I sent a book out and it came back to me.  I sent a PM to the requestor and they PM'd me back and said that they moved and no longer need the book.  This was just sent last week...?

I felt like that was kind of rude since I sent it at my expense...?  And how do I get my point back?

It says in the rules (under A Book I Sent Came Back) that it's within your rights to ask for a credit.  I would PM them again, ask for a credit to cover the postage.  Then report them to PBS if they refuse.  PBS won't refund the credit but you may not be the only person they did this too and so they should be made aware. 

Okay, I didn't know you could do that.  I'll PM them and see what they say.

If you go under Help Center you can find the info. I just Asked The Librarian and found the info. 

That is rude.

Was it a WL book?  They might have had it on auto request and forgot.

Yuppers, that's the word...rude

Okay, so I e-mailed them and said I would like to "kindly request a credit since I sent this book at my expense in good faith that you wanted it" and she did not respond, but marked the book RECEIVED and that it was a LATE POSTMARK. 

First off, she did not receive it because I have it with the yellow "change address" sticker" and what does it mean that it was a Late Postmark -I know what it means, but what does it mean as far as my account?  Now I'm just concerned about making sure I don't lose a credit in addition to being out the shipping $$ :(.

What should I do at this point??

p.s. I always put Tracking on my shipments and this is what the DC# says:

	Arrival at Post Office, January 13, 2010, 3:01 am, xxx, VA 2xxxx
	Processed through Sort Facility, January 07, 2010, 1:53 am, xxxx, WA 9xxxx
	Moved, Left no Address, January 06, 2010, 1:45 pm, xxxx, WA
	Forwarded, January 02, 2010, 9:32 am, xxxxx, WA
	Electronic Shipping Info Received, December 29, 2009

My guess is that she probably marked it received and just entered a date in where they ask for a postmark, not realizing that that would trigger a "late Postmark" message from PBS.  You don't have to worry about losing your credit--the site won't take it away from you just because the book was marked as being sent late.  And one late book shouldn't affect your account.

I would PM TPTB and forward the messages to them.  They should know what's going on.

Yup, you should have gotten your credit when she marked it Received.

I wouldn't bother PBS with this, though. The "late postmark" email is an automatic email. It won't affect your account.

I accidentally enter the wrong date in the postmark field all the time as I am marking books received ... (not on purpose, but I often forget to toggle the month if I receive a book in a month that is different from the "mailed" month.)

Sara, to say that late postmarks do not affect your account, and that you do it all the time accidentally, but without concern, is wrong. If someone does receive enough of those, it's the same as any other flag. A flag for cancelation, a flag for late mailing, a flag for a damaged book, they are all flags on your account, and you are saying that it doesn't bother you a bit to "accidentally" cause one to someone's account. Doesn't sound like the nicest thing I've heard anybody doing all week. I would hope you would try to be more careful for other people's sake, and if you can't then don't mark anything at all rather than often giving someone a bad mark on their account

I've forgotten to toggle back several times this month...but that would be the opposite, it would have looked as if I've received it, but they shipped it at a future date. 

What should I do to fix it? Does PBS really have the time to research and fix those if I have entered them incorrectly? Should I notify them each and every time to fix this incredibly minor issue, or should I just let them work on other people's important issues (like researching transactions  where people aren't marking books received at all?)

What about all the people that enter in a postage cancellation stamp date who don't realize that that those stamps could have happened anywhere along the postal journey? I'm sure that happens much more frequently than my accidents.

Not to mention, I am currently mailing books out with APC stamps that I purchased on Nov. 2, 2009. So, I imagine that that is the date that people are entering for the books that they are ordering from me in Jan 2010 (unless they look very closely and figure out how I could have wrapped up and put a dated stamp on their book 2 months before they ordered it! ) PBS now has a record that I am mailing out books 2 months before they are ordered.

 Why would PBS put much weight on something that could be entered incorrectly so easily? either by accident, or by putting in a cancellation stamp? (I don't think that they do put much weight on it, IMO.)

And, let's talk programming. PBS has a record of when the book was ordered, when the wrapper was printed, when the book was marked mailed.  They also have the record of what date I marked the book recieved. If I happen to mistype the wrong date in the little postage box on the form, they can EASILY see if the date doesn't make sense. It obviously must have been mailed sometime within the timeframe of the book being ordered and the book being marked received, no matter what date I put in the little box. I think that the automatic emails might be triggered solely by the date put in this box .... and a little bit of programatic verification of the dates entered in the box could catch a lot of wrong ones, if others make the same error that I sometimes make.

