A very VERY popular wish list book has become available to me.  A waiting list a mile long .  Been wishing for a couple of years now.  They  e mailed me and said cover was ragged and a had a hole in it.  Is this acceptable.  If  I refuse, what happens?  Do I retain my place?

I would forward the email to Management and let them help you decide.

Do as Sherri suggested, and forward the correspondence to the PBS team.  If you decline the offer, you will lose your place in the WL line.  If you ask the person offering the book to decline your request, you would retain your spot in the WL, but it sounds like this book should not even be posted.  We don't need books like this in the system, so it's good to weed them out where possible.  Let the PBS team know about this, and they will help you retain your #1 spot on the WL.

If you don't care about the appearance of the book, then accept it.  If you do want the book to be in postable condition, then don't accept.  Don't cancel the request, let the other person cancel the request. 

I would go a step further Kristen - if you want to read the book but don't care about the condition - offer to do a 2 for 1 - pick something else from their shelf and have them throw in the book with it.

The book posting guidelines say

Cover not torn or chewed/gnawed

• some used book stores cut out a small part of the cover; if the amount missing is less than 1 inch, this is OKAY
• a small rip (less than 1 inch) in the cover is OKAY
• yes, that does say "chewed/gnawed" above.  That means no pet-chewed (or human-chewed) books.

I'd ask how big the hole in the cover is and what exactly they mean by "ragged".

I agree with Sarah.  You almost need to dig into it deeper in order to ascertain whether it's postable or not, which means finding out how big that hole is, I guess, and what exactly they mean when they say "ragged".  That's easily a subjective term, IMO.  There's worn & ugly, but postable ragged, and they expected a credit for this POS? ragged:P

I have written to the admin/PBS team and reported two really non-kosher trades.  These were not BOOKS and therefore not postable...arrrrrrrgggggggg......and it cost me 2 credits.  I got nowhere doing this.  There was no response from PBS, so in the future I would report it but since I don't have an expectation of results I suggest you try stopping the book from costing you a credit.  If you receive a book that is not postable DO NOT MARK IT RECEIVED in acceptable condition.   Do what you can to mark it not postable when you receive it.

I would also try the two for one idea that Susan mentioned.  Unfortunately for me, that wasn't an option because this person only had three books left on their bookshelf after I swapped for the two not postables.   Again I say aaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggg.

Pamela

Not to derail or anything, but Pam, what exactly did you receive that weren't books?  Just curious.