Technical Issue - eBay showing $24.2 million in orders, none listed on Order Page

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Hello.

The screenshots are from Sept 3.  I have attempted to contact eBay every single day since then to report this technical issue.  Multiple times per day the Automated Assistant has failed to connect me with a chat agent, even when I wait 10x the indicated time until connection.  I even tried waiting 4 hours, still no connection, then "sorry, an error."

Anyway, in Seller Hub in the Selling Limits it said on Sept 3 that I had $39.1 million listed and sold.  On the Listing Page it said there were $14.9 million items listed.  $39.1 million listed and sold - $14.9 million listed = $24.2 million sold.  Where are the orders?  I need to fulfill them!  This is not a selling limits issue, this is a missing orders issue.  I need to fulfil and get paid for those $24.2 million in orders!

eBay Listed Items PageeBay Seller Hub Selling Limits Section

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Today, 9/14/25, I have $43.7 million listed and sold, and $16.6 million listed.

The missing orders have now grown to $27.1 million!  I need to fulfil and get paid for those orders!

Please help me

[gator08041971]

That 39 million number is mostly based on sold AND listed in the past 90 days I believe.

What does your order history show for the last 90 days?

example:

Last 90 days of orders:

Active listings:

Keep in mind, your active listings are always going to account for their highest potential price, and don't take into account any offers or other deals.

So, looking at those two examples, you can see there's about a 167 dollar difference in mine for the past 90 days.

Compare yours the same way.   Tax is not included in both examples either, so that may account for the difference in mine for example.

[le-5262]

I'm not sure you're reading those numbers correctly...

those include the 16k+ active listings that you have.  

$50k necklaces add up pretty quick.

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Hi gator,

Thank you.  With past 90 days orders, and all listings valued at full listing price (no offers or discounts), and no miscounting of tax, that still leaves $24 million in missing orders (slightly less than the $24.2 million less than I stated).

Those $24 million in missing orders from my order page still need to be fulfilled and I need to be paid.  Or, if you use today's numbers and modify them as you described, $26.9 million in missing orders that need to be fulfilled and I be paid for.

Any other thoughts?  Thanks!

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Hello le-5262,

That's why I included the screen shots.  Even with the current price of gold driving up the cost of making and selling this jewelry (up $1,500+ per troy ounce to $3,500 per troy ounce since Biden took office, a fact, not a political comment), eBay shows my listed items totaling as $14.9 million.  I cap inventory at 5 units of inventory for most of my jewelry (not the actual amount of inventory I have on hand).  Only my skin care, polishing cloths, Swarovski crystals/beads/crystal pearls, and closeout jewelry under $100 is listed at the actual (higher) inventory amount.  So if I have 20 exactly identical necklaces at $50k ($1 million on inventory), only 5 units ($250,000 of inventory) is listed on eBay.  It's not like I sell multiple units of the same exact piece of jewelry of medium priced fine jewelry, so I don't need to list all of my actual inventory.  I do not sell what is called "high jewelry."

BTW, the most stable (not sensitive to the state of the economy) and non-seasonal fine jewelry price range specifically on eBay is $8,000 to $30,000 per piece.  I don't list many items above that.  And I don't have 16k+ of active listings.  I have less than 2k.  I was giving you the dollar value of all items listed on eBay, not the number of listings.  The most brutal price range to compete in within jewelry is what I call treadmill jewelry (most jewelry under $500, you buy, it breaks, you buy it again, it breaks, etc).  My jewelry is designed and crafted to last a lifetime, backed by a lifetime trade-in program that accepts damaged, partially missing, broken, etc. jewelry.  The only fine print is that the piece you trade in was bought from Designs by Nathan(R).

I'm an actual bench jeweler with a full jewelry studio that makes custom jewelry and occasionally resells jewelry curated for lifetime beauty and functionality.  My most recent custom designed at the client's direction jewelry piece sold for $28,000.  I read numbers just fine.

[le-5262]

For the record...

I think they are absolutely beautiful necklaces.

From the screenshots...I still think maybe the missing money is from your listed items. The 14million only reflects 200 of your total listings.

You have something like 1600 listings? 

I think maybe the 1400 listings not included in the total in your screenshot might account for some of it?

P.S. I'm wrong on that...I just checked and my total shows the total (not just the first 200) 

Sorry I had to edit.

I hope you find those orders!

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Hi le-5262,

Why thank you!

