Remove old SOLD listing

[taks9014]

Hello Everyone 🙂

Can you help? We've bought old photographs from an eBay store. One photo is a close-up of our family member. We've asked the eBay store to remove the image of this photo from their SOLD listings. However, the photo is still visible if you search the eBay store (if you tick the sold box).

Maybe the store owners don't know how to remove the image? Maybe they believe that if they remove the image, this action will "hurt" their data or something?

Can you explain how an eBay store owner can remove a sold listing? We would like the listing AND its associated text and image to not be searchable. Thanks in advance for any help. Happy new year.

.

[Anonymous]

Hi @taks9014,

Thanks for posting, I'm sorry to hear about the circumstances. Once the listing is completed the seller is unable to make and changes to it.

The best possible option would be to report it to our security team to see if they can have it administratively removed. Normally this could be reported through a web form, but we don't really have a built in selection for this particular situation.

What I would do is the the Chat with us option at the bottom of the following page, so you can get in touch with a security expert to see what can be done: https://www.ebay.com/help/policies/selling-policies/selling-policies?id=4214&st=12&pos=4&query=Selli... 

[nobody*s_perfect]

As mentioned in the other post, the seller cannot change or remove a sold listing. However, it's searchable only for 90 days after the transaction, so even if you can't get satisfaction from eBay's customer support, the problem will take care of itself.

[taks9014]

Hi John and thank you for this prompt and detailed reply. Your instruction to follow through with security at eBay sounds sensible.  We intend to follow your link as you've suggested. Have a great week.

[taks9014]

Good evening, N.P. (great name, by the way). And thanks for that promising news.

When you explain that, 90 days after the sale, a sold item is no longer searchable on eBay, does this mean that the public URL that exists today -- the URL produced by eBay and which currently appears in search engine results outside of eBay -- will no longer be connected to the sold listing?  And that the listing photo and text will be non-existent to the public?  I ask simply to understand what is meant by "no longer searchable". Best regards.

[shipscript]

@taks9014 

You are correct. eBay purges items and photos 90 days after a listing expires. Anyone following that link 90 days from now will see ebay's default "we looked everywhere" page, like this one:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/001234567890

[taks9014]

Thank you, shipscript, for this helpful explanation of what happens and when. Much appreciated.

[taks9014]

Hello again John,

We followed through with the link that you suggested (thanks again!), and had a chat session with an eBay person called Jane.

According to her, it _is_ possible for an eBay store to remove a sold item from public display.

Jane made two main points:

1) That we should ask the eBay store owner to contact "the eBay selling team" (no name provided) at eBay to receive instructions on how to delete a sold listing, and

2) To delete a sold listing, the eBay store owner will need to go to "the classic view of their selling page".

We explained to Jane that her advice did not appear to be consistent with what we learned here in the eBay community, in this thread. But she twice insisted that her advice is correct.

Before we reach out to the eBay store in question, can you comment on the statement by Jane that the advice in this thread is incorrect?  We'd like to know which is accurate: this thread or Jane.  We don't want to risk the possibility of telling the eBay store something that isn't true.  

With thanks in advance.

[Anonymous]

Hi @taks9014,

The information in this thread is correct. The steps that Jane was referencing is how a seller removes a listing from their order history (mainly used for situations where an order is canceled, and you want it out of the way, etc). This process only impact the seller's order history, not the eBay search results, or what is publicly viewable. I apologize, it sounds like there may have been a misunderstanding in the chat about what you were looking to accomplish.

The only way data gets removed from the search is if it either hits the 90 day threshold that Ship and n.p. mentioned, or it is administratively removed by us. You could try the chat option again, and stress the situation so that everybody is on the same page, or wait till it falls off after 90 days.

Hope this helps.

[taks9014]

John,

Building on your suggestion:

"You could try the chat option again, and stress the situation so that everybody is on the same page"

As you, yourself, are already inside of the eBay organization, you are best positioned to speak with Jane and to confirm what action eBay can take. 

In our view, as the eBay store customer, there is nothing for us to "stress the situation" about. We're unsure exactly what that means.

In the chat with Jane (of eBay), we provided an explicitly clear description of the problem and, to ensure clarity, we provided this description multiple times in the chat. We further explained to Jane that her solution is a direct conflict with what you are saying here in this thread. She dismissed that concern.

You say that you are correct. Jane says that she is correct.  If there will now be some way forward within the eBay organization, this is most likely to occur via a conversation within eBay. And not via a conversation that is brokered, piecemeal, by an outside customer.

Might you speak with Jane or her manager to get a commitment in advance to remove the sold item profile from public view on eBay?  

[Anonymous]

Hi @taks9014,

Thanks for your reply.

My options are limited, as listing removals are handled by a different division of our support, but I'm happy to see if I can do anything about that.

I sent you an email for some more information, reply to that and we can go from there.