Discussion Forums - Questions about SwapaDVD

for my last 20 requests or so...80% of them took longer then a week to accept and send out 1 single DVD.

some never even accepted at all.never answered in fact...why does swap allow these people on here if they are gonna post stuff to trade but never come to accept and send.?

I think swapadvd should give people 3 days...no more than 3,to accept and send out their items that are requested.it isnt tha dfficult.

I have always sent my stuff out within 48 hours or if it did take longer.i wrote the person to explain when it would be sent..

anyone else having this problem?

Well, recently it was a holiday weekend, so I would take that into account. I took 5 days to mail one of my dvds because I only have a printer at work and had a 4 day weekend, and 5 days is a lot with me. A lot of people take vacations around holidays and forget to put their account on hold, and some people just leave the site without deleting their tower (if you let those phase out, their account will eventually be closed by swapadvd from nonresponsiveness.

Frankly I've had a harder time getting people to accept wishlisted titles than I have dvds to mail.

thanks to both of you for replying...both are great points

Yea, I like Sara's suggestion. I think thats a great idea, as long as swapadvd makes it obvious when the person logs in that their account is on vacation hold (like a popup when you login saying "your account is on vacation, would you like to come back"? Or something. Well, they might already do that I dont know, I've never gone on vacation....I've never missed an acceptance, but I have cancelled it if I thought I wasnt going to have time to mail it. Personally, I much prefer you cancel a request I send out then waiting to make sure you arent going to have the time, because then I just wait a whole bunch of extra time

I think swapadvd should give people 3 days...no more than 3,to accept and send out their items that are requested.it isnt tha dfficult.

For some it would be difficult.  Without Printable Postage that simply wouldn't be an option for me.  I'm not close to a post office and I'm probably far closer than many.  I make postie runs twice a month, which is quite reasonable.  Five days to accept, five days to mail, makes it so people can get to the postie.  I think reducing that window would simply cause more people to mark mailed before they actually did so and lead to even more pseudo-lost DVDs.

I don't know how many not-marked-mailed it takes to flag an account. (I know it's more than two b/c a mem did that to me with a book at PBS.  Didn't mail it, timed out, reposted it, I requested it right away, and he let it time out again, and his account is still active.)  I think tightening up those numbers might be a good idea.

edited because I somehow missed that I double quoted...someday I'll start proofreading these posts...

I"m one of those without a printer who mails everything from the PO.  I always allow myself the max amt of time when I accept, butSince I have  PO Box, I usually go to the PO at least twice a week so most everything gets mailed out quicker than I project.

I always mail same or next day on everything.  I use printable postage, but I'd mail next day anyway.  I do buy $1 stamps as well as forever stamps and 10 and 5 cent stamps for those few items I ship without paying on-line.  That way, I just pop my item in my mailbox and it's gone!!!  No wait for my requestors.

KB's said I'm faster than Amazon Prime!!

Yea, you are phil :-) Unfortunately, not all of us have a mailbox we can stick it into. Even if I bought my postage online id still have to go to the post office to drop it off.

All of you make valid points..but doesn't it seem prudent to tell a requestor you will ship it out at a certain time if you are going to be a few days in mailing it rather then not accepting/cancelling or let it time out at all?

Seems like most DVD's i have been ordering lately are from people who do not even accept it or acknowledge it at all...unfortunately i have never been one for patience and i have been cancelling them after 5 days if no acknowledgment...

those are the people i do not know why they even bother to be a member of this site is all i am saying.

It shows disrespect to this site and it's members in my eye.so i still say 3 days is plenty of time to either,accpept.,agree to mail ata certain day/time or cancel. hope someone can see my point. (just my opinion)

I like the idea Sara had as well. I'll admit there was a couple of months one time where I thought I had my account on hold but due to my own error I did not. So while I had kidney surgery and was recovering I missed lots of requests. ( back then I had lots on my tower though...now not so much ) I think there are people who have a legit reason for letting something time out, but most probably don't. Either they just don't come here anymore period or they don't come here often and then neglect to see they have email from here about requests as well. Oh, and Christopher I agree with you about making it a 3 day window to accept....that IS plenty of time to click a button to let the person on the other end know something.

but doesn't it seem prudent to tell a requestor you will ship it out at a certain time if you are going to be a few days in mailing it rather then not accepting/cancelling or let it time out at all?

