Item specifics and ISBN's dropping off of book listings when going in to the listing to revise it.

[jools_1967]

I have noticed 2 things this past week:

1) eBay does not appear to be recognising anywhere near the usual % of ISBN's for books when adding a listing. Has it somehow messed up it's back catalogue?

2) On items where I had previously added a book listing and it had accepted the ISBN and pulled through all of the item specifics for me, when I now go in to revise the listing say for price, all of the item specifics AND the ISBN has disappeared. Again, is this because the back catalogue of ISBN's has somehow been screwed up?

Big problem as then takes ages to add all items specifics back in and of course does not look as good as when the system recognises the ISBN.

[1786davycrockett]

"the back catalogue of ISBN's has somehow been screwed up"

Sorry to paraphrase from your statement -- but it's been O SO TRUE for O SO LONG:  The eBay book catalogue has largely been a disaster for years, and there also seems to be no effort to correct the most glaring problems, such as misspellings,  incorrect publishers, incorrect titles, incorrect genres, incorrect page counts, incorrect contents, incorrect summaries, incorrect copyright dates, and so on, and so on, and so on.

The eBay book catalog also does not recognize the late 1960s and early 1970s ISBN numbers, which had included both numbers and letters, as well as the 9-digit ISBN numbers.  

Admittedly, it is more labor intensive on the part of the seller to create a book listing entirely from scratch; but the up-side is that you can at least feel secure in knowing that you have personally verified each bit of necessary information on your own (which sellers who use the eBay book catalogue should be doing ANYWAY).  Remember -- eBay makes it VERY clear, in each and every listing, that the SELLER is responsible for ALL the information included in a listing:  eBay takes NO responsibility for all the errors that it includes in its own book catalog.

Trust yourself, and NOT the eBay book catalog!

[scottmh84]

I have experienced the exact same problem in the last few weeks and have never experienced this previously.  When I search for the ISBN in the catalog, no results can be found, and these are ISBNs that were in their catalog a few months ago.  This is an problem that needs to be escalated by enough people to eBay customer service because it appears to be a problem with their database.

[gainesvillebooks]

Having the same problem. When entering an ISBN in "Tell me what you want to sell" I've been getting messages that the ISBN is not recognized much more frequently. Additionally, some of these have been for books I've previously listed without issue.

The one work around I've seen is to search for the book as if you were buying, then press the "Sell Yours" button. It will bring up a listing screen with information populated. You do have to check to make sure the other seller has the right info though.

[1786davycrockett]

Since the vast majority of individuals who purchase books, either online or at brick-and-mortar stores, do NOT shop by using ISBN numbers, simply enter "Does Not Apply" in the box intended for ISBN numbers.  You can safely bet that 99.9999% of the time (if not more!), buyers will STILL be able to find your listing -- and it will probably be MORE accurate than the data incorrectly provided by the eBay catalogue.

In the REAL world, ISBN numbers simply DON'T matter to the vast majority of buyers and readers -- it's an inventory gimmick, so don't sweat it.

[gainesvillebooks]

No, of course the world at large does not use the ISBN to search for a book but we use them to list. We use them to find the correct entry in the catalogue so the correct information auto populates. Up until the last week of November, the system would do this. Now it tells us that the same books are not in the system.

 We "sweat" it because without this information, it increases the time it takes to list a book.