I’ve been a member/lurker for a bit over a year. I find the FT forums incredibly helpful. I fly about 4 times a year, which isn’t much compared to most of you.

I’ve posted a few posts and mostly have received great info.

However what I’ve found is that when a FT member says send me a PM they do not respond. IMO me that’s just plain rude.

For example, I’ve been hoping to get a lounge pass. I’ve sent PM to members offering passes and have not even received a reply. I would appreciate at minimum a yes or no response.

Is that the normal behaviour?

Lounge passes are a bit of a tricky thing. Some people who offer lounge passes are interested in giving them out to their online friends or frequent posters. It would probably be better for all if this activity were strongly discouraged on FT.

I understand that they would rather give them to a friend.

I still think a simple reply would be the polite thing to do. "Sorry lady I don't know you"

I agree completely!

Thank you- You have good manners

While I agree with you, I think its important to keep in mind two things:

1. Your post count isn't very high, and I faced the same thing as you when new to FT as well. You'll find that once you've contributed more and people see that you're not just a freeloader, that you're more likely to get responses. I realize its frustrating, and post count isn't everything, but it does show that you stick around a contribute rather than just asking for things.

2. Some posters may be bombarded with PMs, like I have been after certain posts, and while it may be good manners, it doesn't make much sense to respond to 20 different people with a bunch of different questions to say, "Thanks, but I don't have time to give you a detailed response, etc."

Just my few cents. Stick around, and continue to contribute. You may find that there comes a day when you don't have the time/energy/desire to respond to every PM you get as well.

I should be so popular! Thank you for the advice.

I will continue to contribute as I can, my knowledge is limited, I'm here to learn.

That's how we all started!

^

low post count = sometimes no response to pm

If a fellow FTer has personally responded to you in a thread inviting you to PM them and then doesn't respond to said PM, that could certainly be construed as rude. If said FTer just made a generic post in an ongoing thread, I wouldn't take too much offense if they didn't reply to PMs. Just keep contributing and participating in the forums to show good faith.

In general, do people feel obligated to respond to every unsolicited email they receive? I don't. If I were to do this, it would simply be too time consuming and I don't wish to spend my time writing back to strangers who work for Nigerian banks, are trapped overseas with no money, etc.

I also feel that if offering free stuff here means that you must/should respond personally to every expression of interest that your offer generates, it would discourage some people from attempting to gift this stuff to others as the process becomes just too much work for the one who's trying to be generous. Most folks tend to repost in the original thread when all of the goodies have been claimed a statement that everything is gone, sometimes as a new post and sometimes as an edit added to the initial post. IMO this is perfectly adequate.