Seems like most DVD's i have been ordering lately are from people who do not even accept it or acknowledge it at all...

Oh, that's just wrong.  I don't run into it much here as almost all my requests here are WL offers, but it's an issue at PBS.  I think it's b/c people don't want to refuse my RCs.  See, my RCs just restate postable conditions, sooooo....

unfortunately i have never been one for patience and i have been cancelling them after 5 days if no acknowledgment...

I know it's frustrating and I'm figuring you already know this, but you really should let those time out.  It's the only way to flag those accounts and get them out.

i like saras idea too.

i usually accept within a day or two but i give myself the maximum window to mail. the po is hardly open in my small town and fw is a half hour drive away. i really try to only go there (or have my hubby go there) once or twice a week.

I get really fed up with requests sitting in the account with no action on them--I'm with Christopher on this one, I cancel them if they sit too long!  How hard is it to just send a PM?  I try to do that when I cannot mail right away and I need to wait a day or so to select the mail date as far out as I need to. I write and say "I'm not ignoring your request" and ofer an explanation. I've never had anyone get mad about why I was waiting on mailing. I think making contact is the best route.

Meghan, you only mail twice a month?!  I should get on your schedule!  Unfortunately, when I have to take a pile of dvds to the PO and pay out $10-$20 on postage, that would probably double if I waited two weeks!!  It's better for me to pay as I go, and I go to the PO every day. 

The last two I got in the mail were mailed out a full week AFTER they marked it mailed. Very frustrating when you're waiting for a movie and they haven't even mailed it! I would rather them P.M. me and tell me they were delayed in mailing it, then I would know. Maybe they needed the credits but it's not fair for those of us who are patiently waiting.

Gloria - I only mail twice a month for anything that has to go to the postie.  I use Printable Postage here and at PBS so those things through the system go in a day or so.  Bookmooch, off-archive, anything international (including APOs etc.) all go twice a month.  The postie is to much of a drive to go any more than that.

I always put the postmark date when I receive, not the date postage was purchased.  The postmark is put on there at the first postal station it goes through so it indicates when it was first mailed.  When you purchased the postage has nothing to do with it.  The site wants to know when you actually handed it over to the postal service.

And for those of you who say you cancel on requests that wait to long . . . what do you do after that?  If you re-request (or re-post depending on what end of the transaction you're on), it will just go right back to that same unresponsive member you cancelled on before.  So do you just give up on that title for a while?  That seems like a foolish thing to do.  "I'm impatient and he's taking too long to respond so instead of waiting another day or two for it to time out, I'm going to cancel and then . . . uhhh . . . wait another month to retry this title again and hope that member is no longer on the list."  Huh!?!  If you just wait and let the system time it out, that request/offer will move on to the next person in line and the title will be removed from the unresponsive member's tower/wishlist, as well as leaving a 'mark' on their record for being unresponsive.

I have let some time-out and go on to the next person. . .the others that are cancelled are not WL'd ones, for sure. They're ones that I think, okay my credit has been tied up now for x number of days. When requests sit from week into the next I have to wonder if the person wants to earn a credit or not.  If it's a weekday, maybe the person is at work, then why do they not respond at night? If it's the weekend, or holidays, I tend to take those things into consideration, too.  I think everyone has a reason for not waiting for an item to cancel out and go on to someone else, hey, maybe it was a last credit and a WL comes in. I wouldn't assume we all cancel after one day or two days!  It gets irksome to have so many people let requests sit there w/o bothering to make contact. This, to me, is a legitimate complaint.

And I've had some transactions take a month from the time they were requested until the time I receive them, which I think is rediculous, particularly since they took so long they were claimed lost in mail!  In one case, I didn't think the person deserved their credits because they lied about the real date they mailed, but I had to mark them received. Another person that outright lied about the shipping date had let the transaction time out once, then the second time (it went back to them again), they didn't check "mailed" until the day before it would have timed out the second time! And then still didn't mail until the following week. . .

