I am fairly new to readitswapit (about 2 months) and I wanted to say that my experience so far has generally been very positive. I have completed some fantastic swaps and now have a massive pile of books to read. However I guess I have also beeen unlucky as I haven't received a book after it was agreed at the end of March. How common is this problem? Readitswapit were very helpful and the user is currently suspended although I still don't have the book and I guess that I probably won't. I see that 2 other people have also left feedback this week and haven't received their books either. The member was still logging on up until about a week ago! She never replied to any e-mails I sent and hasn't left feeedback for me. I hope this is a fairly rare problem and that I have been unlucky to encounter it so early on. All my other swaps have been great and I have come across many friendly people.

tania895:

However I guess I have also beeen unlucky as I haven't received a book after it was agreed at the end of March. How common is this problem? Readitswapit were very helpful and the user is currently suspended although I still don't have the book and I guess that I probably won't. I see that 2 other people have also left feedback this week and haven't received their books either. The member was still logging on up until about a week ago! She never replied to any e-mails I sent and hasn't left feeedback for me. I hope this is a fairly rare problem and that I have been unlucky to encounter it so early on. All my other swaps have been great and I have come across many friendly people.

When I first joined I had quite a few 'sticky' swaps (I'm unbelievably unlucky and attract such things like a magnet... I definitely had more than the average quota of swapping problems), but I've only had one person not send a book, and she was suspended, too. You probably won't get your book now, it's true, but don't give up on swapping. I view it like this... if I had wanted the book then I wouldn't have put it up for swapping, so it's just a wee bit more space on my overcrowded bookshelves, and RISI has given me far more than I could have hoped for. It's so great that the good folk running the site are really responsive to any and all problems, and that combined with people like Hecate here on the forums convinced me to hang in there. I don't regret it, and you won't, either.

i've done ahem....nearly 300 swaps and only once has someone not sent the book, although a few have needed reminding by support before they've done so.
shame to get unlucky early, but i feel it's worth the risk.
most people are very honest, good luck swapping.

I'm sorry to go off the original topic . . . but . . .

Baffiebabe, it's clear from your post that you've been swapping for a while but it says under your name that you joined on the 4th May this year. Does that mean that if you started posting on the forums when they changed - or perhaps changed your name at that time so that forum name and swap name matched - that you were given a joining date which is different from the date that you actually started swapping.

That sounds horribly convoluted - but I hope you can understand what I mean. 

Actually I've just noticed how stupid my last post is.

We've all got joining dates which start with the new forum! It's funny that I noticed yours but didn't notice my own or anyone else's! 

Just to back up what evryone else has said I have done 135 swaps and not one has gone wrong. I have had a couple of very badly described books but nothing I couldn't read!!

 Hang in there. There are far too many good people for this site to go wrong!!

Frances51:

I'm sorry to go off the original topic . . . but . . .

Baffiebabe, it's clear from your post that you've been swapping for a while but it says under your name that you joined on the 4th May this year. Does that mean that if you started posting on the forums when they changed - or perhaps changed your name at that time so that forum name and swap name matched - that you were given a joining date which is different from the date that you actually started swapping.

That sounds horribly convoluted - but I hope you can understand what I mean.

hehe... not a problem. I was wondering the same thing myself. I think that's because I just set up my profile on the new board, even though my ID and email addresses were the same on both sites. I joined last summer, and my first post was apparently on the 8th of August, so I don't really know what's going on with that. I haven't been incredibly active on the boards... I tend to go in spurts. Maybe that has something to do with it? It would be nice if it said when I really joined, but like you said, if anyone looks up my posts they'd see that I've been around a while, so I guess it doesn't much matter. Maybe I'll get lucky as they sort things out and it will have the proper date.
 

tania895:

Thanks everyone - I am certainly not going to give up book swapping - far too addictive!!! .

You have that right... I went into a frenzy of swapping, and one day I sat down and calculated how much I'd spent on postage and it came to over £200 in less than 2 months. I had to shut my swaps down until after xmas so I could recover, and for the most part now I'm just accepting swaps that other people initiate. Hard sometimes to keep a lid on it, though. I'm a confessed bookaholic. Bad bad bad.
 

One thing I'm doing is offering a two-for-one on a lot of my books. When I was younger I didn't take such good care of my books as I do now, so some of them are pretty shabby, though readable. To make up for it I give people a choice for a second one, which will hopefully decrease some of the groaning on my bookshelves. Not that many people have taken me up on it, though. Oh, well. I live in hope.

Oh, and I *still* haven't read my first swap book.