why do my listings disappear?

Question

i have just gone through my inventory (600+ listings ) and i find that many items (20+) i had listed have simply disappeared. this means i will have to completely redo the listings from scratch in order to sell them. please explain how this happens and how i can avoid it into the future.

selforfun · Answer

I would not recreate those listings yet.

First, go to Seller Hub > Listings > Ended and search for the missing items by title or SKU/custom label. Also check your eBay Messages in case eBay ended any of them for a policy or account-related reason.

Fixed-price listings are normally Good ’Til Cancelled and renew automatically each month, so if an active listing disappeared, something caused it to end. A few possibilities are:

the quantity reached zero and Out-of-Stock was not enabled
the listing could not renew because of a selling limit
eBay ended the listing
the listing was manually ended
it ended long enough ago that it is no longer available in your Ended/Unsold listings

eBay only keeps ended/unsold listings available for a limited time. Once they are more than about 90 days old, the listing details may no longer be recoverable and you may have to recreate them.

With 600+ listings, I would also start downloading a Listings report from Seller Hub periodically so you have your own inventory record if something like this happens again.

Seller Hub Reports:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/selling-tools/file-exchange?id=4096

Listing durations:
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/selecting-listing-duration?id=4652

If you find one of the missing items under Ended, check the reason/end date first. That will probably tell us what happened to the rest.