What happens if an item is in a potential buyer’s basket when you end a listing?

[blountcofriendsoflibrary]

We  think items we have ended and re-listed are selling twice because they were stuck in someone’s basket when we ended the listing.  How can we prevent this?

[inceptions]

Hi @blountcofriendsoflibrary 

eBay is investigating the cause of these "ghost listings" and provides these instructions for how to report them:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/How-to-report-GHOST-LISTINGS/m-p/34527800

[blountcofriendsoflibrary]

Thanks for the response.  What we are experiencing is not exactly the problem you describe.  We have many variation listings, and we end/re-list them regularly to assure that they are fresh in the system at all times.  We've noted several instances where someone had one of the items in our variation listing in their cart when we ended the listing, and they then complete the transaction after we have ended and re-listed the variation listing.  We didn't have any way to know WHICH of the items in the variation listing was in the person's cart, although we see the message that something is in someone's cart.  We have wound up selling the same item twice, once to the person with the old item in their cart, and once from the newly re-listed variation list.   Is there any way to know WHICH item in our variation list is in someone's cart?  

[inceptions]

Hi @blountcofriendsoflibrary 

No, I understood your issue. It doesn't matter whether a the listing is for a single item or has variations, once it's ended, no one should be able to buy from that listing. The cart should reflect that the item is out of stock. Of course the problem may not even be related to the cart, but it's a good theory for eBay to explore so it's worth reporting via the process I gave you.

There is no way to know which variation is in someone's cart.