Year-End Inventory Discoveries
For those of you who have larger stores, you may want to update your inventory. It's been two years since I last did mine, and I was shocked to find nearly 3-dozen listings that somehow fell out of my store.
Has this happened to anyone else?
14 comments
44012
·1 year agoYes the same thing happened to me. I actually kind of expected it to happen as other sellers have indicated it has happened to them too. Each and every year. So I just kind of waited till year end to do inventory.
The found items got pulled, put in a box to either donate, trash or re photo and list again. Some I probably accidentally deleted, some may have timed out and ebay maybe deleted(?).
I also sorted my inventory alphabetically and found six duplicate listings with the same exact information and the same exact time of the listing. You know, that ghost listing kind of thing. When the times are the exact same I chalk it up to some kind of glitch with the bulk listing tool. This taught me one lesson that makes it easer is to try not to change the first word of the description line when editing an item later. Keeping that first word the same seemed to help find the duplicates without playing the memory game by sorting alphabetically. Edit: I do this as I don't have SKU's for everything.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoI sell seasonally and find these lost items when I'm pawing through my inventory - I, too, am more concerned about double listing than lost listings, but for dog's sake, I only usually have about 170 items running and when I find 8 or 10 missing, that just seems ridiculous.
fashunu4eeuh
·1 year agoeBay has a stated practice of removing old listings that have had no sales activity within a year. See the link below for the written policy.
https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/removed-listings?id=4656
bashort
·1 year agoI have had many listing that just disappeared, never got any message about it.
If we remove or hide your listing, we'll send the reason to your registered email address and to your Messages in My eBay. If you don't see an email from us,
pls-consignments
OP1 year ago🤔 In my 26 years of selling, I have never seen an email telling me that they removed a listing.... even in my spam folder.
tarotfindsandmore
·1 year agoI have a little-ish store but I find listings disappear all the time. Instead of trying to hunt them down, I just sort my listings by ending soonest and end them myself when they're close to ending according to eBay, and then sell similar those ended items. Things sort themselves out pretty easily this way. It also gives me an opportunity to correct any errors (I recently found a cute little gnome mug listed for 1399.00 rather than 13.99, wonder why it didn't sell??).
I tried to go in and figure out which specific listings had gone into the ephemera but just ended up exasperated. As long as the number in my store matches (or is very close to) the number of active listings on my dashboard, I figure I'm okay.
I also go in and comb through orders once a week to sell similar things that I have multiples of (after confirming that I do still have more of that item) so I don't forget to list them.
reallynicestamps
·1 year agoSame here.
I worry more about double listings and ghost listings.
Items that are listed twice, since like @tobaccocardyahoo my items tend to be OOAK.
And Sold items that suddenly reappear.
I do scan my listings occasionally after putting them in alphabetical order for duplication or items that sound familiar because they sold recently.
tsme35
·1 year agoI found 2 times when I went to buck sell similar, the listings where double, so it was trying to list an item twice. I'm getting ready here in a week or two, to inventory and find out how many are not listed too. I found a couple in the last month or 2, was like, I don't remember seeing a listing for this item, checked my store and sure enough it wasn't.
tobaccocardyahoo
·1 year agoI have over 4.5k items listed and if one or two disappear it is not worth enough to spend the time to determine this and relist.
@12345jamesstamps postulates a benign cause for discrepancies which is self remedying. It has the advantage of reflecting activities which are not performed in real time.
My listings run for years. I have made recent sales of items which have been active for years.
reallynicestamps
·1 year agoWhen we moved across country on retirement, I packed up my Book Porch where there were 10 Billy bookcases of books, all listed on eBay. About 5000 books.
Except that about a third were not.
I was donating the majority in any case, but it was a shock how many that I thought were available were in fact no longer online.
At one time, eBay would let us long-tail sellers know when an item had been listed without selling for 16 months.
I used the message to update the listings (either taking it down then relisting a little later or rewriting and repricing the listing)
That was ten years ago, and I still occasionally find an item in my stock that is marked as listed, which has disappeared from eBay.
loose_goose_garage
·1 year agoOver the past few months I had an issue where occasionally an item would just end, and not even at the time the listing would end (technically renew), even though all my items are Good 'Til Cancelled listings.
eBay never notified me, the only reason I knew was my eBay store is connected to my GoDaddy Site that would show the item as being out of stock.
Sure enough I checked my ended listings, not sold, on eBay, and there were quite a few that I never personally ended, and they did not sell, but they were no longer active listings.
Very odd, but has not happened in the past month or so now.
bashort
·1 year agoall of the time, just did a spot check on one tote that only had like 8 things in it and 4 were no longer listed.
chapeau-noir
·1 year agoConstantly. I just consider them 'free' inventory and make up new listings for them.
ETA: Some of them have been listed for only 30 days, and I have a pretty hard 60-day limit for anything to be listed so they're not aging out for some reason.
12345jamesstamps
·1 year agoA seller will have 'Listings'...active listings...
Then each day a seller will have 'Ending today' listings...
And those listings are re-listed....again in some time frame of the day...
Having a lot of listings and then ending on a day and then being re-listed by eBay on that day.
For me, the ones being re-listed are selling...better.
The newer listings seem to take longer to sell.
A seller would have to find a day when nothing is being re-listed to check every listing.
This is where a seller might list something that has already been listed....and seller re-list it again...and thus a double listing.
We get a lot of posts here about sellers saying an item sold twice.