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@needsome12vbasics wrote:

Thank you - that's all good and well, BUT why do Ebay say they will display a notice on your listings saying you are away and to add the listing to your watch list?  

 

 

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Because eBay do display a notice on listings saying that.

If the seller has kept their listings visible, so that they can still be purchased, the notice will say that the buyer can still purchase the item, but there may be a delay in processing the order, then it gives the date the seller will return.

If the listing is invisible, and can't be purchased, it says they can add the item to a watch list because that's the only option there is - it can't be added to a cart, and it can't be bought. 

There is an option via some third party listing management services whereby you can set a listing's quantity to 0 without ending it so that a seller can maintain sales history when they are out of stock or the item is otherwise temporarily unavailable, but that too will hide it from view on eBay (but it is listing specific, rather than affecting every item in store). Hopefully this will become a fully functioning option available to everyone sometime in the future, as I personally do have occasion where I would like to withdraw an item from sale but not end the listing - I don't want such items visible, though. 

The simple reason for this is that if an item is listed as available on eBay, it has to be available on eBay. If it has to be temporaily unavailable, there's no point making them visible during that time (one of eBay's policies is that if an item is listed on eBay, it can not be offered for sale anywhere else). I honeslty don't think ebay will ever allow listings that can't be purchased to be visible to buyers searching on ebay - it isn't about what a seller wants buyers to see, it's about what buyers want to see, and that's typically things that are available to them.