I sent a book to an APO address in Okinawa, Japan.  The PBS'er was lovely and explained upfront that books to her take longer and I was welcome to refuse the request.  I sent it out and noticed that it's nearly timing out for "the did you receive" response.  Now I'm perfectly comfortable that the book will make it to her, and obviously she knows they don't arrive promptly.

My question however is... will that "hurt" me in some way, as far as my points or rating?  If so, couldn't things be set up differently for an APO or FPO address for that reason?

PS.  The PO sent it media mail, no questions asked.

I doubt this will affect your standing with PBS.  I am sure they more than understand the delay involved when sending to farther places.  There probably is a specific number of timeouts, cancellations, etc that would flag an account as suspicious, but a few timeouts shouldn't raise any alarms.

Right, I don't believe there is like an offical rating system that PBS keeps  with tally marks or anything like that.  I could be wrong.  What I imagine actually happens is that they just sort of look at which accounts consistenly have problems associated with them.  So, one or two lost books or books received with a problem or whatever is pretty meaningless in terms of your membership here.  They really want people to stay member, and recognize that, the longer you are here, the more likely it is that something will go wrong with one or two transactions for whatever reason.

Also, I can tell you this:  I've had two books that I've sent get declared "lost" which both eventually arrived at the destination.  So, I imagine this will happen with yours too.

Ok, cool.  She and I both knew it would take awhile, but I didn't want a tick against me.  ie.  I sent out 5 books to someone and the PO damaged the top one so it was marked received with problem.  It sounds as though it was obvious to her that it happened in transit, yet it says I sent with a problem which bummed me out.

I would guess that they have the flags set differently for books that are going between the mainland states and HI & AK as well as the APO & FPO addys, so that if someone frequently trades with them, they don't get tagged as a problem account.

As for your damaged books, Kristen, see if it doesn't say "damaged by PO" which is how she should have marked it, and that doesn't count against you.

I would guess it's tagged differently too, since I sometimes push the  "No, it's not received yet" button just for fun and a message always pops up about longer transit times to the APO address.  :)  Sounds like your receiver is already well aware and will be good about hunting it down in Transaction Archive if necessary... the little black question marks make that easy to do now!!  :)