Advice sought on holiday mode settings

[thebossesaccount]

Our main eBay store site is very active and averages 15-20 sales per day.  We have worked hard over the years to build a solid reputation for both qulaity of products and the despatch of order on the same day as received.

At long last, we want to take a one week vacation, but with the least possible negative impact on our eBay status and sales.

It is my understanding we can (a) put our store on "holiday mode", and warn buyers of a delay in processing orders (b) block buyers from making a purchase during the holiday mode setting (or so I am informed by eBay reps) and (c) extending our current 1 day process/shipping of order to (say) 7 days.

I would greatly appreciate input from the more learned members as to the best way forward, and in particular  will help protect our eBay status.

[kopenhagen5]

I suggest setting the holiday mode to listings visible but buyers cannot purchase.

That means there will be a notification on listings that you are away.

And buyers can still add your listings to their watch list but just can't purchase.

[twyngwyn]

This is what I do:
Set your handling time to 10 days......when in 'holiday mode' add the blurb that you will not have internet access between such & such a date, as nothing will be posted between these dates ( ), so please do not pay until internet access is available.....take a screen shot of info.....go about your life as normal. If there is a problem ebay will accept the screenshot & delete any defects against you

[brerrabbit585]

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@kopenhagen5 wrote:

I suggest setting the holiday mode to listings visible but buyers cannot purchase.

That means there will be a notification on listings that you are away.

And buyers can still add your listings to their watch list but just can't purchase.

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There's no such setting.  Either they're visible and they can buy, or they're not visible so they can't buy.

I'd take twyngwyn's advice, except that I'd forget trying to tell them not to pay straight away.  If you've been opted in to immediate payment you'll only confuse the buyers, and many would ignore it anyway.

[twyngwyn]

I'm not opted in to immediate payment....but point taken 🙂

[kopenhagen5]

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@brerrabbit585 wrote:

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@kopenhagen5 wrote:

I suggest setting the holiday mode to listings visible but buyers cannot purchase.

That means there will be a notification on listings that you are away.

And buyers can still add your listings to their watch list but just can't purchase.

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There's no such setting.  Either they're visible and they can buy, or they're not visible so they can't buy.

I'd take twyngwyn's advice, except that I'd forget trying to tell them not to pay straight away.  If you've been opted in to immediate payment you'll only confuse the buyers, and many would ignore it anyway.

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Oh, I thought I had read in another thread that listings could still be placed on watch lists but purchases couldn't be made ?

[lyndal1838]

If a buyer has an item on their Watch List it remains visible to that buyer but cannot be bought and that buyer cannot see any other items in the store.

No idea what the setting is as I am not a seller.

[*tippy*toes*]

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@twyngwyn wrote:
I'm not opted in to immediate payment....but point taken 🙂

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I'm not opted into immediate payment either, but eBay has kindly forced it upon me without my consent. Something they are good at doing.

[brerrabbit585]

It's a Clayton's option - an option that's not an option.

[digital*ghost]

Personally, I'd hide the listings if taking a break more than around 3-4 days. It's true that you might be able to sort any problems with eBay afterwards, but that avoids the problems all together (it's really common for buyers to miss holiday notices and / or extended ETAs). During a break, I don't want to be thinking or worrying about accruing tasks, or any buyers getting increasingly frustrated with delays, regardless of whether the info was available to them or not. 

The drawback of making listings invisible and not selling anything in the interim is you can sometimes take a little bit of a hit in search rankings, and of course no turnover in the holiday period. Plus, the listings can take a while to reappear on site once you take the holiday settings off. (You can get them to come back up faster by doing a 'soft edit' on them, i.e. load them into the bulk editing tool, change nothing at all, but submit them as if you have - this seems to re-index them almost immediately instead of up to 24 hours later).

Whichever option you select, I'd recommend also creating an 'out of office' auto reply when you put the holiday mode on, so that anyone who messages you gets notified of the holiday and any potential delays to getting a normal reply etc.