You can post what you're looking for in the book bazaar.  If you cancel and reorder it'll just go to the same person again.  By letting them time out you are helping to weed inactives out of the system. 

You can always check boxer's shelves to see if they have it then order it from them. I would think that most boxers are active. The only other thing is what Mary already said.

As irritating as it is, helping to weed out the inactives and the people who joined to get 2 free books ultimately helps shorten these waits.  The usual situtations of  "life happens" also applies and books and PBS aren't the most important things to most people in the ordinary course of things.  The trick is to have several hundred books on your TBR so these waits aren't as frustrating since you will already have enough to read. Fortunately, PBS has offered me more than enough books to keep me occupied for a long time.  Now I get flustered when a whole lot of WL books come ine!

Ruth

I've been having this difficulty lately also, over half the books I request are timeing out once or more for lack of response.  And yeah, it's frustrating.

Yes, it helps weed out the inactives, but there will always be more future inactives coming in, so I don't think the net change amounts to much.

As for boxers and book bazaar... I've never seen a boxer's offerings yet that had enough books I was interested in to make it worthwhile.  Generally I find that if a boxer has one book I'm interested in then that's the only book they have I'm interested in.  (And yes, I know I have strange tastes in books)  Book Bazaar is just confusing to me, and often seems to involve posting directly to someone's WL (which I don't participate in because it makes me feel like I'm cheating somehow), or having to choose other books to make a "deal" and I can't find any others I actually want.

Bottom line for me is that long waits staring at "Waiting For Member" messages are part of the club process and I've pretty much resigned myself to them.

Avtually there is another way to find the book you want if you really want it now. One way is to check the bookshelves of the people who have reviewed that book to see if they still have their copy and order it directly from them. Another way is to check the book bazaar and do a search for the book. I do this sometimes if I want a lot of books by the same author. I can check several peoples' book shelves to see if they have more than just one so I can order them together.

What I really hate are the people who wait until the last minute to say they have the book and will send it then put that they will mail it the last possible day and then NEVER mail it. What is with people like this? It is happening more often, just happened again last week. I was off the wish list so long that several other people on the list could have alredy gotten their book by the time I was but back on the with list. I think these people should be tossed off unless they have some really good reason for doing it. (I would love to hear what kind of reasons there are, I know there must be  circumstances where it is unavoidable but I'll bet most don't have a good reason.