was this morning:

"I am so sorry. I have no idea how this happened. I printed off the label and mailed the book to the first notice I received that someone was interested in the book. I then received your request and answered that I had already mailed it. I just rechecked the account and yes, I received a notice about your request AFTER I had received and responded to the other request. I received the first request on 1-8-09 at 9:38 PM and then the second request (which was yours) was received on 1-9-09 at 11:17 AM. Sounds like a glitch from the PBS end. I would call the help desk and get it straightened out. Apologies."

In the future I know not to get my hopes up and believe what PBS says when the books on it way! :(  All my prior transcations on PBS have been wonderful until this situation. :)

definitely sounds like a PBS glitch...it happens.  I would let TPTB know by using the contact us link so they can look into it.  They want to know about glitches!

if nothing else you should be at the front of the line since she cancelled.  you can check your WL to see

She may have been trying to post it directly to someone else on PBS and it went to FIFO instead.

Could you explain further was FIFO is?  Is there more than one way to post?  Will PBS be able research this and figure out what happened?

FIFO is first in/first out.  THat's how most books move. The first one posted is the first one ordered. The first person to WL is the first in line to get a posted copy and everyone moves up the list.  But sometimes people order books directly from someone's shelf and bypass the FIFO line.  Sometimes people post a book directly to someone's WL and bypass the FIFO line.  It is not against the rules.  It is preferred that you post books to FIFO.  But sometimes people have more than 1 of someone's WL books and try to save postage money by sending them together.  Or they are tired of requests timing out and so they post right to someone they know from the boards to get a quick response. 

It could be that someone came off vacation hold and was put back in 1st place by the system.

Ruth

No if someone came off hold right after the book was posted it wouldn't have offered it to the OP.  I'm guessing she was trying to post it to someone else on PBS or posted it on 2 sites w/o checking to make sure it wasn't WL here.  A lot of people just post books without checking that and then they get 2 requests at the same time-1 for each site.  If you're going to do 2 sites then you need to make sure books aren't WL first.  Especially on PBS as it automatically offers it to someone. THe other site I belong to just sends an Email to all the WLers and they have to ask if you want to send it to them.  I personally would choose PBS first but that's me. I only use the other site for unpostables and books I can't seem to move them.

It almost sounds like the book wasn't taken off her shelf when she accepted the first request.  Definitely let the PBS Team know about this, so they can investigate. 

Back when I first joined, I posted a WL book-it posted it twice and offered the same book to the first 2 people in line.   It's not supposed to let you post a duplicate book until the 1st one has been marked mailed.  I declined the 2nd one and contacted PBS about it just to let them know.  I had forgotten about that until just now.

I had that happen to me a couple of different times when I took my account off vacation hold. I got a request for a book, accepted it, and then a few hours later got another request for the same book--happened two different times that I recall, once with several different books. There was some sort of glitch, according to PBS. Maybe it was a similar thing.

Cheryl

Definitely let the PBS team know, they can look and see what happened and let you know if it was a glitch or something else. 

Thank you for all your replies.  I awaiting a reply back from PBS - l'm hoping they can figure this out.  I know not to get my hopes up in the future :)  Happy New Year to you all!

I am almost certain it is the circumstance Mary mentioned, i've had it happen quite a bit. The system has a glitch that will occassionally duplicate a WL posting. They start out going to the same person from the same person. If the person who gets the offers accepts them both and then the poster cancels one, it goes OK. But if the person who gets the offers (both for the same posting) accepts one and declines the other, it will move on to the next person and you end up with two different offers even though the member only posted it once.

It sucks, but nothing can really be done, the other person was actually the one to get the legitimate offer. The good news is that now you should be the first in line for the book!

This has happened to me once when posting a wishlist book.  I posted once and it was offered to two people.. I guess the timing burps from time to time when posting wishlist books.

I PMed the second person to let them know what happened and that I was cancelling.  It  might have been more clear if the sender would  have let you know that PBS entered the book twice by accident.

I have posted quite a few wishlist books before and after and this only happened once, so I think that you shouldn't run across this very often.

Sorry for your disappointment.. at least you know you are next!!

This is very odd, I ordered a book this morning, and this afternoon I got a message saying that they could not mail, the reason is "already requested by another member".  I remembered this post, so maybe I'll send a message in about this as well, it's possible that there's some kind of glitch going on.  My book was not a wishlist book though.

It could also be that the person was running a deal and forgot to delete a freebie that someone requested.