I requested several books in a series, all from different traders.  Book 1 in Series Requested 9/4 and it finally Canceled out on 10/8.  Now mind you I have all the others, but don't want to read out of order.  Reordered 10/9 and here a week later still waiting Members Response. 

Is there some way to choose which members we want books from?  Is there some kind of ratinig to look at? 

Also at same time waiting for books to arrive NY from Alaska.  Again, books 1&2 of 8 requested.  Have all the others, and these particular books have tracking # & were supposidly shipped 9/20, but there has been no scan.  I realize they could still be on the way,  but on top of the other issue I just needed to "RANT". 

Most members are so quick to respond, and USPS fast to deliver.  Just wish there was a way to rate members for others to see.  Recently came across another dummy members,  said they couldn't ship because ".... they didn't know all that was involved wthen the joined>"  Uh! 

Anything traveling MM from Alaska or Hawaii is going to take a long time and might actually go lost before you get the book.

When I have a book timing out, I'll try searching the shelves of Boxers in hopes that I can get a response faster that way.  Doesn't always work though.

My daughter asked me to order the whole set of a particular series for her. I found all of them, arrange for the shipping..and then waited. The first one arrived within a few days. There is still one "Waiting for member". I believe it is on the 3rd person.

Sorry, there is no way to choose. But...if you are looking for a series, or something in particular, it's often helpful to put a post in the appropriate topic thread in the Bazaar (or post your own) and/or genre forum. I've found that the majority of people that frequent the forums are here regularly (and if they respond to you, they want to mail books), and you don't have to wait through the timing out process.

Usually when I want multiples in a series like that-I post in the book bazaar with what I'm looking for and try to order more from one member.  This usually decreases the time outs I have to wait through, saves another member postage money and frequently ends with them offering me a deal on them-win/win for both of us. 

I tell myself that I am helping to weed out the dead weight members every time a request times out  and rolls over to the next member; but it is sooo frustrating.

Just a note -- you said it canceled out on 10/8 and that you reordered on 10/9.  If the system canceled the book on 10/8 because the sender missed a deadline, it would have automatically ordered the next copy of that ISBN for you, if there were any more copies posted.  (But maybe it was a wish list book, and it went back on your wish list on 10/8, and you got a new offer on 10/9.) 

ETA: If you ran into an abandoned account, that account will be placed on hold after a couple of consecutive non-responses.  Gradually abandoned accounts are weeded out this way, and response time improves.

+1 - muy frustrating.

Like Jodi & Mary mention, there are discussion threads where deals can be made for sets & multiples.  The advantage being, the requester probably has credits and the sender is active and probably ready to mail!

"ETA: If you ran into an abandoned account, that account will be placed on hold after a couple of consecutive non-responses.  Gradually abandoned accounts are weeded out this way, and response time improves."

This seems a very slow, and frustrating, way of weeding out inactive members. I wonder if, given enough requests, TPTB may consider a concentrated effort to weed out inactive members - Maybe one-off email request to members to log onto PBS.com at least once within the following 30 days - or their account will be placed on vacation hold. IMHO, this wouldn't be an unreasonable request - if a member can't respond to a request (and a follow-up reminder email) such as that, then they are not going to respond to a book request either.

So, anyone got any opinions on such an idea? pro's,  con's??

Mistie - Your suggestion (or something similar) always pop up when this topic surfaces. If you feel strongly about it, I suggest you contact the Team via the Feedback page under 'Contact Us'. They listen to our concerns and implement them if they feel it will benefit the club or if they have the manpower to do it. I remember suggesting the individual WL hold when I first joined and now we have it! When I mentioned it, they were already thinking about it but most likely they give priority to those suggestions that come from a lot of members.

I don't think your idea is a bad one...as you say, if somebody misses a request and then doesn't log in within a certain period of time, then maybe they should be on hold.

I  like the once a month log in idea.

-RD

The only way you can choose what member to buy books from is if there is more than one isbn in the system for the book.  When I'm ordering a book I often look at the member's book shelf before ordering in case I want other books from them and they might offer a deal if I ask.  I also look to see if the shelf looks active. 

I, too, get really frustrated with waiting 5 days for a book request to cancel and go to the next person in the lineup.  Because this site works off of the FIFO system, many heavily posted books that come up next in line have been in the system for a year or more.  And because of that, many of the members have long since left the site. 

I would like to see this site reduce the wait time to three days.  That way I won't have to wait a month or so for some heavily posted books (which happened to me recently, fortunately it wasn't an important book like the first in a series).  Either that or allow us to decline the first book offer and move to the next in the FIFO list.  They could, perhaps, limit the number of times you could move through the FIFO list to 2-3.  But, by doing that it would give us the ability to skip a book from an account that looks to be inactive.

I've suggested the required log in thing before.  Even making it a requirement to log in once every 90 days would weed out a lot of incatives.

They could even just send out a mass email saying something like "in an effort to clean the PBS system of inactive accounts-any accounts (not on vacation) with no log-ins within the next 30 days will be put on vacation hold" or something like that.  Anyone who just hasn't logged in becasue they haven't had any transactiosn to tend to can just log in and out and that's that.