When I order a book from a bookshelf of a  person who has posted in the Discussion forum ... how long should it take to get a response from the person stating that they will accept or reject the order?

I have had a request in from a person who had recently posted and it's been over a week and no response.  Is this common.  If the person fails to answer the request for an order, does it go into the system as FIFO?

Is it better better to stick with FIFO or is it better to look at someone's bookshelf that has posted in a discussion forum and order directly from their bookshelf?

Thanks ... I'm fairly new to this and still learning.

From The Help Center:

What happens after you submit a request for a book

The sender has 5 days to respond to your book request.

Read more about the requesting process here.

Read more about the sending process here.

A request from FIFO gives the sender 5 days and a few hours to respong to an order.

Ruth

No matter who you request the book from, they would have the same response period (5 days) to accept the request. People delay accepting requests for a lot of different  reasons, sometimes they are trying to time mailings for the same day, or delaying long enough to reach a paycheck, or whatever. Posting on the forum or not doesn't affect those economic reasons for delaying an acceptance.

Statistically speaking, though, if you order books from someone who is a current poster, they are probaby logging in every day, and may be more likely to accept requests faster than non-posters.

But, the people who actually post in the forums are a very small percentage of PBS members. So, there are tons of regular members who don't post, but are still going to accept requests relatively fast.

Yes, your request will roll into FIFO, if the other person doesn't respond.

I have ordered probably 150 or so books from FIFO, and have only had a few occurances of someone taking the whole 5 days. Also, have only had a few taking less than 1 day. I would say most of my requests fall somewhere between 1 and 3 days for acceptance.

I have also ordered directly from poster's bookshelves, but I would say that still averages 1 to 3 days.

So, hang in there, I'm sure even if it rolls over, you'll get your book.

The fasted way that I know is to order from a buddy while they are online.  (The buddy list will show that.)  Otherwise you wait. 

Well if it's been over a week then the request has probably already passed on to the next person in line.  Kind of suprising that you ordered from an active poster and they didn't respond. Unless you ordered from the book description page in which case it wouldn't order from them but from FIFO.  Either that or they weren't a very active poster after all.  A lot of people join, come to the boards and then a day or two later their account is closed for various reasons. 

It's kind of weird that the person posted and then didn't accept right away...if I post something I respond quickly because I want to get rid of my books.  Most of the people in the forum seem that they want to get rid of them, but maybe something came up and that was the reasoning for not accepting.

No, I ordered from the bookshelf.  I was surprised too.  It's still shows up as as pending on response from the member.  I think I'll just cancel it and order from the FIFO.

Thanks for all the responses.

Henri - if it has been over a week, then the request has already been cancelled and rolled over into the FIFO list, that would happen after the 5 day wait on the first person. If you cancel the order and it is in the FIFO list already, you will just be reordering from the same person.

Even though I am on the  site alot of the time, it is usually at work so I don't accept requests most of the time I am on here. I wait until I know I am going to the PO and I will let a request sit there for a little while until I can get access to the book and confirm it is postable and posted correctly. It may be that they will be accepting soon, just trying to get to a certain date for mailing. It is always better to leave a request sit and let the site handle it.