How do we know if we are dealing with an isoalted problem or a person with a bad habit of mailing things oput late?

deborah

There history won't tell you if they sent books out late, just how many they have received and mailed.

I didn't know you could check someone's trans record.  How do you?

It doesn't show a transaction record really.  Just the # of books you've mailed and the # of books you've received.  When you click on their name (in blue) to go to their profile that info is in the box with the Books listed & WL info in the box to the right.  If it's hidden (like mine) there are just dashes.

Mine is hidden not because I mail late (I never have) but because I don't want hubby knowing how many books I'm really mailing & receiving.  Ignorance is bliss in his case.

Some people hide it because the #'s appear to show if you buy credits (if you have more books received than mailed) or if you have credits on hand (Some people think this based on if you've sent more than you've received). 

Others hide it for privacy reasons.  Especially if they are from a small town, it could be possible to figure out who they are just from the name and they aren't comfortable sharing that information.

Mine is hidden because theres no reason anyone needs to know it.

I think it's default to be hidden because mine was hidden and I didn't even know it until I was trying to check it by viewing my public profile... it used to automatically be not hidden but I guess it changed?  I've never thought to check someone's "record". They could easily send out 200 books that didn't meet guidelines and all 200 would be listed as transactions....

The default is for it to be hidden, and it took me quite a while to figure out how to un-hide it. I spent about 30 minutes looking through the help section, looking through the various account pages, etc. before I could figure it out. (The only reason I knew about it at all is because it was mentioned here - people kept complaining about how people were "hiding" their histories and I couldn't figure out what they were talking about.)

It's definitely not something you would see unless you went looking for it. A lot of people never read the forums and probably have no idea one way or the other.

Karen

Ditto to that last message. It's defaulted hidden? I need to go and check mine then!

Mine is hidden, because I was getting PMs asking for credits because I "obviously had so many extras".  From different people.

Kerry

I hope you reported those people for begging!

If you want to see how your profile looks to others, log off, then search for yourself in the member directory.

And if you want to adjust what is hidden, click on "my account" and then the "public profile" button under the yellow bar.  Then choose the blue "privacy controls" link on the top right.

The transaction stats really aren't indicative of how reliable a sender is.  The good news is, the administration keeps data on everyone, and knows who sends out high percentages of bad books.  That will get you in trouble.  If you are worried about mailing a book to someone with a less detailed profile, you can always use PBS delivery confirmation.  But everything should be fine....I order randomly all the time through the system, and rarely have any problems.  And I've been here 2 years!

In my case, the vast majority of my transactions are Box swaps.  So if you look at my books sent, the number is low.  If you look at my feedback under Box of books, that's a much metter indicator of my activity.