i'm just curious about how long people wait before cancelling a request. maybe i check my email more compulsively than most, but it seems to me that if i haven't heard from a member in 2 or 3 days, i'm probably not going to get the book.

is there any way that PBS deals with this?

They have 5 days to respond to the request.  From the Help Center:

How long does the sender have to respond to a request?

The Sender has 5 days to respond to a request from the time the email notification of a request is sent.

• If the sender does not respond with the 5 day period, the transaction will be canceled
  • this system action will take place at the end of the 5th day (in the middle of the night)
• If there is another copy of the book available in the system, the request will be passed along automatically to a new sender.
  • This will happen without an email notification to the requestor.

• If there is no other copy of the book available, the request will be canceled, the requestor gets her credit back, and the book placed on the requestor's Wish List.
  • If this happens, an email notification will be sent to the requestor.

Hope this helps : )

ed. to fix formatting

Megan beat me to it :)

attack of the TGs?  : D

Some people don't check their account everyday.  It's a pain I know but you have to wait it out. If you cancel your request and then make it again it'll just go to the same person if they're the top of the FIFO for that book.

Also, in my time on this site I haven't found any correlation with time it takes to respond and likelihood of getting the book.

I sometimes delay answering requests if I know I won;t be able to get to the PO or have postage money for a few days.  Once I accept it I have five days to mail it, so if I can't mail it for a week, I might not answer the request right away.

I always let them go until the time runs out.   I figure I'm doing my part to clean up PBS.   Plus that's the easiest way to get to the next person who has the book.

I've never found a correllation either between how long it takes to accept and whether I get the book.  As soon as I order a book though I check their shelf to see when the last time they posted a book. If they haven't currently posted then I will cancel the order because that's where I've found the correlation.

But if you want to cancel your request then by all means, do so. Just like they have five days to respond you have a right to hit the cancel button, which I've done several times and then gone out and bought the book because I've decided I don't want to wait for it!

Susan - I wouldn't be so quick to assume that if you don't see a book recently posted on someone's bookshelf, then they aren't very active on PBS.  It could be that most of the books they post are WL or ordered w/in a few days of posting, and all you're seeing are the Grishams and Dan Browns that they posted ages ago when they first joined.

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that if you don't see a book recently posted on someone's bookshelf, then they aren't very active on PBS.  It could be that most of the books they post are WL or ordered w/in a few days of posting,

I agree 100% Holly and I've commented on this before. I only have one book on my shelf right now, but I've sent out about 500. Most of my books are WL ones or are used for the games.  I'm  a tour guide and a games moderator and am on this site pretty much all day. But you wouldn't be able to tell that just by looking at my profile :)   You certainly can not or should not judge someone by the size of their shelf ;)

My husband got ansty while waiting for a response and cancelled twice before the 5 days were up.  Like the earlier posters said, it will go back to the same person, so he waited a lot longer for them to respond because he then has 3 sets of 5 days to wait.  If you really, really want a book faster, you could see if its listed by a different ISBN on another members shelf.  Otherwise, its better to go ahead and wait out the 5 days, even though it will seem like you are waiting two weeks :  ).  I just recently ordered a cookbook that was off the beaten path and there were 3 in the system and sure enough the first two members had the order fall through after 5 days, but I saw that today, the last person the order got the order today and accepted it.  Yea!  Good thing! because there weren't any other copies out there.