I just went and tested your theory about maybe the $ listed were for just the 200 listings on that page.  It was a good theory worth testing.  The $ listed doesn't change no matter which page of 200 listings I am viewing.

Any other good ideas to test?  I appreciate it!

[le-5262]

HA! Yeah I checked mine and saw I was wrong.

I wish I did have another idea for you...

that's a lot of money to have floating around somewhere

[gator08041971]

@phoenix-fire-jewelry 

That's just it though.

I don't think its missing orders so much as missing something else.  If all the orders on the order page are accounted for, paid for, and shipped/processed and you have no open orders yet see a discrepancy, the error lies elsewhere.  Either in how you are viewing the data, or something else.

Orders don't just vanish.  But listings and items can get miscounted or misread.

Let me put it another way:

Review your active listings.  Do the active listings match what should be active? (your known inventory that you listed)

Your orders.  Do they match what you had sold?   I'm assuming with this kind of inventory and items, you are tracking the information in other places than eBay.

If you add those two things together, do they line up with your known inventory you listed?

Have you checked to see if any listings had been ended without knowing it?  You can check ended listings too:

https://www.ebay.com/sh/lst/ended?status=UNSOLD_NOT_RELISTED

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Lol yes it is!  That is why I am trying to find it and fulfil it!

Seriously, thanks for your help.

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Hi gator,

Yes, I have gone through and carefully checked my active listings.  I did that before posting this in the technical issues section.  My orders do not match what eBay indicates I have sold.  All orders I can see have been fulfilled (and all but one delivered).

Actually, I use Feedonomics to manage inventory and orders across channels.  I am very careful.  You certainly don't want to make a fulfillment mistake on a $25,000 necklace!

Almost all orders end up going through the Authenticity Guaranteed program, and 100% of orders have passed authentication.  I haven't had a return in over a year, so that isn't affecting any of the numbers.

What especially alarms me is that since I first reported the orders gap on September 3, 2025, at $24.2 million, the gap has increased in the last 12 days by $3 million more.  It just keeps getting bigger.  Pretty soon I will be blocked from renewing listings if the gap keeps getting bigger.  My entire $ monthly listing limit is $50 million, so every time my order gap gets bigger, I am less able to list new Christmas inventory.  I've got another 1,500+ listings to add before Christmas, which will double my actual listed inventory to about $30 million vs. my $50 million limit.  I won't be able to with over $20 million of orders missing and unfulfilled.

I've actually sold on eBay for 25 years, starting about a year after eBay launched.  These kinds of missing orders have only been an issue in the past 4 years.  Before that the calculations were always correct.  Last year the team that handles Selling Limits assured me that the calculations were accurate (then the gap was $6 million in orders).  I told them that if they couldn't get the listing limits calculation to work consistently, that is wasn't right to impose listing limits.  The only response I got was to increase my listing limit to $50 million.  I've had this kind of conversation with the Selling Limits team on four previous occasions.  On a few occasions, they refreshed the calculation and it returned to being accurate for a while.  Then the gap just drifts and keeps getting bigger over time.  Other times they just increased my listing limit without addressing the core issue.

Personally I believe a coding error has crept into the computer programming that calculates the Selling Limits and the Listed and Sold numbers.  That kind of data drift is normal over time in any kind of database; great database managers keep doing queries to catch the drift before users ever see it.  But when you are talking to the Selling Limits team, they have no computer programmers on their team, so the coding never gets checked.  That's why I'm reporting this as an actual technical issue.  A real programmer needs to check the coding to figure out why the gap gets progressively worse over time.  This is not a Selling Limits team issue.  This is a database management/computer programming issue.

Meanwhile I have to do everything I can to make sure there aren't actually buyers who are paying and not getting their orders fulfilled (and me not paid for fulfilling them).  I can't assume that these orders don't exist, or that will be the end of my business on eBay.

Previously I sold on Amazon, about 10,000 units annually.  I don't sell there anymore because Amazon doesn't follow its own policies and is otherwise abusive to sellers, which actually made my blood pressure skyrocket to over 140/200.   Oh, yes, and my blood pressure dropped significantly after I left Amazon! 

