When I upgraded my membership in November, 2009, premium members received the following "bump" in their vacation:
Gold: 1 extra day per month if renewed monthly; 14 extra days if renewed yearly.
Diamond/Platinum: 2 extra days per month if renewed monthly; 28 extra days if renewed yearly.
The above is in addition to the 2 days per month that everyone receives. I don't think that this policy has changed.
Ah-- that's a substantial difference. I wonder why they don't mention that on their basic package comparison page?
If the platinum/diamond members are actually getting 58 days of vacation added each year, that should end the nonsense that vacation days are only for "true" vacations. Clearly, the average worker does not get 8 weeks of annual vacation, even in Europe, where average paid annual leave is more than double that in the U.S., so chess.com must expect those days to be used for other purposes too.
I just learned that the U.S. is the only country that doesn't have a legal minimum number of annual paid leave days (at least on this list of 72 countries), but for info for those of you elsewhere, 2 weeks (10 work days) is a typical annual vacation allotment for a full-time job in the U.S., working up to perhaps 4 weeks after a lot of seniority on the job. Some jobs also have a few legal holidays with pay, but they don't add up to anywhere near the number of vacation days that chess.com doles out.
EDIT: Sorry, that should be 56 days in my 1st paragraph (based on woton's info), not 58. Also, added the vacation information link.
Dear friend, your proposed solution is so obvious that you really don't need to mention it so many times. The system was working great for me, but not anymore. I'm upset and annoyed because I have games ongoing that will eat up my vacation. More important, IMO the rule doesn't take into consideration the weekends and will affect more users. That's why I'm complaining.
BTW, did you thought how much period of time will take a 5 days/move game in order to be finalised ?
Anyway, instead of being posted on a thread like this, can this kind of important announcements be send by a message to all the users, like happened to a lot of other announcements (Carlsen match for example) ?
vacation time? if I used my vacation time due to computer crashed,which it did once,but if I am off chess.com for more than 24 hours, it will be due to some died in my family;this is my vacation...
Yes, if you renew you get extra days. But I guess it doesn't apply to lifetime diamond members, ie. titled players and those who bought the $500 lifetime
Although 61 minutes were left, I was put on vacation with following message, and I lost 1 day of vacation:
You may have as little as 30 minutes remaining in one or more of your Online Chess games and because you are a Premium Member your account has been automatically set to "Vacation". Please login soon and continue your games!
The games which triggered this event are:
http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=40743668
http://www.chess.com/echess/game.html?id=40743669
It says "as little as", not "less than". Nothing wrong with the agreement of the message with the situation, although the notification might be better worded to start with something like "You have less than 90 minutes left on at least one of your games...."
An honest wording of the message would be "We're taking away a day off of your banked vacation even though there's still plenty of time for you to make a move before your time expires. This is another bonus feature of our new improved vacation system."
I don't think that qualifies as "telling the truth without judgement or blame", so therefore it fails in the "honest" department.
Perhaps paying members should have the option to turn off Auto-Timeout-Protection.
... if they paid a little more?
... if they paid a little more?
Funny guy. 
No need to explain Eric. Its your website and your rules. If people dont like the rules they can go back to yahoo chess.
Personally i agree with the change.
On another note...you going to Reno next week?
I dont like it..
Im going away for 10 days tomorrow.. :/
people actually go on vacation you know..
did you even read what i wrote??
Did he read it? Probably
Did he comprehend it? No
I dont like it..
Im going away for 10 days tomorrow.. :/
people actually go on vacation you know..
did you even read what i wrote??
Did he read it? Probably
Did he comprehend it? No
Did he comprehend it? Yes,
Did he care? No.
OH, you know you know you know id never ask you to change, if perfects what your searching for then just stay the same...
we're making a change to vacation soon: all vacations will be a MINIMUM of 1 day. so, no more using "vacation" time to just manage an over-loaded games list.
vacation was meant for when you go on vacation and can't play your games for a few days, not as a way of extending lost positions or enabling people to play too many games.
so if you are the guy who uses auto-vacation to cover you for a few hours while you make too many moves, or make all of your moves in all of your other games but refuse to make a move in the game you are losing badly, you will quickly find yourself running out of time.
i know some people will disagree with this, but those people are probably the people mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Erik, you have a very fun site here. However, you are straying drastically from the concept with this bizarre vacation policy. Most of your paid subscribers are on this site because they love the game. They (we) aren't here to "game" your system. We want to play with other amateur chess enthusiasts. We aren't trying to use vacation days to manage an unmanageable list of games. We aren't trying to use vacation time to avoid losing. The free subscribers may be doing this. So why not punish them, not us? I'm very, very serious about this. You have changed the vacation policy so that it's actually unmanageable for me. I only use vacation time when I'm expecting not to be able to access the internet for several hours. I would like to be able to find a wifi hotspot in an airport, make a few moves, get on a plane, and then look for anothe hotspot a few hours later. Please, please reconsider this new policy, at least for paid members. Thank you.
Catherine Mambretti
Premium members get at least 30 days vacation per year - so this does allow for quite a few 'unable to get back in time' episodes - even when there is a one day minimum.
Doesn't vacation accrue at the same rate for everyone (24 days per year)? It's just that unused vacation can be stockpiled in greater amounts (60 days and 90 days as maximums) by the higher-ups.