I sent a book off to NYC from Chicago, usually a week to ten days at the most.  The book is timing out tomorrow.  I checked the member and she has no books listed and only one on her wish list.  I suspect she joined and then promptly forgot about PBS.  Is it possible that her account might be considered inactive and I might not lose the credit?  (I PM's her last Frtiday and she hasn't opened the PM.)

PBS will mark a book received if an account looks inactive and not responding to a PM is a sign of that.  Look up in the help doc s what it says to do with lost books as a sender.  You might have to wait until it goes lost before PBS will look into it for you.

After it is marked lost, you may contact PBS to look into it, as the member has not responded to your PMs.

You've sent a PM so it's on record but this is what you do once it's declared lost.

From the Help Docs:

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.

Thanks. 

I would like to hope that if the member recieved a book in the mail, that they would remember where it came from. How would an inactive member request a book? Perhaps that book will make a return trip. I am so sorry this happened to you. I will bet it will all work out well in the end.

Some people come on post a few books, use the 2 sign up credits and then just don't do anything else with PBS.  (and not to be morbid but for all we know this person requested the book and then soon after, got really sick, died, is in a coma, their computer died, or a myriad of other reasons for why PBS is just a low priority for them now). 

When you contact PBS they will look into whether or not this person shows signs of inactivity.  Some people are really slow about answering PMs.  They only come onto PBS when they have a transaction to deal with. So it's possible that they haven't received the book, read the PM in the email PBS sends and being a newbie don't know that they need to come on and say "hey I didn't get this book yet".  I'm trying to arrange a meet-up book swap with anothr local PBSer and she only responds every couple of days when I send her a message.  I pm'd someone a week ago about a book they sent that went to lost to verify that it was mailed so I wait longer before reordering and she just responded this morning. 

PBS marked a book received for me when the member was 1 day from timing out.  I didn't get any response from her and PBS did it for me!

I have had this happen and if the member is inactive instead of being marked lost, the system should automatically mark it received for you so you will get your credit.  Let it go lost and if it doesn't get automatically marked received rather than lost  then go ahead and contact PBS to check into it for you.