"We looked everywhere" and "Where's all the stuff?" when listing items for sale too quickly

[nujik]

I've been on Ebay for almost 25 years and this is a new one on me. 

When I'm listing things for sale quickly, I seem to run into some sort of spam/bot protection. I will suddenly get a message "We looked everywhere. Looks like this page is missing. If you still need help, visit our help pages" with a link to go to the homepage. If I then click on the homepage, it brings me to another error, this one has a very basic Ebay interface with an error "Where's all the stuff? Our homepage is down, but the rest of eBay is fine. We'll have it back up in a moment". Any attempt to do anything from here will result in Error 1 or Error 2.

Now, obviously ebay isn't going down every time I try to post stuff for sale. I'm able to access ebay on my phone, other computers, etc.. This is clearly some sort of faulty protection system. As far as I can tell, it locks me out for about 10 minutes at a time. It's hard to gauge because if I try to do ANYTHING on ebay, it seems to reset this invisible counter - unbelievably infuriating.

Is there any way around this? I'm literally just entering items for sale by hand, using a desktop and Firefox browser (also tried Chrome, no difference). I usually only have a short amount of time to enter my listings, so being locked out for 10 minutes at a time is insane and pointless. If I have a lot of items to list, it will happen multiple times per session, sometimes doubling the length of time it takes me to enter my items for sale. 

There's got to be some sort of workaround for this, it makes the ebay selling experience awful and frustrating. I'm always trying to strategically time my clicks to avoid hitting some magic barrier. Stepping on eggshells, afraid to look at my Overview or Listings page in case I might incur the wrath of the Fake Error Messages. Even if it could tell me how long I'm locked out for, or how many more clicks I have until I trigger some protection - ANYTHING. Anything would be better than this current system.

[mapleleafpicker]

not sure if this is helpful but certainly reaching out to ebay about this has not helped. 

I recently started using a VPN - I have disconnected the VPN and now im not getting that issue.

Will report back if this proves incorrect. 

[mapleleafpicker]

30 minutes of creating listings and no more issues. This could be a VPN issue... check your VPN's boys 

Will report back if I start having this issue again.

[gekanukr]

Its not VPN issue. VPN can solve this problem if you switch it on.

[nujik]

Yeah I've tried it with VPN, no VPN, hardware VPN, different desktops and laptops, it's all the same. It's some sort of malfunctioning bot protection on ebay.

The best workaround I've found is to use Firefox to make my listings. When I get locked out, switch to Chrome. Make listings until I get locked out, then switch back to Firefox. Repeat ad nauseam until I've done my several hundred listings in the dumbest way possible.

[sparkysparkums]

Here exploring reasons for the exact same error..  Let me guess, ebay never offered a resolution?

[sparkysparkums]

I was just on the phone with ebay tech support, while he was investigating I decided to make sure my firefox was up to date, which it is supposed to do automatically.  It wasn't, so I updated restarted and it is now working..  Hope that helps..

[nujik]

Update: I've had dozens and dozens of listings to add last night and tonight. I've gotten locked out ebay due to this bug at least 10-15 times in the process. Switching browsers or even straight-up switching computers is the only thing that works around it. I still lose whatever listing I was working on (it deletes all of my pics and description and such when this happens), but it's a marginally workable solution. Zero response from ebay on this after more than 6 months, even after multiple people are entering tickets for it.

[nujik]

Update: still the same. I just spent 15 minutes researching all the information I needed for a single listing, part #s and specs and 19 pictures and the whole nine yards, just to have this bot protection kick in and lose the entire listing. It was only my second of the day, I have approximately 400-500 more to go. Gotta love ebay intentionally screwing with their buyers. 7 months with no reply to anything, no useful answers from support tickets, nothing.

[turninratchetsgarage520]

Have you tried, as a possible workaround, using the "Save for Later" option then using the bulk edit tool to submit all the drafts at once?

[nujik]

Yes, that's a good call. Unfortunately, when I'm locked out, there's no indication until you try to complete/exit any listing (whether saving as a draft, submitting, previewing, etc). If you click any of those buttons, it just locks up the session and pretends like it's loading forever (I've left it for 20 minutes, it stays like that permanently). If you refresh the page, you get messages like "Where's all the stuff?" and you can't do anything on ebay at all, as you are locked out for some sort of faulty bot protection (I assume). After 5 or 10 minutes I can get back in, but my listing/draft and all the information in it is gone and I have to start over.

My best bet has been to open another Ebay tab, and just before I go to submit a listing - go to that other tab and refresh the page. If I can refresh the page, I'm not locked out. If I start getting those bogus error messages, I know to wait 5-10 minutes before trying to submit the listing.

Only problem is, I have to remember to do that every time for hundreds of listings at a time, and I invariably forget a few times until it bites me.

[nujik]

Update: I've been listing things for 3 hours now and have gotten maybe 30 listings done. I usually get 30-50 per hour, so I am operating at about 25% speed. I have been locked out 14 times and counting.

I've tried VPN, no VPN. Edge, Firefox, Chrome. I've tried clearing cookies and everything. I just keep getting locked out constantly. I don't understand why Ebay is specifically trying to keep people from listing things on their sales site, you'd think this would be the opposite of their goals.

[nujik]

Update: at this point, it's so bad that I can't use ebay at all. I gave up on doing listings and decided to research a vehicle for my teenager. I can do a search but if I click a listing, I'm locked out of the site for 5 minutes. Every. Single. Time. I gave up counting lockouts at 20 in maybe 4 hours. That's at least 100 minutes of wasted time, not to mention all the work I had to redo on listings that got lost.

[kh-jean]

Hi everyone,



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Thank you for understanding.