If they've been doing this for less than one week, it's also possible they're on vacation and uncertain when they'll be able to play their next move. Have you asked them why they keep changing their vacation status?
Erik talked about requiring a minimum vacation time of 48 hours. I think when that's implemented, that will resolve your concerns.
Theres a very long thread about this already here ;
http://www.chess.com/forum/view/help-support/vacation-abuse
Problem with that DW_Read :P , not all of us can gaurentee we'll be online in a month. I might be fine to play games today, but something might come up which means that I can't play when my opponent magically unvacations and decides he's ready a month later.
My only hope would be to also go on vacation so that I can beat out "opponent #1's" vacation...and hope to catch the game in time. It seems far more hassle than it's worth just to combat someone trying to stall a game. And if it happens more than once, eventually you don't have any vacation time left for yourself :P
I don't see the point of vacation time. If you can't play, you can't play. Vacation time seems...irresponcible. People who know they're going to be busy should manage their time better and not schedule a game. And if something suddenly comes up that is important enough for them to miss a game, then certainly that was more important and needed to be taken care of. Vacationing to save a couple rating points isn't right...
It only hurts those who play fairly. The one that's busy should lose the game, not the person who was available but out of vacation time a month and a half later.
i totally agree..... although it might go against the few people who might, lets say, book a cheap last minute holiday and they have to leave tommorow, so vaction would help them, but saying that, if i was going on holiday tommorow....i would not care less about lsoing a couple of games ;-) lol.
also some times people have trouble with the internet connections (e.g moving house) where they will be away for a couple of weeks so you need vaction time for that too, so we cant win, we need vaction time, but people will always abuse it.....but as i said i dont care, i never use mine, and if people want to stall my games with vactions....then go ahead....ill play when they are ready.
But player #1 doesn't know when Opponent #1 is coming back. If he's magically back a month from now and you're playing a 1 day/turn game, you have to check this site every single day during that month or else you'll lose on account of time.
What part of that is fair? Why should the non-busy person lose because the busy person randomly came online? It seems the person who loses should be the one who was busy and unable to play in the first place. Not the fair player.
But player #1 doesn't know when Opponent #1 is coming back. If he's magically back a month from now and you're playing a 1 day/turn game, you have to check this site every single day during that month or else you'll lose on account of time.
What part of that is fair? Why should the non-busy person lose because the busy person randomly came online? It seems the person who loses should be the one who was busy and unable to play in the first place. Not the fair player.
The argument may look good but it is false.
It is unlikely that Player #1 would have only 1 game going which means that Player #1 would be online every day for game #2.
If Player #1 has only 1 game, what is to stop him from having a 2nd game.
Nevertheless, If Player #1, indeed has only 1 game, he still must check this site every day whether his opponent comes online at random or not.
But it's not false. Because TODAY I might have 20 games going. I might have more. Who knows. Maybe even tomorrow, I might have games going. But I can't guarentee I'll still be free a month from now. Most likely, the games that I have going on at this moment will finish in a month's time. Probably in a week's time.
And if all my games are finished, except for 1 vacation game and I find out I'm now too busy to start more games and log on. Guess who wins my game? Is it me? Nope. It's the person who's stalling and being a poor sport...and again, that doesn't seem fair.
Then I'm reduced to vacationing as well, hoping that my vacation outlasts his vacation so I may someday finish our game. It just seems like way too much hassle.
my answer to that is dont except 1 move a day games.....then you wont have to check back evryday, and if you dont have any games going and are waiting on one player who is on vaction then why not set the 'vaction' flag yourself to avoid that, then continue that last game when YOUR ready.....
i agree w/u bro... who cares ..... just enjoy the game ,,, 
Hybridy, if you're playing 20 games, does one game really make that much difference? Also, if you're that paranoid about vacation why play 1 day games? Personally, 1 day games seem to make little sense. As for 48hr vacation notice, I got told with one day's notice that I would be travelling for my work. That isn't something so immediate that I can't pause my games, but if I had one day games I would have lost them all because of vacationing. Maybe the solution is not to enforce stricter rules on vacationing, but to give a grace period for your opponent on the first move after you come back.
Hybridy, if you're playing 20 games, does one game really make that much difference? Also, if you're that paranoid about vacation why play 1 day games? Personally, 1 day games seem to make little sense.
Exactly. One or two games shouldn't matter. In fact, several games shouldn't matter. If you're busy and you have to leave, you shouldn't have to go on vacation and cause trouble for other people.
Certainly, I can lose a game to a vacationer and live with that. It's not even a problem and I didn't mean to make a big issue of this. I just think it's rather unfair that I should have to suffer (or change my playing style to 3 day games) because someone else wants to stall and piss me off :P . It just seems unfair and I think it shouldn't be too hard to come up with a better system. And I do like your idea, a grace period should solve the problem.
my answer to that is dont except 1 move a day games.....then you wont have to check back evryday, and if you dont have any games going and are waiting on one player who is on vaction then why not set the 'vaction' flag yourself to avoid that, then continue that last game when YOUR ready.....
DW Read, you took the words right out of my mouth, as it were. There are a lot of other time controls on this site, and for this style of chess (this is NOT the same as OTB), 1 move/day is actually really really fast. I know that there will be days that I am busy, and that I won't be able to log on. I have a busy life, as well as two little kids, so things can get hectic. So I never take games at 1 day/move, and I won't even take all of my games at 3 days/move. Does this mean that all of my games take several weeks or even months? No, I have finished entire games in less than a day. But I know that if something comes up, I have that cushion where I lose games because I was unable to log on for a day or two.
Exactly my point. I would never use 1 move a day games either, even though i know im on every day, but just in case, i always have 3 days min.
Is it considered abuse to go on vacation 4/5 times per week as someone I'm currently playing does? This person is playing a lot of games and propably doesn't have the time to make all his moves, but it still is pretty annoying.