Has anyone else had problems with requesting a book and the member with the book won't answer their requests?  How about 3 complaints of this happening and the sender loses their membership!!!!!!

Gary--This is something that is monitored by the site.  After a number of  unanswered requests (I don't think anyone knows how many) a member's account will be placed on hold.

I know it can be frustrating to order a book and watch it go through numerous members before being accepted.  But, one thing PBS does teach us is patience!  And another way to look at it--you're helping the site to weed out inactive members. 

Are you letting the system cancel transactions for you or are you cancelling early and reordering? If you are cancelling and then reording the same edition of that book you are just getting the same requestor over and over again.  It's best to let the system do it's thing.  The time outs help PBS get rid of inactive accounts.

I've found also that books with a lot of copies in the system can have a pile up inactive accounts at the top.  Some peope join with nothing but heavily posted books and then they lose interest by the time their books are finally at the top of the line.

I've had my account go on hold. I went out of town on Friday afternoon (I checked my account before I left) and checked my account as soon as I got back on Sunday evening.  During that time I had 3 offers that went unanswered. Yes, I know I should have put my account on hold. But I didn't want to miss out on wishlist books that I've had waiting for years!!  I just wish there was a little more time given for the weekends. 

Now I have to check my account every 48 hours for the rest of my life. Weekdays I don't mind. I'm always on every day. But on weekends during the summer, it's tough! I have to reserve a little time for the kids.

I love auto-request. It makes it easy from my end to get the books I want.

And, it's darn convenient when I post a book and the other member has it on auto-request.

The auto-request might work for some people, but I just never have the credits for that. When one book comes up on my WL I usually have one credit. BUT if two or three come up close to each other, I might need up to 48 hours to get a credit to come from a mailing OR need time to bum a credit from a family member OR need time to transfer a credit from SwapaDVD OR get a credit back from the games forum. With the auto-request on, I'd lose half my WL offers from lack of credits. When I have it on 48 hour I don't lose any (or almost any).

Maybe you need to just keep a credit buffer of 5 or so.  If you have credits at the CD site that you can transfer than transfer some ahead of time.  Or a few cheap ones in the book bazaar for the same as it would cost you to mail books out.  Or not join games until you have a decent credit buffer.  Then you don't lose your place in line and make someone wait on your timeout. I only autorequest ones that I'm near the top for and are very slow moving.  Anything that's posted regularly is on vacation hold.  I have a big enough TBR to wait for them and don't spend my credits as soon as I earn them. 

Thanks, Carol - I didn't know that about auto-request. This could have caught me out. I've usually been high enough on credits that it hasn't been a concern, but recently I've been pretty low. I might have to consider buying a couple of credits before I go on vacation hold next time.... (Remaining in the queue doesn't help me much, since most of my WL books are rarely posted.)

If you do not have credits in your account when an auto-requested book becomes available, the Auto-Request will convert to a regular Wish List (48-hour) offer.  If your account is on Vacation Hold in this situation, you will be "bypassed" for the book, and you will remain in your place in the Wish List.

Yup, Auto-Request is the way to go if ya got the credits.  Its a nice surprise when you get a notification that your request has been accepted into the system and you had nothing to do with it except make sure your WL was on Auto.

-RD

I have to keep a buffer of 10 credits in my acct at all times as I've had as many as 8 books from my WL offered to me in a week.