Should Chess.com Change How Vacation Works?

3) no more than 15 or 30 days in a row

4) auto vacation for all membership levels

The last one is hard to implement, simply because it affects the genuine interest of chess.com to get a refund (there are many members saying that they pay a membership just for the auto-vacation mode, then if all the members have it they wouldn't buy the membership and this is a lost of money).

One way to solve the problem, premium members could have the option to turn on/off this option. If they put the option "on", automatically give the same ability to all his opponents, it doesn't matter if the opponent is premium or not. Thereofe, the user that need it, have it, and his opponent is in equal conditions against him, but this opponent wouldn't have this ability against others if he isn't a premium member too. If he want it, he has to pay a membership.

I wouldn't necessarily cut the rate it accrues, I think that's fine.  The problem is how high it can go.  Diamond and platinum members accrue five days per month, which I think is fine, but I think it should stop accruing at perhaps four weeks rather than the current three months.

I agree with you. Life crises are not limited to 3 days in length, nor a week for that matter.

The average move time is wildly inaccurate. For one thing, it doesn't take into account vacation time used, at all!

Nor time zones.

If you don't like Vacation play a no vacation tournament or set your options to No Time Out.

We already do this for any closed account for any reason. 

Ah, ok.  This was not the case in the past, and I remember an incident where a banned cheater had entered premoves on a forced mate line that was going to result in him checkmating his opponent post-ban.  His opponent had to contact support to get someone to log into the account to resign the game.

But if they're now immediately resigned, that's much better.

Mmmmm.... I think at present when an account is closed all its games continue normally and finally end by time out when the time per move has passed (i.e. auto-vacation stops guarding the closed member).

I don't know what happens with conditional moves and I think still you can lose by time out against a closed member (but you get the points back)

I thing it's ok the no-automatically resignation feature, just because the closed member has the right to appeal and there were cases were the closure was a mistake (I had a problem with the anti-spam - I wasn't spaming -  that closed my account during about 12 hs, the time that I contacted support and they solved the issue). 

I don't think the rate of accumulation is all that bad, the problem is how much it can accumulate to.

If it accumulates at 5 days a month for diamond members, 2 days a month for free members, and in between for lower members, I don't think that's bad, so long as it never adds up to more than, say, four weeks max for diamond members.  That way, those who regularly need to use a day or two here and there can still do so, but nobody can disappear for three months.

And, in an unrated game, I wouldn't have a problem with allowing people to create a game with no time control if they so choose.

The rate of accumulation is a much better method than using a set calendar (starting on January 1st and renewing every year at the same time for example), which would be the main alternative. 

Why would it be?

The January reset method lets you take a lengthy vacation over the New Year period.  It also gives you a hard limit per year, and that limit needs to be significant enough to cover the full year.

The accumulation method means you don't actually need the limit to be as high.

To have a sufficient limit for the full year for someone who regularly takes a week off due to work schedule, etc., you might need to give two months.  This could easily result in someone else abandoning their games and leaving you hanging for two months.

The accumulation method, on the other hand, would mean the person who regularly takes a week off would have it recharge between breaks, so the total would never need to accumulate to more than a couple weeks to cover their situation.

how about if you're "on vacation" you cant use chess.com at all. I understand people have connection issues or maybe something happens where you cant play: death, honeymoon etc. but people abuse it. I make a good move and then people put the game on vacation hoping for me to resign because it gets old seeing the same game on my feed. and when they do come back I've completely forgot my plan of attack. one vacation per game, two weeks max. or the first option I laid out.

Some members do other things as managing a club, train tactics, read an article, etc. And that doesn't mean they have time or desire to also play daily (I mean playing it seriously, not just move the pieces) at that moment.

If smb abuse, report it!