Understanding Your Reliability Score

Your reliability score shows how dependable you are when lending and borrowing books. It helps build trust in your community and influences how the system routes book requests.

One score, two signals

You have a single composite reliability score from 0 to 100. Two rolling diagnostic rates back it up:

Response rate (30 days) — how often you respond to borrow requests on time when someone asks to borrow your book.
Return rate (90 days) — how often you return books on or before their due date.

The composite score weights both, plus a few smaller signals (commitment fulfillment, dispute outcomes, recent activity).

Reliability levels

Your score maps to a level you’ll see throughout the app:

Score	Level
90–100	Excellent
80–89	Good
65–79	Fair
0–64	Poor
(no recent activity)	New Member

What the system tracks

Positive signals:

Approving or declining borrow requests within 24 hours
Returning books by the due date
Meeting your dropoff commitments
Picking up books within the pickup window
Being vindicated in a dispute

Negative signals:

Not responding to borrow requests at all (largest negative — silence is the worst signal)
Returning books late (severity scales with how late — 1 day late is much lighter than 3 weeks late)
Missing pickup windows
Missing dropoff commitments after approving
Cancelling an approved loan before handoff (lighter than going silent — at least you communicated)

Neutral (zero impact):

Opening a dispute. Reporting problems is never punished.
Initiating a recall. Recalls are soft requests; asking for your book back doesn’t cost you anything.
Granting or denying an extension request.

How the score recovers

The score uses a 180-day rolling window with exponential decay — older actions count less than recent ones. A bad week from six months ago has very little weight today.

Fresh start: if you go 90 days without any negative actions and complete at least 3 positive actions in that window, the system automatically grants you a small reliability boost (“fresh start”). You’ll get a notification when this happens.

Pause your lending when life happens

If you can’t lend right now (vacation, busy season, recovering from something), open the My Reliability page and tap Pause lending. While paused:

You won’t receive new borrow requests.
If anyone tries to request from you, they’ll see “On hold” and can pick a different lender.
Any decline events recorded against you while paused are neutral — no penalty.

Resume any time. Active loans you’ve already started continue normally.

Where you’ll see it

My Reliability (in Settings or on the Loans page) — your score, level, response and return rates, recent activity, and pause toggle.
Borrow request notifications — the lender sees your score on the request card.
Approval dialog — the lender sees your level when deciding whether to approve.
Source picker — when you have multiple lenders to choose from, the picker shows each one’s score.

How the score affects lending

High score — lenders are more likely to approve your requests; the auto-router prioritizes responsive lenders.
Low score — library admins may flag your account for platform admin review.

Notifications

The system only notifies you about your reliability when something meaningful changes — not on every event. You’ll see:

A push when your level changes (e.g. moving up to Good).
An in-app notification when you earn a fresh start.

You can always check the current state on the My Reliability page.

Tips

Respond to borrow requests within 24 hours, even if it’s a decline.
If you can’t lend right now, pause lending instead of letting requests time out.
Set up push notifications so you don’t miss time-sensitive lending actions.

Still Need Help?

If you have questions about your reliability score, contact support.