How long do eBay listings remain up after selling items along with tracking info.
Been selling more of my higher priced electronics. In case of charge backs or disputes after 6+ months wondering if listings will remain up along with tracking info to send detailed information or should I grab screen shots of everything now just to play it safe?
Sold around 30 items have 36 more to go so may only take a few hours but don't want to waste time unless the info won't be avalible in the future. Was reading some card companies allow charge backs up to a year and more so just want to cover by butt.
Was gonna grab sceenshots / pdf files of all orders. tracking numbers, Order details and orginal listings along with listing photos.
14 comments
tobaccocardyahoo
·5 months agoI have far too much paper to even consider printing any of my orders.
The tax man if he wants to audit me will have to accept copies of what Ebay has stored/
My state has neither an income tax or a sales tax, so they leave me alone.
My buyers are decent people and if they have an issue, they ask in a reasonable time frame and we reach a resolution. But most of them are happy campers.
christworks
·5 months agoWow! You all are spending a good deal amount of time backing up records that you should never need that often, and if you do, something else is going on. Some of you are selling $5 and $10 items. Are you really worried about someone opening a CC dispute on a $10 item that you maybe netted $5 on? If they do, are you really going to invest more time into such a low dollar item trying to fight a CC discpute over it? I've had 2 CC disputes in 3 years. I won both and needed none of that stuff. I used to print every sale so I would have that data at tax time. I now use a 3rd party program that handles all of that, and I can easily access whatever I need. More power to you if you like to be super organized like that, but I cannot imagine investing so much time when the return on time investment is likely going to be very poor.
snazzplatypus
OP5 months agoEverything I'm selling is above 2-300 max going 950 right now so yea just wanna cover my butt
sin-n-dex
·5 months agoLikely I'll never need all the information I saved, but if I am audited which is a possibility at some point, and I don't have that, I'm going to be completely screwed. I don't just need proof of how much money is involved, but proof of where I shipped, and proof that Canadian sales taxes were collected by eBay. Without all that proof if needed I could be owing a lot of tax money to the Canadian government.
C.
soh.maryl
·5 months agoDon't understand your concern about Canadian sales taxes, so maybe I am just dense.
In the US, state sales taxes are collected from the buyer's payment by eBay and are forwarded then to the appropriate state treasury. Or does Canada have a national sales tax that's charged to sellers?
stephenmorgan
·5 months agoAs I am not reporting taxes as a business but as Capital Gains so I need to have records to show the Basis of each individual sale to determine the Capital Gains of that sale. Each sale is a separate entry on IRS Documents. eBay Order Details has almost everything to do that. There are just a few other things that add to the Basis of an item to determine the Capital Gains.
I have hundreds of Sales Receipts from 1983 to 2002. May of them have faded over time so I have been scanning them into my computer for long term storage.
I am not so much worried about an IRS audit but I want to know when I have sold enough to break even overall for over 20 years of collecting.
slippinjimmy
·5 months agoFrom this USPS page: https://news.usps.com/2020/02/03/for-the-record-3/
Currently, customers using usps.com have limited access to tracking information for non-signature (120 days) and signature items (two years).
Customers who purchase USPS Premium Tracking will have access to their online tracking data for as long as 10 years for a small fee.
Most credit card holders will only get 180 days to open a dispute, some Amex users may have more time.
stephenmorgan
·5 months agoI seem to recall that was $10 at one time. I sort of read it like the $10 was for only one item. Do you know whatever the current fee is if that is per single item or is it for all items that go thru your account?
stephenmorgan
·5 months agoeBay keeps the information easy access available for two years in the Order Details. However, after 90 days some of the information is deleted.
I save a PDF copy of the Order Details for each and every sale. I also save a PDF copy of the Shipping Label. When the item is delivered I save another PDF copy (copy-2) of the Order Details because is shows delivered.
To do this a person has to figure out how they are going to set up their File Directory to be able to locate the information when needed.
I literally have a seperate File Folder for each separate order that is organized by eBay's Sales Record Number, Buyers Name and grouped by year.
All this organization makes accounting and tax time very easy.
Play around with this page and see if it is helpful.
https://www.ebay.com/sh/ord?filter=status:ALL_ORDERS
sin-n-dex
·5 months agoI'm doing all that, I save the sales order document name "Jan 1 - buyerusername", and put it in a folder for January 2026.
For the shipping labels, I just download them and they're sorted by date, I can generally preview what's in the folder around the date I need to find it, takes a bit of time, but the sales order I need to keep in case of a tax audit, the shipping label is only useful to send to the customer or in a chargeback dispute.
C.
stephenmorgan
·5 months agoSample of my File Directory. Using Batch File I created I create 150 Directories in about 30 seconds titled with the year and sequential page number 2026 501- and so on. Then I just add the rest of the details as I use the folders.
2026 is the year of course, next number 501 is a page number of my printed Order Details, next number 205, is the ebay Sales Record No, next name and then where they are from.
Sample of what is in each File Folder. Sometimes more documents like when I use a different shipper other then eBay.
I also save the Order Details when an order is cancelled just to keep things in sequence.
snazzplatypus
OP5 months agoYea this is sorta the layout i was planning
gb58
·5 months agoIf you go to your seller hub page, and at the top, on the drop down under "orders" you will see "paid and shipped".
When you click on that, you can customize the time period it shows.
I just went back as far as it will let me, and it allowed me to go back to April 4th of 2024. So it keeps the info on your shipments on the site for 2 years.
sin-n-dex
·5 months agoIt does delete buyer information from the sales record after a period of time (some number of months), plus tracking is only visible on USPS site for something like 90 days unless you pay for their service to keep it longer.
I print all sales orders to PDF within two weeks of purchase (to capture that goofy email address, that's only good for a while, but it disappears 15 days after the sale). I also have copies of all USPS labels in PDF form because I download them from my shipper and print them out. I don't need to refer to them often, but once in a while it's been helpful.
C.