Back from vacation and...
Felt the need to post. If this helps any person avoid the scary hassle I had, it'll be worth it. Because wow Ebay is super deceptive with what they tell you to do if you're going away. And help? It's really hard to find, and certainly there's none online. Is it on purpose/malicious? I don't think so, I just don't think they're very good at what they do with their help pages.
The ONLY SAFE WAY to vacation your listings auctions OR fixed price
1. Go thru each one and set your handling time to more days than the vacation. Gone 8? Set for 10.
That's it.
The only thing you can do, or they'll be happy to burn you because everything's automated.
The help page will of course, call your fixed price stuff 'a store' and tell you how to set it to away, and it gives you this cute little calander where you pick the days you're gone to and from, and helps you set your 'my ebay messages' away message and all, and then lets you hit "save settings" and says everything's all well and good.
But it's not.
That does LITERALLY NOTHING.
Unless you're paying for a store/subscription on ebay. But it lets you go thru all the steps and doesn't remind you/tell you/warn you anywhere that it doesn't apply to fix price or myshop stuff. It lets you act like you have a store when you don't. It leads you into thinking you did the right thing, AND that it will apply to the listings you have up NOW. Terms like 'vacation for fix price', 'vacation listings', 'away from ebay'....all those terms point to the same misleading help page.
So of course, what happens is 2 of the items that I've had up at fixed price that languished for months sold the very first day we hit the wilderness due to murphy's law or something idk.
I ended up having to call ebay (o no) and they said the only thing to do was refund both buyers & then gave the 'handling time' advice, or the 'just tear down all your auctions and end everything right now, then relist it all when you get back'. Well, part 2 of course seems sniffing for fees. So I 1by1 handling time'd and it worked fine, but was labor intensive. Then, naturally, nothing else sold for the whole trip.
But it seems like that advice is nowhere on the internet...at least I sure couldn't find it when I really needed it.
And if that happens, I get compelled to publish the information somewhere at least, so maybe it helps someone.
It's especially relevant because now the whole 'fix price is good till cancelled' thing they implemented. Of course, I was running 0 auctions, and ordinarily I'd of let the fix prices just run out/have nothing up because I know how to be good and plan ahead. But the new way is 'they're up forever' so this is an important bit of info to know.