Sorry, I just have to vent a little. I've found that I am having problems getting books that have a lot of copies available. Which is pretty ironic considering that there are a lot of copies available! The only thing I can think of is that by the time the person gets in the queue to be the next shipper, they posted so long ago that they are neither no longer active or can't find the book.

Case in point: I requested Trading Up by Candace Bushnell. There are some 30 or copies available. The first shipper accepted and then after the 5 day deadline expired, she PMed me and said she couldn't find the book. OK, fine. Now the 2nd person has accepted the shipment and the same darn thing has happened. Yesterday was the 5th day deadline to ship the book and no activity. It would be one thing if they weren't accepting the request but they are and then I have to wait around another 5 days for the next person to respond. Grr! I wish there was some way to know if people are delinquent shippers or not.

OK, end of rant.

Frustrating!

It was nice of the first person to tell you their reason.  It would be nice if the others would let you know also.  I keep all of my posted books seperate and in a nice spot, so I don't loose them.

I had a wish list book pop up the other day.  I accepted the book.  Then, I had to wait on the other member.  Time ran out.  Weird, since they just posted the book, I know they are still active.  Some people...

That really stinks. I have gotten to the point where I usually only "order" books (except WL of course) from members that post in the forums. I'm just way too impatient to wait for them to accept, and then take the full amount to mail too.

Angie- I think I might start doing the same thing. At least you know that people who post are somewhat active. 

How do you find out how many copies of a book are posted?

If you add the book to your reminder list, you can hover over the ! and it will tell you how many copies are in the system.

If you put a book on your reminder list you can see how many copies are in the system. It shows up as a little grey exclamation point next to the book (at least I think it's an exclamation point).

Keri -  I don't have that particular book but you can put me on your buddy list.  I'm on here constantly and mail every day! :)

Now, I think I do have this book on my bookshelf.  I some times get frustrated with the waiting.  I've started ordering more and more of my books specifically from the bookshelves of those that I see on the forums often than to suffer through the FIFO waiting heck that we sometimes have to go through just to get a Grisham novel.

Kerry

We mail every day or every other day (the PO is walking distance, so we use it as our daily walk), but we always pick the lastest date to mail "just in case".  Sounds like you've had a run of bad luck - I've only had a few where it went more than one person and those were rare.

You could look at it like you are helping clean up the PBS database by getting rid of "phantom copies" so the rest of us who have books and will mail move up in the FIFO.  =)

That happened to me trying to get a popular book In Her Shoes.  It went through THREE cycles and was accepted on the fourth so it took almost two weeks before I even had a taker!  I was starting to take it personally ~ LOL.  I was happy to read that if they don't respond their books are taken off their shelves automatically. 

I too mail right away when I get a request and all the books on my bookshelf are in a seperate place.

I'd like to see accounts that haven't had any activity within a certain parameter (could be 45 days, 60 days, etc) go automatically "inactive". They would not lose their membership. The member would simply click on the "reactivate" button when they returned to the site and they wanted to resume trading. Since life happens and sometimes people are offline for weeks without planning to do so, it would eliminate these problems. It would mimic the putting your shelf on hold mechanism, only it would be automatic for those who have no advance planning that they'll be gone, or those who are no longer interested in using the site, and simply abandoned their shelf and ignore requests. It would also keep the FIFO line moving smoothly.

Hi there I also have all my posted books in a seperate place so they are easy to find. I mail every day also. I do this so that other people will do the same for me. I hope. LOL 

Barbara

I mail mind out the same day I get the request, if the mail carrier hasn't come.    Otherwise I pm the reciever and let then know it will go in the mail the next day.  i won't to send mind out as quick as I can.

I had a wishlist book pop up the other day.  I accepted the book.  Then, I had to wait on the other member.  Time ran out.  Weird, since they just posted the book, I know they are still active.

That happened to me twice during the last week of June, first week of July.  Being the very suspicious person that I am, I've started to wonder if someone is posting wishlist titles they don't have, just to be hateful....

I'd like to see accounts that haven't had any activity within a certain parameter (could be 45 days, 60 days, etc) go automatically "inactive". They would not lose their membership. The member would simply click on the "reactivate" button when they returned to the site and they wanted to resume trading.

It's used on another swap site and comes in very handy, both for requestors and account holders. 

.

I would LOVE if accounts that haven't been logged into in a certain period of time went inactive. Nothing annoys me more than having to wait 5 days numerous times for someone to accept my request. I too try to order from people I see that are active in the forums.

My rant of the week is I posted a wishlisted book that is on its third wisher and no one has accepted yet. They just keep timing out. Driving me crazy.

I learned the hard way to check the person who I ordered the book from. As soon as I order the book I check two things: first, do they have a profile (I tend to order more from those that do) and second, and the most important, I check out their bookshelf and find out when they posted the most recent book. If they haven't posted a book within the last month then I cancel my order.  Since I started checking I haven't had any problems (and I really haven't had too many problems since I joined).

Susan, I can understand the checking the profile thing, but I don't think I've posted a book in the past month, other than WL books that went right away, but I am very active, so that wouldn't be accurate for me...

You can also tell how active a person is on PBS by the number of posts. Since message boards fall off after 45 days, the post count will be for any posts in the last 45 days. Anyone who has a lot of messages on boards are obviously on PBS a lot more!

Diane

You can also check the book reviews and order from the person's shelf directly, sometimes if they have recently reviewed the book it may still be on their shelf.

I recently ordered the first book in a series so I could read them in order; I already had the other three in the series.  When the order was about to time-out because the member never responded to the request, I posted in a forum that I was looking for that particular book.  Well, a member said she had it, and I ordered it directly from her bookshelf after cancelling my pending order that was about to time-out.

That was last Monday.  The forum poster said she would mail the book on Saturday.  Saturday has come and gone and, tonight at 11PM, this transaction will be cancelled by the PBS system because the 48 hours beyond the promised mail-by date will have passed.

I pm'd the sender Saturday night and asked if she'd mailed the book and, perhaps, had forgotten to mark it mailed.  No response from the sender.

I don't know.  I assume the sender has had a life emergency or something unexpected has happened that prevented her from mailing the book.  I cannot believe that she would have responded in the Discussion Forum that she had the book available for me if she did not intend to send it.

Susan, I do pretty much the same thing you do; i. e., checking for a profile, etc.  Also, I  keep a number of members who read my preferred genre on my Buddy List.  Then, when I am looking for a book, I look at their bookshelves first. 

I had to turn down a request yesterday for a book I know was on my bookshelf but now I can't find. Of course in my house I have my daughter who is 19, her friends & son's gf; who all "borrow" my books without telling me. The best I can figure out is that someone "borrowed" it & did not tell me. This doesn't happen often but it does happen. I always feel like such a shit; when I have have to tell someone ...duh....I don't know where it's at.