I love selling on eBay. Fortunately for me, Amazon did a free remove-all-your-inventory-from-FBA before COVID, and I was able to get every last piece of inventory out of FBA for free well before Amazon froze all inventory in FBA that was not for "essentials."  I did Seller-Fulfilled Prime after getting out of FBA, then later decided my health was more important than fighting over a customer returning someone else's product (not what I sold them) and being forced to refund $1,000 when all I got was a $5 trashy jewelry item.  Yes, it was that bad.  I do not recommend that anyone sell on Amazon.  Seven years ago my built from scratch brand reached $0.5 million in sales (gold was under $1,800 a troy ounce, and it was too risky to sell expensive items on Amazon because of the fraudulent returns), and Amazon not following its own posted policies made my net profit shrink so badly that it was nothing to walk away from that revenue.  So I returned to eBay.

So how do I get the database and programming teams to figure out what is wrong with the ever worsening drifts in calculations for Listed and Sold?  Or to fix missing orders?  That's why I am posting here - to get technical help.

[gator08041971]

@phoenix-fire-jewelry 

My orders do not match what eBay indicates I have sold.

Here's the thing.  You are guessing you sold.  You actually don't know, and I suspect you haven't actually sold that large of a difference without those orders showing up.

I would compare the current active inventory of listed items  (I kinda mentioned this earlier) with what you know should be listed. If that part is accurate, then the number calculations are off, not actual sales and you are back to it being a bug or some other discrepancy, not actual missing sales as you are surmising here.

Granted, I don't work with this kind of inventory or dollar amounts, and naturally I understand the sweat you might be under, but at the same time assumptions can get you in trouble too.

However, if your active inventory does not match what should be actively listed, then either they were taken down or somehow sold with no orders to match (which I find unlikely).

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

Hi gator,

As I told you, I did check the current active inventory of listed items with what I know should be listed.  It does match.  None of my listings were taken down, other than one small one with a listing error that I took down myself to fix.  I did that before I posted this to the technical issues area.  I already cross-checked this data.  My background includes operations research, statistics/optimization, and industrial engineering.  I am heavily overqualified to know there is a real mathematical issue with two possible causes that standard data evaluations to test assumptions and parameters do not explain.

I've already accounted for the fact that Feedonomics accidentally deleted all of my SKUs and had to relist them new about 106 days ago, causing wild fluctuations in my listed and sold despite the actual $ inventory number stayed the same (that's what happens when all your listings end and get relisted, it doubles the inventory count in the calculation despite no change in the overall number).  That anomaly passed from measurements on Sept 1, and on that day I did see a rebound in my $ available to list, just as expected.  But then by Sept 3rd (the day of the screenshots), my $ available to list dropped literally in half, despite not listing anything in those 3 days and having no orders those 3 days.

I have freely admitted I do not know if the orders are missing or if there is a bug or other discrepancy or both.  No matter how you look at it, there is an issue that I am responsible for pursuing and so I have to aggressively pursue all paths to do right by my buyers and my business.  Why has the orders gap increased by $3 million in the past 12 days, when the current listings $ value increase ($14.9 million listed to $16.6 million listed in 12 days) is correct vs. the listings I have added in the past 12 days?  My listed and sold should have only gone up by $1.7 million, not $4.7 million, because my sales for those days were under $100,000 and therefore accounted for far less than a $0.1 million variation, basically less than a rounding error in the calculations.

What concerns me most is why is there a place to report technical issues (both missing orders and incorrect calculations are technical issues) when no one from eBay has indicated this will get looked at and quickly?  I can't be the only seller affected, since no matter the technical issue involved, they are all technical issues involving coding or data information management.

Thank you again for your thoughts.  I have investigated what you mentioned, and Occam's razor still applies - when you rule out all probable possibilities, explanations constructed with the smallest possible set of elements, no matter how improbable or impossible, are the most likely.  Hence data drift/code drift in the database or the coding.  Drift is a proven and common issue accepted by information technologists and programmers, that if not guarded against, eventually causes discrepancies visible to the naked eye (i.e. to those outside the system or database).

This needs to be investigated and fixed by eBay.

Have a good evening.

[phoenix-fire-jewelry]

kyle@ebay please respond to the technical issues identified in this thread.  This has been reported multiple times to eBay.  I also just tried to contact the Selling Limits team to once again notify them of the calculation errors, and got an error message that my submission could not be sent to the team.  It seems that no matter how I try to get help, error messages blocking communication are all I get.

This specific problem gets worse month to month, and has been reported repeatedly to eBay over the years as I mentioned.  Nowadays I wait until I start listing for Christmas and report it annually, so that the issues get corrected and do not block listings put up for Christmas.

Thank you for your attention.