I need your ideas on how to handle my 3 month vacation.

[musicyouneed]

I will be going away for 3 months Jan 2 to beginning of April 6.  I will have access to the internet while I away.  I do not want to shut everything down as I may lose all my listings and it is a lot of work putting them back up.   I have 3 accounts with about 2500 listings so I need to make sure I do not lose them.

Options are:

1.   I could put myself on vacation mode for 30 days and then do it again for 30 days then again for 30 days then for 6 days.

2.   I could zero out my quantity, just keep track of which ones I zeroed out.

3.   A combination of both.

4.  I could put myself on vacation for 30 days, then end all my listings and hopefully they will remain in ended for 90 days. 

Anyone else got any other ideas or advice?  

[ricarmic]

I was on vacation for 7 weeks in the summer.

I ran for 30 days, opened and "immediately" reclosed for the remainder of the time.

*A caveat though, a regular buyer somehow managed to buy something in the couple hours that the items reappeared. (the re-shutdown does not happen instantly it takes a couple hours).

[femmefan1946]

I'd shut down completely for 30 days, not even have my items show with an "On Vacation" notice which is just asking  for trouble, using the "Seller Away" function.

And like ricarmic,reopen and close again for a few minutes onDay 29.

[38e_avenue]

---

@femmefan1946 wrote:

I'd shut down completely for 30 days, not even have my items show with an "On Vacation" notice which is just asking  for trouble, using the "Seller Away" function.

And like ricarmic,reopen and close again for a few minutes onDay 29.

---

It's what I do, except I relist 60-70 days after I shut all listings down. I think they all are stored in "unsold listings" for 90 days, but don't want to take the risk to verify it myself  😁

[38e_avenue]

I wonder why everyone here is talking about 30 days. It's now 90 days. 

And seriously, do not play any silly game with "seller on vacation" or "seller away". Just shut down all listings to avoid troubles.  

[musicyouneed]

I think the 30 days that everyone is referring to is the max on vacation shutdown.  Shutting it down for 90 days would not work for me as I will be gone for more than 90 days.  In my case I would need to do a combination, put myself on vacation for 30 days and then end all my listing and they hopefully should be there when I return. 

[38e_avenue]

---

@musicyouneed wrote:

Shutting it down for 90 days would not work for me as I will be gone for more than 90 days.  

---

Sure, but you can relist on 80th or 85th day, and then shut down again, getting 90 days more. 

I am doing since many years - it works just perfectly. No need to use the vacation setting at all. 

Check your store allowance first - if you have Premium, you can freely shut down and relist all the listings. 

It was much more complicated before they introduced the 10.000 allowance and 31 days listings.  

It's how vacation setting works 😅

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I have two different suggestions.

Assuming you can put aside one 2 hour chunk on your vacation to deal with eBay, I would suggest shutting down completely until you are roughly 4 weeks away from being home. Remove all your listings, go completely inactive.

Your listings should be saved in the ended listings section. When you are a month away from being home, re-list everything. Bulk edit the handling time to 30 days, and then put your store in vacation mode. 

Every few days, take a minute to check if you have any sales, returns, etc. If you have sales, you won't have to ship them for 30 days and the buyer should have seen the extended handling time. I would still write a stock message that serves as a friendly reminder that the buyer bought something from you while you are on vacation mode, and they should receive a shipping confirmation in 30 days when their item ships out. You don't really have to do this, but as we know not everybody reads the listing. This way, if a buyer doesn't realize the item wasn't going to ship for that long, you can cancel the order for them.

With that said, if you operate a store that doesn't have extremely high volume and if you aren't strictly relying on the income from the eBay store, I would advise you to keep your listings ended until you return. It would still be a good idea to check eBay once a week in case you have returns from previous orders, but if the income is just side money or hobby money, and if you're not making a significant amount of sales, I don't think the hassle justifies interfering with your vacation. 

The only exception would be if you are a seller who has a really popular multi-quantity listing that has great 'Best Match' placement. For example, let's say you sell the most popular hammer on eBay or something, and you sell a dozen of those a week. Then your strategy is going to be different, because you don't want to end a listing that earned that kind of placement. 

[musicyouneed]

Great advice.  Now ending the listings, do you use the relist feature or do you use sell similar.  What concerns me is I have several listing with more than 1 quantity, say for instance I have 3 and sold 2 of them and only have 1 left, I don't want to relist 3 but only the one remaining, how do I ensure that doesn't happen?

[38e_avenue]

I always use "sell similar" only. Concerning the multi-quantity listings, I don't really know how it might work. I also have multiple items, buy always list them one by one.  Try to shut down and relist 1 of these items, so you will immediately know it actually resets to the original quantity. 

[38e_avenue]

---

@ilikehockeyjerseys wrote:

Every few days, take a minute to check if you have any sales, returns, etc. If you have sales, you won't have to ship them for 30 days and the buyer should have seen the extended handling time. 

---

Well, that's doesn't sound like a real vacation to me. Checking the sales every few days, sending e-mails if something sells, explaining to buyers why they will get the item with 30-day delay.  This is not only too risky, but might also seriously perturb the vacation. Many years ago, I got a late payment from a customer 30 days after the sale. My store was closed, I was in Europe. It happened about 15 years ago, and I still remember that as a very unpleasant experience. Jamais plus! (never again!)   🙄

[recped]

I have used Out Of Stock a number of times for lengthy "vacations", the longest was 60 days.

It's a bit of work if you are listings multiple quantities (I rarely do) as you will need to manually reset the inventory levels when you reopen.

eBay ends OOS listings on the date of the 6th month renewal, then they go into Unsold for another 90 days.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

I agree. That is similar to the sentinment I stated at the end of my post. Unless they do a high volume of sales, or they depend on the income from eBay to survive, they should just close the listings until they get back.