I guess I've stumbled into a run of bad luck, but in the past several months I've received:

- 2 ARCs

- 2 book with highlighting that I wasn't contacted about before it was sent

- 3 books with the wrong binding

- 1 wrong volume of a series (asked for Book 3; received Book 2)

- 2 books with water damage

It is getting to be really frustrating!  I don't think of myself as being a particularly picky PBS user, but Im' starting to wonder if I am since I'm having so many problem swaps. 

Has anyone else noticed an upswing in the number of problem books they receive?

I have noticed certain genres that have more problems than others. I sometimes read YA novels. They are almost always the ones I receive damaged in some horrible way. Kids.

I went the first few years with really no unpostables. In the last year I've gotten a boatload. Mostly water damage.

I got one the other day that was water damaged and stained all over the place with a wide variety of stains (both in color and texture, including burn marks). The book was bordering on gross. It's the first time I got cussed out. lol She told me the book was brand new, which sent me into gales of  laughter because the book  was so definitely not new! She was a total newbie, been here 3 weeks. She was irritated about all sorts of things .... people not marking books received and the amount of postage she's spent. Made it a point to tell me I'm the "only" person who said the book wasn't postable. Again, been here 3 weeks. 

She will not make a good member and I foresee lots of unpostables from her until she quits in frustration (which she already said she was going to do) or gets booted off.

I see and hear about a lot more of these types of people joining than I did back when I first joined 6 years ago and even just a year or two ago.

I don't trade tons of books, but it seems like there's been an uptick for me lately, water damage.  And I got my first nastygram from a sender the other day -- the "I got it that way and it's perfectly readable, but you must be one of THOSE people who expects perfection" message.  And she wasn't a new member. 

I've gotten 3 highlighted books in recent months -- yep, no contact before hand and 2 were highly unlikely to be used as "textbooks".

While I don't mind whether a book was actually used as a textbook or not - that's such a broad category, when you consider that classes exist for every topic under the sun, that I'm pretty sure any book could be used in such a setting - all I ask is that the owner contact me before they send it, so that I can decide whether the book is one in which underlining/highlighting will bother me.  I mean, if it's a book that's fairly hard to come by, I'll take it anyway, but if it's Huckleberry Finn or another book that's relatively easy to find, I'll pass on it so that I can see if I can find a "clean" copy elsewhere.

I wonder if the uptick in water damaged books is due to Hurricane Sandy?  Maybe people aren't noticing a bit of water damage, or it's become somewhat normalized in their eyes since many or all of their books have been affected?  Having never been through a hurricane, I don't know exactly what kind of damage it can do to a library, but I can imagine that it itsn't good :-p

Accidentally double-posted response.