Do not use vacation mode!

[ryangillam]

It is broken again 🙂



I have been switched to vacation mode for 48 hours. I have received 7 orders. I was told it had been fixed and thus I went from pausing gigs to vacation mode again. Turns out that it is not fixed.



Proof:

[ryangillam]

Apparently that is not a glitch. Apparently the customer did not order it at the time that the system says they did. Crazy, but apparently that is the official line.



I mean, it clearly says that the ordered it 1 minute before submitting the information. If this was a gig that was ordered before vacation mode was active then it would not say that ‘customer has ordered your gig’, it would just say ‘customer has submitted the information’ as the first thing would have happened a while back. But apparently nobody sees it from my point of view.



At the moment I really suggest that nobody uses vacation mode. It is buggy as hell as you have absolutely no backup now since Customer Support refuse to recognize that it is just as glitch as it was in the past (late delivery cancellation feedback could have been removed previously, now it can’t because they claim the issue has been solved)



Pause your gigs people if you want to enjoy a bit of down time.

[wingle]

2 weeks ago i enabled the vacation mode. And i got 3 new orders. And those orders were new and was not placed previously. To me it seems fiverr system takes much longer time to suspend gig from listing and actually enables the Vacation Mode.

[mark74]

Reply to @wingle: I add this: when I turned vacation mode off, my profile still had “vacation mode” active and CS had to fix it for me (and took several days too!!!).

Vaction mode is buggy and need to be fixed soon…

[mark74]

Take a look at this other discussion: http://forum.fiverr.com/discussion/27033/vacation-mode-on-and-still-getting-orders#Item_8

[ryangillam]

It just seems odd. I am struggling to convince CS that this is a very real bug.



To make things worse, the agent who was dealing with it originally misunderstood my request. He thought I was saying that my vacation mode was stuck ‘on’ (like some of you have been dealing with). He then flicked it off which instantly sent out a notification to 10 people that I was no longer on vacation. Within 10 minutes 4 of them had ordered from me…thankfully they are regular customers, but still. Got to learn to read messages!

[thecreativeguys]

We have 2 options:

1 put our account on vacation mode.

2 suspend our gigs.



I think we should have a fast and EFFICIENT option. I think they should have a gig option to put the orders on hold. not the gig!



Can I help you with some work? 😉



Best of luck

🙂 Joe

The Creative Guys

[ryangillam]

Do you just respond to threads without really understanding what they are about? 😕 We do have a feature to put orders on hold. It does not work properly. Customer Support are denying that it does not work despite evidence to the contrary.

[Guest celticmoon]

Reply to @ryangillam: You said to thecreativeguys: Do you just respond to threads without really understanding what they are about?



It’s certainly a slightly less-obvious way to self-promote, yes?

😉

[cheezees]

Reply to @ryangillam: I’ve noticed that too. Adding unhelpful, sometimes incorrect advice when it is obvious that the original post was not thoroughly read. They need to stop.

[ryangillam]

I am getting completely tired of this vacation mode glitch. It hit me just over three weeks ago. Vacation mode was active. Came home to a wave of gigs. Like, more than I would normally get (because I would pause when they come in). Despite no sleep I am finding it VERY difficult to get through everything. I dread to think how much negative feedback I will get at the end of this. It sucks because I loathe letting customers down. Most of these customers will never purchase from me again despite the situation NOT being my fault (one person even went so far as to say he did not believe me because Fiverr’s site was coded perfectly…he was a programmer after all and knew these things)



The gig is STILL taking orders despite the vacation mode trigger being on. I do not know what to do.



If somebody gets evidence that their gig takes orders with vacation mode on (despite a screenshot not being enough evidence for CS…they wanted me to screencap emails too (which I deleted almost instantly)). So yeah! If there was a feasible way to stop orders coming in (taking the gig offline is not feasible any more) then that would be great, otherwise I will dig myself further and further into a hole.

[jtengle]

I turned vacation mode on last week and didn’t have any new orders slip through. My problem is that last time I couldn’t turn it off. It stayed on for several days after it was supposed to. I even tried to manually switch it off with no luck.



It should switch me back to active this afternoon and I know I have buyers waiting. Fingers crossed it doesn’t glitch out this time.

[venussgirl]

There is a bug into this so i dont use it until their repair it.

