Vacation settings

[leslie8018]

Vacations settings are for information only  for your buyers.  If you do not end all of your listings or change your handling time to reflect your return date you will be penalized by eBay for late shipments.  I have just lost my Top Rated Seller status because of this very reason.  According to customer service, once you change your vacation settings you can go into the "help" section to see if a vacation actually affects your listings.  Who does this?  As a seller, I assumed the vacation setting would put my shipments on hold - WRONG.  So be aware.

[castlemagicmemories]

It won't help you, but you are not alone.

Have read SO many threads just like this through the years.

Sorry, it is sad.

[odditiesandantiquities1]

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@leslie8018 wrote:

Vacations settings are for information only  for your buyers.  If you do not end all of your listings or change your handling time to reflect your return date you will be penalized by eBay for late shipments.  I have just lost my Top Rated Seller status because of this very reason.  According to customer service, once you change your vacation settings you can go into the "help" section to see if a vacation actually affects your listings.  Who does this?  As a seller, I assumed the vacation setting would put my shipments on hold - WRONG.  So be aware.

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I too had some late shipments myself when I put myself on vacation. I didn't realize that I had to change the handling time. Now I do and I get sales when I go away without any penalization. Fortunately, we never go where we don't have access to messages, so I am able to contact each customer when they purchase as well. 

[gltreasurehunters]

This also happened to me. But the people at Ebay really helped me out. The other thing is that the handling time keeps going to 1 day. I always do 2 day. I keep forgetting to switch it for every listing. So that hurts me as well. 

But anyways. The vacation buttin only is for a message about you being gone. I learned the hard way too

[swenson8781]

It's unfortunate that there is no good clarification of what 'should' be done to prevent losing TRS status, however, I do think there is a message that states your listings will still be visible and available for purchase even if you have 'vacation' settings on.

If you have a store, you can completely hide your listings so they are not available for purchase at all.  I do that every time I'm going to be gone.

If you don't have a store, I think the only way to prevent sales is to end all of your listings.  Or if time allows, you can simply extend your handling time.  But I've heard sometimes that backfires too, as buyers don't read/realize that the delivery is going to be delayed 😞

[dcintennessee]

I'm getting ready to "open a store" and this is a useful caution. Thank you! 

Next month I have to be away for a Thursday-Sunday, without time to ship Wedensday purchases before I leave. I planned to extend handling time, instead of possibly scaring away potential buyers with the yellow vacation banner. But....I just realized that handling time isn't stated on the listing?? Is it there, and my old eyes are overlooking it?

I know somewhere I've seen "this seller typically ships within x days of cleared payment."  But now I can't find it on listings, nor on the confirmation emails for my last couple of purchases.  Is the estimated delivery date a buyer's only clue regarding the seller's handling time?

[partial*eclipse]

eBay's current policy is to NOT show the handling time to buyers; they  state that they only show the estimated delivery date(s).  Nevertheless, many listings do show the handling time, BUT only if the bueyr clicks through to the shipping tab.

 If your handling time is 4 days or more, the shipping time note in the listing header has a yellow alert message.

[partial*eclipse]

There is also an option to Hide all of your fixed price listings, so you have no sales during the vacation period. This option is a checkbox at the bottom of the vacation setup  screen.

The vacation settings and the Help page about them were set up long before eBay started using shipping time as a seller evaluation measure. Just a simple one-sentence update in the Help page would save a lot of aggravation and disappointment for Store subscribers who are doing their best to be conscientious sellers.

brian_burke@ebay