And Christa, there is a cut off point for mailings, which is one week from the time  the sender indicates as the mailing date.  If someone mails their item over a week after the date they picked, and it goes "lost" due to their late mailing, you are not required to check it in.  Believe me, if someone does that to me again, I will not be checking them in. Oh, but you do have to let them know you are not checking them in, too. Before you do this, check it out with the Team, don't just go by what I said here. I may have left out some detail. 

"If someone mails their item over a week after the date they picked, and it goes "lost" due to their late mailing, you are not required to check it in"

Actually you are. If it goes lost, but you eventually get it, the site requires you to mark it received through your transaction archive to stay in good standing (I'm not sure how they would enforce this unless it was mailed with DC though). I've had this arguement before :-) I think its rediculous that you should have to mark something received that was mailed extremely late (in my case it was a full MONTH after the person marked it mailed). You better BET that I'm checking the dvd to make sure theres NOTHING wrong though, if theres even a slight hiccup or pixalation, its getting rwap because at this point I likely already have 2 of the dvd.

Meghan-ok,3 days may be to short to mail sometimes but definately not to at least accept/decline...wouldnt you agree?

Kerry L.-And for those of you who say you cancel on requests that wait to long . . . what do you do after that?

I personally do not even waste my time with that title after i do,unless it is something i want badly.ill either go online to purchase it or go tow walmart.It is cheaper most times when i buy it instead of with credits.

but after reading alot herein.im not gonna cancel anymore,im gonna let it time out..maybe swap will get on the ball and boot these people.or at least put them on vacation or something.

If someone mails their item over a week after the date they picked, and it goes "lost" due to their late mailing, you are not required to check it in.

umm... yes you are.  If you receive a movie - even after it's been marked "lost" you are still required to mark it received. If you have already received the same title from another member and it has been marked received as well, you won't have an additional credit deducted from your account. From the help docs:

When you receive 2 copies of a DVD after submitting only one request, you are not obligated to give a credit for the extra (canceled) copy.  You are obligated to mark the properly sent copy received.

It's not ridiculous to expect to mark a title received when, in fact, you have actually received it! It's how the system keeps track of who does what and how long the PO is taking to deliver things. If more and more items are being delivered after the date that  SaD considers them "lost" then they would have to adjust the program to make the date it's marked lost further off in order to give more items time to arrive.

I knew someone was going to respond to this!

>>If someone mails their item over a week after the date they picked, and it goes "lost" due to their late mailing, you are not required to check it in.

 umm... yes you are.<<

I got the reply from the horses' mouth, but I really don't want to dig through a mile of emails to find it again, but will if I must. . . You all need to check on your policies. I had two incidents of late mailings, both went lost.  One was mailed over a week past the mail date--it may have a week and a half--and I was told I didn't have to check it in, but did have to let them know why it was not being checked in.  Another was mailed late, again, but was mailed 6 days late--not over a week--and I had to check that one in. (And I wrote to the person whose package I did not mark rec'd and explained why I did not. . .then felt bad and sent them their credit anyway with a little note to mail on time in the future.   I'm not talking about  ALL lost mail packages, only the ones that are seriously late mailing where the late mailing is the cause that they are claimed "lost in mail." 

just my opinion  but I think your generally too impatient.  This seems to be a problem everywhere anymore.  I have had numerous paypal disputes within the first 24 hours of payment sent because I didn't ship immediately.

I trade on here for a few different reasons but I am a small business owner with a very sick daughter and 2 more boys to keep me busy..  At times I can ship right away but other times I am not even able to accept a trade right away.

Ummm, Denise . . . that says to me just the opposite.  Are you sure they won't deduct another credit?  Have you had the experience yourself (or has anyone else here, and can verify?)

"When you receive 2 copies of a DVD after submitting only one request, you are not obligated to give a credit for the extra (canceled) copy.  You are obligated to mark the properly sent copy received."

It says you are to mark the 'PROPERLY SENT COPY' as received.  It makes no mention of having to mark that late-mailed copy as received.