I have to be honest, I would consider a flag for late mailing to be extremely minor, yes, on my own account, too.

I was trying to reassure the OP that even if the person entered in an incorrect date, that this is an extremely minor issue and she shouldn't give it a second thought. And, if I was in her situation, I would never think of bothering PBS to fix it, because if their time is limited, I would rather they spend it on site improvements rather than fixing some minor issue with my account that has no bearing on anything (IMO).

I've sent more than 500 books out in the past year, I don't believe any were actually mailed late, and yet I also occasionally receive the auto email saying not to mail late. So, people must be entering some kind of wrong date on my books ocassionally. I spend zero time investigating this. I suppose I could PM the people who are marking my books received and see if they remember what they entered and then maybe they could dig the wrapping out of the garbage and double check it, and then maybe I can ask them to conact PBS to fix "their" error .... but I've got better things to do with my time, and I imagine so do the receivers.

Other people have different opinions. That's cool. Doesn't bother me.

Other people have different opinions. That's cool. Doesn't bother me.

Oh really, could have fooled me.

Um, I don't believe that I have called anyone names here or attributed any personality traits to them. Unlike what I was told.

I never said that I agree with everyone else. I just said that other people's opinions don't bother me. That doesn't mean that I agree, that just means that I don't respond rudely when I disagree.

See the difference?

I think PBS should be notified because she could have done this to other people.  You may just be the first one to complain about it. 

The one late mark won't cause a problem on your account.

I'm not saying one flag will hinder an account, Sara, but to consider any flag to be negligible and to encourage others to consider them unimportant is certainly not right. You have your opinion that this type of flag is not important, I have the opinion that ANY flag counts and they DO add up. No, of course, they don't check every flag on an account, but they do look at those that receive a specific number of flags/points whatever. They may well have in place a system that counts certain flags so many points and others less or more, and when you hit the magic number you get tagged for investigation. Does it hurt you to be investigated? Not always, but sometimes the system automatically shuts accounts down that receive a certain level of investigation and I'd hate to go telling someone that marking books so that the other person looks like they mailed the book late when they didn't or did with your permission, is wrong, because like it or not, it is a flag or PBS wouldn't bother to notify you when you get one.

As to your response to Kate's comment on your previous post, if you are inferring that I "called {you} names here or attributed any personality traits to {you}" I certainly don't read that anywhere in my post, and if you do, I guess that would be your reading  problem, not mine, as I didn't do such nor even imply such, I simply said doing it uncaringly is wrong.

Sherry, are you suggesting that this issue is something that the OP should be worried about? Because, if not, then we can agree on that.

Also, are you suggesting that PBS wants people to report to them if they accidentally enter in the wrong date in that little mailing field, thus triggering some kind of PBS investigation to correct this that would require either 1. the OP to supply a postage receipt proving she mailed it on time, OR 2. the OP or PBS to contact the OP's receiver so she can go dig the packaging out of the garbage to verify that she entered the "date mailed" wrong? Because, if not, then we can agree on that too.

I simply said doing it uncaringly is wrong.

OK, consider that whenever I accidentally enter in the wrong date in that field, I now feel bad about it.

I still don't think that in the overall scheme of things, PBS wants to encourage people to open a full blown investigation into every mistyped date in those fields, though.

I guess I could be wrong though. Maybe they do want us to take up their time with these kinds of things.

With your attitude, Sara, I would rather carry on this conversation in private rather than the forums. Everybody else understood EXACTLY what I said, without any snide replies of supposed misunderstanding. So, if you'd like to continue this line of discussion, please feel free to PM me directly.

Um, Sherry, since all three of your replies here have been addressed explicity to me by name, and you are addressing 1. my (accidental) behavior as "Doesn't sound like the nicest thing ", my attitude as such that you don't think I should post replies here in this thread anymore and my replies themselves as "snide" ....

(or am I mis-reading you, again? Have you really been addressing someone else this whole time?) (Yes, that part WAS snide)

I certainly feel that  you responded to me in a personal way FIRST.  Did I misunderstand that?

If you feel free to critize behavior, attitude and replies, you should possibly expect people to respond to that.

You are also mis-understanding the nature of my previous post. I was not being snide. I was trying to bring back the discussion to the OP's original problem, and since you are a Tour Guide, I am actually interested in your take on their issue, not on my "behavior".

