If I request a book how long will the person have to accept the request before it is canceled?  I have two request that have been sense Oct. 24th. 

They have 5 days. If they don't respond it will go to the next member in the FIFO line. Don't cancel th order though let the system work. If you cancel and reorder it will just go back to that member.

I think there may be a glitch in the system.  Twice in the past month I've requested a book and a full week later there is no response from the member yet the request remains.  I found the book again through search, placed a request (hopefully from a different member) and THEN canceled the previous request.  The last time I did this was 2 days ago and the request still says "waiting for member".

It's getting very annoying!

Here's the info from the help center on the time lines for book requests.  Joanne - I don't necessarily think there was a glitch in system. It's probable that the first person never responded to the request and it moved onto the next person in the FIFO line. While it can be annoying waiting for someone to accept your request, they are takign the time alloted by PBS.

The status of each request you have submitted appears In the "speech bubble" on the right:

• "Requested on:"
  • is the date and time that you submitted the request
• "Waiting for Member"
  • means the sender has not yet agreed to send the book (he or she has 5 days to respond).
• "Accepted" (with NO "will mail-by" date specified)
  • means that the sender has agreed to send the book by clicking "I can mail in the next 2 days", and has 5 days from the date of acceptance in which to mark the book mailed.
• "Accepted" ("will mail-by" date specified)
  • means that the sender has agreed to send the book by clicking "I can mail later", and has until 2 days after the mail-by date shown to mark the book mailed.

If it's been a week, most likely the original request was cancelled by the system and automatically moved on to the next person. You can tell by looking at the date/time of the request...when the system moves it along to the next person in the FIFO line, it will change the date/time of the request. Sometimes a request will go longer than exactly 5 days...for example, if you requested the book at 8 a.m. on 10/25, rather than cancelling at 8 a.m. 5 days later, it cancels after midnight sometime during the night later that night...so may be closer to six days in actual "hours." 

The nice thing about waiting out the request is that if the system cancels the request, that book is then removed from the person's bookshelf and the next person who wants that book doesn't have to deal with the waiting...so you're doing your part to help clean up some of the inactive deadwood if you wait it out. :)

Cheryl

I'm still waiting on a book that requested 10/9!  There are over 150 copies available and I am on the 3rd request...the 1st 2 didn't respond within 5 days so now I'm waiting to see if the 3rd person will respond!