[ryangillam]

jtengle said: I turned vacation mode on last week and didn't have any new orders slip through. My problem is that last time I couldn't turn it off. It stayed on for several days after it was supposed to. I even tried to manually switch it off with no luck.

 

I wish I had that bug :( Customer Support do not seem to recognize that I had a problem DESPITE that screenshot above. They seem adamant that there is no problem and that buyer ordered a while back and only just sent the information (if that was the case then it would not say "customer just purchased your gig, wait for them to submit information". Even the customer confirmed that the had ordered it just then (they said they could just click the order button on my gig like normal). It's just silly :(

[ryangillam]

Still nobody accepting that a bug is occurring. I have had cancellations galore as this has occurred for about 3 weeks now. It’s just…gah. I have no chance of most of these people ordering from me again because most people seem to think it is my fault (somebody just told me I should be working quicker as a show of customer service…) ghastly.

[alliemadison12]

ryangillam said: To make things worse, the agent who was dealing with it originally misunderstood my request. He thought I was saying that my vacation mode was stuck 'on' (like some of you have been dealing with).

 

Geeze! That's horrible. I had an experience with CS yesterday, too, where I made a very clear request and I feel like it wasn't even read because the response was the opposite of what I had asked. Smh

 

Just a piece of advice for anyone who wants a break/is going on vacation but can still have Internet access: Set the deadlines for when you'll be back rather than completely suspending them. I stayed in the US for spring break so I did have fast internet connection. I made my delivery time 15 days, to give time for when I got back.

Orders continued to flood in, so I didn't have to worry about losing 2 weeks of $/sales, and I had time to complete them when I got back.

 

[cristinaghy]

Ryan, all this sounds like a nightmare. I am super busy these months since I need to write my BA paper and I was thinking to use the vacation mode. After I’ve read all this I’m having second thoughts, so I had to suspend some gigs that would take more time to deliver. I basically suspended all my writing gigs and left only translations.

I feel like all this is unfair; I mean why wouldn’t CS listen to so many people (because I’ve read bad stories about vacation mode before) and stand their ground that everything is fine? I mean…it’s so clear that it’s far from fine…

[mrbilalmemon]

thanks for this post

[cheezees]

Reply to @mrbilalmemon: ???

[lilymichelena]

I put vacation mode on three days ago and received an order today. I’m trying to explain that to the costumer. I’m pausing the gigs. Is this normal? It’s usually broken like this?

[ryangillam]

Ah,



Another person who has this problem! Get in touch with customer support 🙂 The idea of vacation mode is so that you do not lose your ranking in the searches when you return. Pausing your gig WILL contribute towards a loss in ranking. You do not want that obviously.



Technical support are now dealing with the ‘issue’ (although I reported this three weeks ago, they claimed they fixed it, but alas no). I did get an interesting thing from customer support though. Apparently cancellation rate CAN be manually changed. They are looking into doing that for me on the cancelled orders received whilst in vacation mode.

[amberdwallace88]

wow thanks for the inform

[calisto2986]

A really good idea @alliemadison12!



As of right now, I don’t trust the vacation mode (never used it, but heard bad stories lol) So what I do, is suspend all of my gigs, AND include the reason I’m suspending them in my profile bio, so when regulars see my gigs gone, they can go to my profile and read “Got a cold, be back soon!” or “Out of town for the weekend 😃 Be back on Tuesday!” etc!



Setting the deadline later is a great idea though, I’d like to try that sometime, as long as I have access to the internet to explain it to my customers when they order 🙂 I’ve had some ask to have it sooner in their description and would hate for them to miss their own deadline because it wasn’t explained to them why I haven’t done it for them!



Thanks muchly for the caution!!



Calisto 🙂

[wingle]

ryangillam said: I did get an interesting thing from Customer Support though. Apparently cancellation rate CAN be manually changed. They are looking into doing that for me on the cancelled orders received whilst in vacation mode.

 

If this would happened then all the mistake order should also be removed from all users cancellation ratio. 90% of my cancellations are because buyer order in mistake.

 

 

[zackdavidmusic]

Hey friends!



Does anyone know if vacation mode is working now?



I just turned it on today and I’ll also let you all know how it works for me. Any feedback in the meantime of its functionality would be great. Thanks!



-ZD