The person who added it hasn't responded yet. There is another copy available. Should I request that one. Do have a choice to cancel requests if the book you want becomes available from another person?

The person you requested the book from has 5 days to respond. If after 5 days there is no response, the system rolls over to the next available copy.

If you cancel and reorder, you will just go back to the original person.

The system does work, it just takes patience.

If the person hasn't responded yet then your request for the book will go to the next person that has it listed. Each member is given I think 48 hours to respond to your request. If you cancel this one you might be waiting just as long with the other.

Just give it some time.  If the first person doesn't respond to the request, the system will automatically roll the request to the next person in line.

Jennifer, unless it is a wish list book, it is 5 full days, plus the hours left of the day it was requested. So, if you requested it at 5 min after midnight, they actually get 6 days. Guess they wanted something to be uniform, but sometimes the rollover doesn't actually happen until about 3:00 AM. So, it's sometime between 5-6 days :)

At the begining everyone is anxious to get those books- and those days seem forever!  Once you get the ball rolling with books coming in and out and a nice pile of books waiting to be read you don't really pay much attention to the time it takes for acceptance.  And sometimes the shoe is on the other foot.  The time is there because not all PBSers have access to a computer every day, or perhaps only at work, or maybe you go out of town for a few days.  In my case 3/4 of our household is down with a bug this week and it took me some extra time to get to where my books are stored and double-check my books before accepting a few requests. 

Your feelings are normal and understandable, but be patient!  It all works in the end.  BTW, if someone ignores/turns down your request (unless it's because of requestor conditions they can't meet) then their copy of that book is pulled from the FIFO line and removed from their bookshelf.  So there is an incentive for people to respond and they usually do.

As others have mentioned, you cancelling and re-requesting just keeps resetting the timer with the first person in the FIFO line, so hang in there and let the system do it's thing.

Welcome to PBS!

Sara

Sometimes it's a money issue as well and the person might be waiting a few days to accept to get them closer to payday. 

Also letting a request time out helps to weedout the inactive accounts.  If PBS sees a pattern of no responses on an account then they'll close it and remove their books from the inventory and their WL books from the lines. 

You don't want to cancel and re-request because it will just go back to the same person and the 5 day clock starts again.

However, if there is another ISBN of the book, you could order that version instead.  However, you don't know if they will be any more speedy in response.  You also run the risk (though slight) of both people accepting and printing a label before you cancel on of them and then you would end up with two copies.

I find it better to just "forget" about those and then be surprised when I get them.  The only time I check to make sure there is an acceptance is when I order 1 book from the book bazaar that is part of a special, meaning I will be getting "freebies" along with it.  Once its accepted, I double check to make sure its is the right person.

I agree with all the above. 

If you have more credits and are eager to get reading, I recommend just finding some other titles to request.  :-)