I'm not sure why you feel I have an apparently bad attitude. Is it because I feel that a "late mailing" flag on an account is minor and not worth worrying about? Or, is it solely because I don't "feel bad" if I mistype the date somehow into that field? And, again, I would like to emphasize that I never said or implied that I do this on purpose .... it is easy to do accidentally, though.

I'm going to go back to discussion of the OP's issue now.   If the other member had accidently marked her book RWAP, and she now had an RWAP flag on her account, my advice to her would have been totally different. In my opinion, an inadvertant RWAP flag is certainly something that you should contact PBS about and try to get fixed. In my opinion, a "late mailing" flag is not anywhere as serious as something like  an RWAP flag.

Also, when I contacted PBS before about an (unrelated) issue that I had with a transaction on my account, I was told that if someone else makes an error that affects your account, the other person is the person who needs to ask for the issue resolution from PBS, even if  you have PMs where the other person explains their error and apologizes for it.  In my case, someone marked a book mailed to me, and them PM'd me and told me that they lost it before they mailed it, so it was never actually mailed. I contacted PBS (with the PMs from the other member in hand) to ask them to cancel the transaction so that I could get my credit back sooner (than the month long wait until it went lost)  and was told that the other member has to request for the transaction to be cancelled.  So, I understand the reason why PBS has a rule where they request direct communication from the other member, and it makes sense to me, BUT ...

with this knowledge in the back of my mind, (that the OP's requestor entered the date wrong into the transaction) .... this played a part in my advice to her that it is probably not worth it to contact PBS about this issue, as I feel that they would likely tell her that (if they can even fix it in the first place, which is unknown to us) .... the request to fix it would probably have to come from her requestor, and not from her.

Sherry, this question is back to you .... If you have a different perspective on the OP's issue based on your experience as a Tour Guide or as a member of PBS, I would be very interested to hear it (and I am not being snide here, I am being sincere).

I am not interested in any further discussion of my attitude, behavior, or replies via PMs or otherwise, but I will happily discuss PBS questions with you or anyone else.

With your attitude, Sara, I would rather carry on this conversation in private rather than the forums.

Pot meet Kettle. I think both of you are striking some attitude here. Sherry, I think your original post should have gone via PM to Sara.

Susan, I disagree with that because I was correcting something that Sara was telling others that is not true. How would the others know that Sara is wrong and that all flags count to some degree on your account, if I'd only told her in private???? I didn't tell her nastily, I simply told her she was wrong and that if she didn't care about hurting other people's accounts, that seems wrong to me too. I don't see any attitude in that post, simply a matter of stating facts, but if you'd rather see new people read the incorrect information, I guess that's up to you to not correct mis-information. Personally, I'd rather make sure that correct information is being posted for new members to read.

And, I invite you to a private conversation to discuss my attitude if you like too, I see no reason to discuss it here. But, thanks for letting me know that my first post apparently had more attitude than I ever intended it to have. I merely ment to correct Sara's mis-information and to let her know that doing what she was doing is wrong. If she doesn't like being corrected or being told what she is doing wrong, well, I'd guess giving out information probably isn't what she should be doing. Not that I'm never wrong, but when I give information, I do already know and have either encountered the situation or looked it up, and know that I am right when I give information out. I don't just guess at things.

But, thanks for making me feel like a heel for making sure that the OP knows that ALL flags do count to some degree and are NOT to be just dismissed off hand, as other will get the impression that they can mail books late anytime they want and it doesn't matter, since that's what was said in the forums, and nobody said any different.

ETA: And if anybody else has any kind or unkind words for me, please send them in a PM, as I am "unwatching" this topic. I've stated the correction, and now it's descending in to a name calling issue about who said what to whom, and I'm just not into that today. See ya all!

It hurts me to see two of our most esteemed friends engaged in a pissing contest.

Well, I would just like to point out that my advice WAS based on my experience here at PBS, which is that I have received a few "late mailing" emails from PBS and they didn't affect my account at all.

I don't believe that the books that I got the emails for were actually mailed late, since I always mail my books out within the time periods allowed by PBS, so I think that the date might have been entered incorrectly by the book receivers into the little box.

I did not worry about it at all. Also, I did not take any action to request PBS to look into it. And, that was my advice to the OP, in this same situation.

When I see questions in the forums that I have not experienced personally, or that I haven't read the PBS rules about, I refrain from commenting.

And, I guess this topic will probably go away now, since apparently my advice is wrong (which is fine with me by the way, I don't mind being wrong, although in the case where I am wrong I would not mind being addressed a little more politely), but Sherry, who feels so strongly that my advice was wrong,  has not, to my knowledge, suggested that the OP do anything differently.