I don’t normally do this, but I’m really irritated.
Once again I was spending too much time on Paperbackswap and Bookmooch. I *know* I should avoid those sites at all cost, but I’m addicted. So yesterday I submitted one BOB offer on PBS and a few requests on Bookmooch. Yesterday evening the BOB offer was declined without so much as an explanation. Maybe I’m asking too much, but when the system sends you to a PM page immediately after declining an offer, wouldn’t send a short message be the polite thing to do? I have declined many offers in the past, and I always send a short “sorry, there’s just nothing that interests me right now” or “sorry, but you’ve got a lot of romance and that’s just not my cup of tea.” I understand that people are busy, but seriously, is it really too much to ask for? It made me truly wonder if she even looked at my shelf, or if she just denied it out right. I guess I’m really irritated because it was for books I *really* want, but I don’t want to spend a PBS credit and they aren’t available at Bookmooch.
Then today one of the three Bookmooch requests I put in for yesterday was rejected because she “no longer had that book”. Okay, I understand that. I know it is hard to keep track of your books if you’re swapping in multiple places. But in my four years of swapping books online, I have only had to cancel two times due to me no longer having the book in question. TWO TIMES. The one thing I like about Bookmooch is that you can see how many times they’ve cancelled, how many times they’ve rejected, etc. Well, trust me, this lady had a high rejection rate. When I received the rejection e-mail, it said that Bookmooch doesn’t consider “no longer have the book” as an acceptable reason for rejection. I was surprised by this, but I was glad to see that. Because it’s really not acceptable. I know it happens, and like I said, I’ve done it myself before, but when I looked at this person’s profile there was, as I said, an unusually high amount of rejections. Bookmooch is right … it’s not acceptable.
Maybe I just expect too much out of people. I’m kind of a perfectionist when it comes to certain things and trading books tends to be one of them. And I know that I have a high expectation. I want my books to be in better than average shape. I don’t expect them to be new, but I don’t want them to be falling apart either. But I think what really irritates me is that people are just plain rude sometimes. Personally, I have met some really great people here on my blog and on the various swap sites and Yahoo reading groups. For the most part everyone I have come into contact with have been really nice, good people. But when someone can’t even keep track of their bookshelf or send me a short message as to why they’ve cancelled a BOB offer, I get really friggin’ irritated.
Tales of a Book Addict 