I sent out a book that has now ben marked as lost.  I underdstand that this happens now and then.  A week before it was officially marked as lost I sent a short, friendly PM to the requester stating that it was about to be marked as lost, and if they have rcieved it to please mark it as such.   That was over 2 weeks ago, and I still have heard nothing backfrom the requester, even just a quick "Sorry I still haven't recieved it."  Is this something I should be bothered by, or is it a normal practice.  This is the first book that I have had marked as lost, and it is a bummer.  Thanks for any help!

I wouldn't say ignoring a message is normal but people do it pretty frequently. I think some people think that pm's are like the site emails and don't need a reply. If I pm about something important (I never pm about lost books) then I always ask please reply in the message.

As for why I don't pm about lost books, the site sends out three or four email reminders about books going lost. If a person has the book and they are ignoring those they will ignore the ones I sent. If they don't have the book a 5th message to mark it recieved isn't gonna do any good anyway.

Some members ignore just about everything that's not a required pm (such as responding to RWAP).  Other members answer everything, thank yous for the thank you. 

When the person hasn't responded, and it's been a week, you can ask the Admin Team to look into it.

This is a small section from the Help Doc :

"A book I sent is lost in the mail!"

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.

I'd contact them again now that the book is officially lost. If they don't respond in 5 days, then I'd contact PBS so they could look into it.

Say something like you want to file a lost book report asap, but wanted to make sure they just hadn't accidentally forgot to mark it received first. If they don't respond to that, then it might just be an inactive account. I figure asking because you need to take action vs. just asking them to mark it received is more likely to get a response if they're still active.

Don't forget, this is also vacation season and the recipient might be out of town and can mark it received in their transaction archive if that is the case. Sometimes those lost books are sitting in the bottom of a mail bag somewhere, only to appear weeks later...I had a book travelling 250 miles take over 6 weeks to arrive and I think that is what happened to it.

I recently had a book listed as "lost in the mail", my first. I am still waiting for a reply to my e-mail, it's been over a week. I will wait awhile longer then contact PBS in case there has been some sort of family emergency or something along those lines.

And sometimes lost books show up way later.  I had one I mailed go lost,....  and it was marked received 6 months later!  I'd love to know where that book had been all that time.