[gvinter]

This is absolutely true. Without a solid vacation policy you can't lean on anything when push comes to shove.

At the end of the day, I believe that if an employer wants to be fair to employees, it doesn't matter if they have unlimited vacations or register PTO, it's going to come down to the message the employer sends to the employees about how to use vacation, when there are special situations (servers go down at 1am), and when the right time to indulge is (you overworked a bit this week - take the 2nd half of Friday off because you earned it).