I hardly ever have any get lost, and now, two orders for single books placed close together have gone lost, and one I sent has as well. Aggravating!

Maybe it is just a string of bad luck

It'd make sense, with all the holiday mail clogging the system. I'm waiting on a book someone sent DC. After 9 days, there was a waypoint update on the map - about 15 miles from the sender's house...

Let me tell you what our CPU was like yesterday.  Our entire office area was full of mail bags.  When the PO came to pick up our mail, they left all the parcel post - media mail because they didn't have room on the truck.  And I'm talking a BIG truck - 20 foot box truck.  That's how much mail we had.  Unbelievable.  They did send another truck later because we complained we just didn't have room to store it.  The volume of priority and first class mail is astronomical.  Media mail and parcel post are "space available" classes of mail.  In other words, if there's room on the truck it will go.  Otherwise it gets left until there IS room for it.  That second truckload of mail from yesterday is probably piling up in the sorting center somewhere.  We are a small postal unit and our volume has been unbelievable.  I can only imagine the amounts of mail from everywhere else.

Check out the other post on this topic here - Mail volume takes it's toll.  Lost, damaged and delayed books are probably going to be the norm until after the holidays.

This will be my third "Christmas holiday season" at PBS and I haven't noticed that trend at all. What I have noticed though is that people are busy during the holidays and more folks put their accounts on hold from Thanksgiving to New Years, people seem to take longer in general to accept and mail books. It could be that the people who were to mail your books actually mailed them later than they said they would--a similar thing happened to me just recently when someone did mail a book but forgot to mark it as mailed because they were away for Thanksgiving, so the system cancelled the order, then I ended with two copies.

The post office is certainly busier this time of year, though, so I'm sure the mail volume could contribute to slower than usual mail. Of course the damned bills always arrive right on schedule! :o)

Cheryl

I've had two books go lost in the past month.

However, I have my doubts that they were mailed on time (DC has never been scanned, accounts are on hold , not answering PMs etc). So, I don't think I can blame those on the mail load during the Holiday season.

All my other books are arriving in less than a week. I have not noticed any slow down because of the season.

I've noticed the books I've sent are not moving very fast - I sent one first class a couple of days ago and it just got to the distrubution center near me last night! I have one swap book I mailed a week ago, and it hasn't been scanned at all - that one is media mail.

I've had a few more go lost too. I had one go lost today. It was a heavily wish listed book too. :( Tomorrow, one I sent out will be going lost. Just last week I had a book coming to me go lost too.

I've got NINE, yes NINE books that will go lost on 12/19 that I mailed out on 11/19. Absolutely NO idea what has happened to them. Every single one of them has PBS DC and not a single one has been scanned since my home post office accepted them. 3 other books that I mailed on the same day have already been received but those 3 were small and I sent them first class.

It's so bad here because we live in Japan so about 95% of my incoming books are "lost" before they get to me. I ordered a bunch of books separately over a span of a couple of weeks, and they all arrived together on the same day, weeks after being "lost". Guess there wasn't any space for them! I heard it comes by boat, but that hasn't been confirmed...

Update: a book that was sent to my a week ago, and a book that I mailed, both with DC, both had not been scanned: both arrived today without be scanned anywhere along the way. So, maybe they just don't have time to scan them?

In the last month I've had two books I requested and one I mailed out marked lost.  All the other books I've sent or received seem to be arriving in good time.  I've also been ordering from Ebay, etc for Christmas and everything has arrived quickly.  I don't know.  Before this I've had very few books lost in the mail, although I did have one I mailed marked received 6 months late. 

I've always had good luck with things moving faster through the post office system during the holidays.

I had a couple of missing or just terribly slow moving things last year, but this year hasn't been so bad.  So far:P

I've had two that I requested go lost, and one that I sent go lost as well within the last two months.  I'm a bit suspicious about a couple of them, since the members' accounts are now on "hold," but maybe I'm just being paranoid.  Do you get penalized if a book you request "goes lost"?  Do I get my credit back after a certain amount of time or is that lost too?  Sorry for the questions, but I've never had problems with books getting lost before.  One of the books I don't really care about getting anytime soon(it was just a "for fun" read), but the other one is for a Master's thesis, so I will have to re-order it fairly soon.  

Update:  One of my lost books finally arrived.  The metered postage says it was mailed on Dec. 16...over a month after it was marked mailed.  A PM from the sender sure would have been nice, but I guess that's life.

I believe that when PBS marks the book as lost your credit is returned to you.  The books could still show up.  I had one delivered 6 months after it was mailed.  However if it's something you really want or need now and there's another in the system I'd order it.

Yes, the credit is returned to you if you do not receive the book. However if it does come, you need to go into your Transactions and mark it received, so the member can get their credit back.

Yes, November and December is notorious. I mailed 2 books last year in November that were never received. They were the only ones for me ever.

And just this week, I receive a book that took a month to get to me. I had to go into transactions and mark it received. The rest of the year, I never have any incidents.

If I know someone wants a book for Christmas, and it is light, I will mail it first class. I did that 3 days ago, and it was already received. I know it made her day, since she wanted to gift it and it was like new.

I guess at this time of year, we need to be flexible, patient and of good cheer:)

Merry Christmas!

We just found out overseas (apo/fpo europe) will be approx. 30 days late.  It seems that in NYC where our mail leaves from was accidently put on a boat instead of a plane so there will be delays.  I guess this started in November.  Fun Fun!

Well I thought I was yhe only one having a string of bad luck .I have 3 I mailed being close to being called lost and 1 that was on its way to me that was declared lost. This is my first year mailing during the Christmas rush so next year I am going to use DC so I don't lose credits!!!

I've had this happen recently.  Both the non-scanning of DC's and the lost book showing up.  The lost book was only coming to me in VA from MI.  It did appear.  I wish it had taken the time to air out somewhere because I think I may get lung cancer from the ciggerette smoke emanating from the wrapper and book!  I've set it to be de-contaminated.  I'm not usually so sensitive to smoke that I require an RC.  But this one should have had one!

Ruth

ETA - I always use DC - because I'm a long affirmed goody-two-shoes who has to prove I've done the right thing.  It does get costly, though.

I think it is a bigger problem this time of year.  So, my shelf goes on hold until January.

It's the law of large numbers.  Say x out of every 10,000 pieces of media mail goes lost.  If there are suddently 20,000 pieces of media mail (or what ever the number is) than 2x books are likely to go lost.

I wouldn't be suspicious just because accounts are on hold.  I just sent out a bunch of books and put my account on hold because I'm going to be traveling.