Mid-August I took chess.com vacation and left for some rest out of the net. For some reason it did not work (it seems the system cancelled it, or maybe dropped it). So I lost plenty of games on time.

I doubt it is possible to recover them, but maybe somebody could check for the reasons of the problem.

Also: after I spotted first messages about my games timing out (I did not have a computer but gmail mobile works on my phone and I checked it from time to time) I tried logging-in from my phone to re-establish my vacation. Then I faced the "you can't take vacation as you have games where you are to move" condition (and my phone browser was too stupid to make me able to make any move). Yet another reason to reconsider this restriction.

You can get around this with premium membership (i.e. bribes).

It is likely that you ran out of vacation time.

I think that it requires it to not be your move in any games, and you also need to go to the bottom of the page and save -- missing this latter part sounds like it might be what happened to you.

i'm glad it failed.  vacations are stupid.

Vacations are necessary, especially since it takes two of you to dictate the overall pace of a game which makes it impossible to plan your game load around your vacation schedule.

That same thing happened to me to, but I had know about my vacation ahead of time and had avoided starting any games before I left, so I only lost one.

>>Renegade

@conman1000 No, I did not run out of vacation time, my first games timed out 3 days after I left, the system behaved as if I did not take this vacation at all.

@TheGrobe I don't exactly remember what I clicked and how, but I understood how this form is working and I succesfully booked some vacation two months ago (and I spotted the "you must make move" restriction then already), so I don't think my mistake is very likely

@ilikeflags As far as I know it is possible to create (and play) "non-vacation" tournaments here, so you have your option. For people who happen to leave the internet for a week or two working vacation system is a must, especially considering chess.com is yet to discover Fischer controls (clocks with increment).