so I ordered a book back on 9/7. member mails it 9/9. i receive on 9/14 an empty envelope with the USPS saying received without contents, etc. i immediately PM the sender to let them know this, telling them what the help center says about calling USPS and such and gave a suggestion on maybe how to improve wrapping (they had sent the book in one of those manila envelopes with the sticky ends (not a bubble wrapper) and didn't tape up the end or anything. i think b/c of the heat, it had gotten less sticky or the machine pulled it open, regardless the book had fallen out.

anywho the past times that this has happened, the person will acknowledge this b/c they are going to lose out on a credit even though they mailed the book especially since they mailed it first class and not media mail. well the member read the PM, and never responded to me.  it's a bit baffling b/c if i were in the situation, i would have apologized or said thanks for letting me know or something. they've continued to list books though so i know they're active. it's like they didn't really care.

meanwhile i have to wait one more week, in case that book shows up due to the help rules. *sigh*

I guess they figure they are going to lose the credit anyway when the book goes lost-so they see no reason to respond. 

Deborah, I am in the exact same spot as you. I don't understand why mine hasn't responded either. Next week, the book goes lost. I guess Mary is probably right.

I figure the person just doesn't care. It's easy to believe that everyone who uses PBS is courteous and does the right thing, however, I don't think that is always the case.

It takes five seconds to send you a PM saying "so sorry", sheesh!

Recently, I've had 2 consecutive RWAPs, where the sender chose to ignore my emails, and never returned my credits.  The way I see it these 2 senders are guilty of theft.  They have my credits and I have 2 unpostable books.

I've been in this situation too. It's pretty discourteous not to cancel the transaction as the help center says IMHO, but there isn't much you can do about it. 

Valerie, you should report them to the site as non responsive, that is against the rules. That said, even if they did respond the rules state they are not required to return the credit, so I wouldn't say that keeping the credit makes them "guilty of theft". 

when a book is "lost in the mail" doesn't the sender still get the credit and the receiver gets thier credit back? I've had one of my sent books lost & I still received the credit. and I've had a few books sent to me that were lost and again I received my credit back. Yesterday I received a book that was mailed a month late & had been marked lost last week I don't know why they sent it after it was marked lost? anyway I got my credit back and now I'm trying to figure out what I'm supposed to do - I don't want to give the sender an "additional credit" if they were already credited for the lost book. but I want to pay the credit I owe for receiving the book. Can you pay a credit into the PBS system? 

Maybe the book was sent back to them for osme reason. Or they found in the car under the seat.  Who knows.

If they used PBS DC then they got their credit when it was scanned.  They did not lose a credit when it went lost.  They will not get another credit if you mark it received in your transaction archive.

If they didn't use PBS DC then they did not get a credit when it went lost.  When you order a book your credit goes into escrow.  PBS holds the credit until either the person buys PBS postage, the PBS DC gets scanned or the book is marked received. 

when a book is "lost in the mail" doesn't the sender still get the credit and the receiver gets thier credit back?  - no, not unless the sender used PBS-DC and the book was scanned, or they used PBS-postage. Otherwise, since the book is never marked received, the sender never gets the credit. The receiver will get their credit back on the lost date regardless and PBS covers it if the sender got a guaranteed credit.

Yesterday I received a book that was mailed a month late & had been marked lost last week - you do not have to mark this one as received if you already got another copy of the book through the system. If you had not, then you should mark it received through your Transaction Archive. The system will handle it correctly on who gets the credit - PBS or the sender.

I did go back and mark the book received and it did explain it all when I looked it up but thanks much for the information it was something I really wasn't clear about.