vacation hold

[veteranpartsguy]

While my store was on vacation hold for 4 weeks away, I received some orders and store says if you order it will be a delay in shipping with return date shown. Ebay refunded buyers within a week because I did not ship! I was on vacation hold! ebay said if you do not ship, the buyer gets a refund! It also appears that I, as a seller, did not ship, making it my fault, I have a 5 star rating. Lately Ebay automatically assumes the buyer is a victim, no matter what!

I'm not selling toxic mortgages! No way to get a live person to explain like before. No real way to communicate with anyone, I have tried numerous times and only got the well known circle of steps that bring you back to the beginning. You would think with the amount of money they take on each order, they might listen to a seller once in a while!. I will ve looking for alternate selling platforms a see cannot see ebay survivng the way they do business now! They will have many buyers and no sellers! Perfect! Anybody else get screwed while on vacation hold? Just wondering.

[koinonia215]

There is a another option when using vacation settings and that is to not allow any sales during that time. Unless you are only going to be away for a couple days and your handling time covers the time you will be gone, this is the best option. Many people don't even pay attention to an item description and so we also have many people who don't pay attention that a seller is in vacation mode.

[kensgiftshop]

---

@veteranpartsguy 

---

Just using the vacation option isn't enough, you have to extend your handling time also if you don't hide your listings.

If you don't hide your listings, you still have to ship within your handling time, that's why you need to extend your handling time.

[raccoonvision]

Hi!

Unfortunately, eBay's vacation mode does not work as it should work. In fact, when you put your store on hold, it only adds to your listings the following notification " the seller is currently away, there may be a delay in processing your order." Basically, this is all the "vacation mode" does. The paradox is while you are away, you are still expected to ship out packages in time, according to your handling time. If you don't, "late shipping" counts and you should expect all negative consequences like service metrics dropping, negative feedbacks, item not received requests, etc. All in all, the vacation mode is pretty much useless and leads to severe damage to your account.

How to use it correctly:

1. Activate vacation mode. It will only add "seller away" warnings to all your listings. 

2.  Edit all your listings! (you may want to use bulk edition mode). Change handling time to the period you will be away ( if you plan to be absent for a week, choose 7 days handling time, etc.). Yes, it will inevitably drop your sales, but anyway it is much better than having 10% late shipping rate and a dozen of negative feedbacks after returning to work. 😀

3. It is highly likely that you will have problems with some buyers who " did not see the item won't be shipped tomorrow"  anyway. Handle these requests manually by canceling orders with "buyer asked to cancel order" reason. As long as you are within your handling time limits, it is not your fault that they did not read carefully. 😉

3. When returned, switch the vacation mode off and change handling time to its normal. 

Hopefully, it helps!

[myboardid]

Really the best way is to hide your listings completely. 

[reallynicestamps]

If  you can't ship why are you even allowing your items to be seen?

You can't ship them.

You might not even be able to get computer access while you are away for four weeks.

That's up to 28 days your customer would have to wait before you can even get the purchase in the mail and another week or more before it would arrive.

That's five weeks if all goes smoothly.

A good way to earn a neg from the most patient customer.

EBay was very very stupid to allow Stores that are On Vacation to be visible.  If you are away for a day or two, don't use Vacation.

If you will be away longer, you can't ship, so make your Vacation total by making your items invisible.

[nobody*s_perfect]

As noted, if you don't want to have sales there is an additional option within the vacation settings that you should activate.

The vacation notice goes back a long time, to before eBay had any seller evaluation criteria that were based on shipping performance. It's basically just an "Away" message.

The alert appears on the Help page about vacation settings:

[dees_den]

Kensgiftshop - how do you "hide" listings? I have a store and will need to follow your advise soon - thanks!

[southern*sweet*tea]

I'm not ken, but:

Manage my store>store vacation settings>turn on>check off "keep people from buying your fixed price listings blah, blah" Scroll down and click apply.

https://mesg.ebay.com/mesgweb/ChangeSettings/Initial#strVacHdr

[dees_den]

Thank you southern*sweet*tea - very helpful. Appreciate it!

[pjcdn2005]

---

@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

As noted, if you don't want to have sales there is an additional option within the vacation settings that you should activate.

The vacation notice goes back a long time, to before eBay had any seller evaluation criteria that were based on shipping performance. It's basically just an "Away" message.

The alert appears on the Help page about vacation settings:

---

Every time I read a post like the op's I wonder why eBay refuses to put this 'tip' on the page where sellers turn on their vacation settings.  There would be a lot less unhappy buyers and sellers if people were aware that they need to do more than just turn on the settings.