Why would I receive an alert telling me that I had used all of my vacation time when I never asked for any vacation time?
I would guess you were accidentally set on vacation but you would not have noticed since it applies to online not live games.
Check here to see if you have to turn vacation off. You may want it later if you start playing online games. http://www.chess.com/home/echess_settings.html
Uncheck "PAUSE MY GAMES! I'm on vacation: please pause all of my games!" then Save Settings
Why would I receive an alert telling me that I had used all of my vacation time when I never asked for any vacation time?