I am a member of paperbackswap and I use it all the time to get books. For those of you not familiar with the website, people who live in the United States can exchange books with other people who live there. All you pay for is the shipping costs. You can literally choose from millions of books. It supports my book habit, so of course I love it.
Recently though, two of the books I have requested have gotten lost in the mail. I am so aggravated. Usually after I have been notified that the book has been mailed, it is only a matter of a few days before I find it in my mailbox. But the last two books I requested have been lost in the mail. The thing that really gets my goat, is that I have to wait a month for the book to be officially considered lost. Then I have to go back on the wait list (if the book isn't currently available) and wait for someone to post the book. Then I get to start the process all over again. I am really just letting off some steam here because a book I was hoping to start reading this weekend hasn't come yet and the likelihood of me getting it this month is now slim to none. Damn!
9 comments:
Awww, sucks for you :( I so want to be part of Paperback Swap, but it's only for the USA :(
I hate losing stuff in the mail... cos there's really no certainty and you keep waiting and waiting and waiting :(
I haven't had a book get lost on its way to me, but I have had a book I mailed get lost before.
Funniest PBS story... I ordered a book (I forget what it was now - it was early last year) and when it came, I recognized the name and address. Turns out it was from Nikki at Romance Book Crazy, LOL!
Small world, eh?
Jill, I empathize with you, but stuff like this happens sooner or later - that's the reality of using the postal service.
Perhaps you'd like to try another book trading site, BookMooch. It caters to readers worldwide but you can limit sending books to within US only. The point system is very generous - you get points for listing books and for acknowledging receipt of books, plus if you send books overseas, you'll get extra points too. The only drawback that I see is, there's no queuing system - so it's on a first-come-first-served basis.
My reading buddies, Kat, Mel and Lisa, and I are all BookMooch members. You can view my page here.
Lori, I have wondered if I have mailed books to people I new through blogging. It's definitely a small world!
Jace, I will check it out. Thanks for the heads up!
Nath, Maybe you should look into BookMootch too.
Maybe :D I didn't know there was another system too :)
Jill, Nath...
If you do join BookMooch, do add me as your friend. :-)
I’ve had that happen to me once before but I decided to get the book from the library instead.
What I find even more annoying is when someone posts a book on my wish list and then cancels my request. It seems like they are just posting books to get the initial credits with no intention of mailing them.
Aside from these minor complaints I’ll pretty happy with paperbackswap.
I don't have any complaints against pbs except for some reason their emails are now getting caught in my spam filter, and I don't have the patience to go through 3000 emails every day - so when I forget to log in and check my account, stuff slips through my finger (like whoever request the Shalvis from me...on the off chance you're out there, I never got the email! I feel bad about that.)
Dana, I do actually really like paperbackswap. I have probably had close to 300 transactions and only 4 of them have been lost in the mail. So those are pretty good odds. I was just venting my frustrations :)
Kate, You know, I have some of my emails from them go into my spam folder too. Luckily, I don't have as many spam messages as you and I routinely check my spam. I one time missed the deadline for shipping a book that I said I would and I felt really bad about it. I have no good excuse either. I just forgot.
Post a Comment