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why are most of my lists empty?
I have 9 lists and all of them are now empty except the ones I've used within the last month. Am I the only one eBay deleted recently? Did they send a warning before committing this heinous act of a$$holery?
6 comments
rollmoeps
OP2 years agoThis is SUPER useful for future reference. I'll definitely come back to this .
eburtonlab
Mentor2 years agoOne more thing that may be relevant.
eBay recently changed the way that lists work, and specifically how deleting things from the Watch List works.
In the past it was simple to move an item from your Watch List to another custom list and then delete the item from the Watch List to make more space for new items, leaving those items on the other lists.
At some point eBay changed the way that deleting from the Watch List works. Now when an item is deleted from the Watch List, it is also deleted from any other lists at the same time.
So if you are used to adding items to your Watch List, then moving things to other lists and deleting things from the Watch List, you are deleting those items from your other lists, too.
In order to move items to another list, it is necessary to do a little juggling act. Open each listing in another browser tab. Then delete those items from your Watch List. Only then can you add the items to the other custom list.
eburtonlab
Mentor2 years agoWhen was the last time you viewed each of your lists?
Items are sold or ended fairly often. After ninety days, those ended listings are no longer on the site, and they drop off any lists.
If a seller ends a listing and manually relists, the listing gets a new item number and the old listing is removed after ninety days. If you have the old item on your list, you may see a link to the new item with a notation indicating the item has been relisted. But if you do not use that link to add the new listing to your list, after ninety days the old listing expires and disappears along with that link.
If you want to keep a list up to date and populated, you must visit the list periodically to add newly relisted items to the list, and to replace items that are otherwise sold or ended. Because of this, over time, the number of the items on your list will inevitably decline unless you add new items to replace the items that disappear.
rollmoeps
OP2 years agoI've had many items on my lists for years and they stay there when they're unsold and relisted.
rollmoeps
OP2 years agoI'm not saying your wrong, I believe you're right. Did ebay send a warning that they were changing it to auto delete after 90 days?
eburtonlab
Mentor2 years agoDid ebay send a warning that they were changing it to auto delete after 90 days?
eBay has been deleting ended listings for many years. It seems like the 90 day rule has gotten more strict in the last five years or so -- before that it was often possible to find listings older than that using a direct link if not by searching. Some listings may last a bit longer on other sites such as ebay.ca, but on ebay.com, after ninety days ended listings are gone.
I found an old thread describing the Watch List deletion behavior changes that were noticed and reported in February:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/Watched-items-in-custom-lists-get-deleted-when-deleting-from/m-p/34301300/highlight/true#M122935
I have not seen any indication that eBay has made any attempt to restore things to the way they previously worked since then.