How does this happen?  I requested a book which I think rolled over onto another member after a few days.  When I click on PM it says her bookshelf is currently on hold.  So my request is going to sit there for five days with no possible response.  Why is this?

I always set my Vacation Hold to be a day or two early because of this.

Actually if you put your shelf on hold for the current day, it starts immediately. But some people set it to go on vacation hold ahead of  time on a specific date so they don't forget. But then if a request goes through during the night before the hold kicks in, they might miss it.

Also a vacation hold doesn't mean they aren't on and watching their account.  Many members, including myself, use vacation hold to control postage costs or just because they're busy and don't want to deal with mailing a lot of books.  So the person may know your request is there and is waiting to accept to get closer to their day off or payday or whatever. I just waited 3 days to accept a requesto get a Friday mail by date.

This month. a vacation hold may well be an attempt to avoid the post office.

Like Emily, I have put my account on vacation hold to avoid the post office. I have also been experiencing a much higher rate of WL books that I have posted rolling over unaccepted and I had three WL books waiting to be accepted when my account went on hold and they all went unaccepted so will now not be available until after Xmas. But that does not mean that I am not still watching my account and requesting books...I just don't want to be mailing any right now.

I just put my account on hold because there is no way I will make it to the post office between now and the holidays, but I still had 4 requests that I printed off and sent yesterday. I just sent out about 20 books over the last 2 weeks so my postage fund is officially tapped out.