Another Ghost Listing found AGAIN! What can be done about this?

[ksedar]

Once again I discovered an active listing on an item sold months ago.  The only reason I know this is because someone put it on their watch list and I saw it on the "send offers" page.  I have been dinged 6 times in the last year for "selling" stuff that sold via ghost listings, already sold in the years prior so I have to cancel the orders.  My stuff is almost all single items so once it sells its gone so I know I am not imagining this.  This time it was a very distinct brooch and I remember packing it up and shipping it.  I have over 1000 listings, how can I do through all of them to make sure there is nothing for sale that is already sold and shipped months or years ago?  This is driving me crazy!  Can ebay help with this?

[downunder-61]

velvet@ebay 

[wastingtime101]

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@ksedar wrote:

make sure there is nothing for sale that is already sold and shipped months or years ago

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Just to rule out a possible culprit:

Do you list using a 3rd party listing program and do you list in bulk?

I'm asking because that would be easier to fix than getting eBay to look at their system.

[1tuna]

thats an awful feeling when you are looking for an item to ship and you realize its already been sold

it has happened to me before and I figured out one way it can happen.

if you go to your unsold listings/auctions  and start to make changes and then abandon them, what happens is it creates a new listing or draft

I have made attempts at revising unsold listing and did not realize that they go to your drafts

I woud relist from unsold but becasue I abandoned an edit it ended up in my drafts and was relisted with others

basically when I went to edit, it copied the auction and it got saved in drafts

[kensgiftshop]

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@ksedar wrote:

Can ebay help with this?

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This has been going on for years and they haven't done anything to fix it yet.

[soundnostalgia]

I have been dealing with this for a very long time. I have 26,000 listings and sell hundreds of items a week. Once a week I go to my active listings page and sort my listings by quantity available,  set your page number to what ever you like (25, 50, 100, 200) - once you do that you can see how many listings are at "0".  Now highlight all your "0" quantity listings (just click the top square to highlight all on a single page, just make sure they are all at "0" before ending) and click "End Listing" and continue until they are all ended. 

After they are ended you can also go to your unsold or ended listings page and delete what you want. All this usually takes me 5 minutes give or take. It's a very quick solution for something ebay will not fix. 

Good Luck!

[chapeau-noir]

@ksedar  This is an old problem that sellers have had - eBay made a soft acknowledgement some years back that there may be a 'temporary problem', then backpedaled. They won't do anything about it, but we get dinged.

My experience with it is that the item does not show up in my store/listings but does exist on the site (i.e., the buyer can purchase) which tells me it's not operator error.  Upon purchase, it shows up in my solds.

The last time this happened was a mouse I had sold and 10 days later it sold AGAIN.  I did not have a second mouse, there would have been no time to accidentally relist.  I got the OOS ding.

The flip side of this is that ebay also loses listings.  Every end of season I go through my inventory and find about 5-10 things that have disappeared.  Oftentimes it's towards the end of their 90-day cycle (I don't auto-relist more than twice), but it has happened within the 30-day first cycle.  I try to look at it as 'free' inventory, but know it has been unavailable for an unknowable amount of time. 

ETA: I suspect this is a data base event error - happens during indexing or something.

[ksedar]

Yes I can see how it could happen from the unsold list but I am very sure this brooch was never ended and relisted at all.  I don't do auctions for this reason as well.

[ksedar]

@wastingtime101 

No I use not 3rd party programs and don't list in bulk.  One at a time the old fashioned way..haha.

[wastingtime101]

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@soundnostalgia wrote:

I have been dealing with this for a very long time. I have 26,000 listings and sell hundreds of items a week. Once a week I go to my active listings page and sort my listings by quantity available,  set your page number to what ever you like (25, 50, 100, 200) - once you do that you can see how many listings are at "0".  Now highlight all your "0" quantity listings (just click the top square to highlight all on a single page, just make sure they are all at "0" before ending) and click "End Listing" and continue until they are all ended. 

After they are ended you can also go to your unsold or ended listings page and delete what you want. All this usually takes me 5 minutes give or take. It's a very quick solution for something ebay will not fix. 

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What you're describing is something completely different than the OP, @soundnostalgia. The OP is describing listings that sold and ended months or years ago, but are suddenly posted again as new listings with new item numbers even though they don't have the items anymore.

The out of stock (OOS) setting is enabled on your account and that's completely in your control. If you want your listings to end automatically when sold out, all you have to do is turn off the OOS setting. Unfortunately that won't help the OP, but it will solve your problem.

[ksedar]

@soundnostalgia 

Thats good to know but I have no 0 quantity listings...most are just at 1 except some silverware has a few multiples.

[wastingtime101 · Accepted solution]

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@ksedar wrote:

No I use not 3rd party programs and don't list in bulk.  One at a time the old fashioned way..haha.

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OK, well it was worth asking. I was hoping for an easy fix for ya.

I've experienced a couple ghost listings in my time, but it's a pretty rare event for me. Sorry you seem to be encountering this a lot. Unless eBay actually recognizes this as an issue (which they haven't so far - they always cite user error), then the best thing you can do is be diligent about reviewing your listings.

Review them all this week - do one page at a time if you need to. After you've confirmed your inventory is correct and you've removed anything extra, from there on out you can, once a week, sort your listings by date created and make sure everything posted that week was intentional. It will be easy to keep up with once you get through the initial review. @ksedar 

[ksedar]

Well as of today I am no longer a top rated seller thanks to this issue even though two of the defects were removed for being a year old now and if they rated me today I would be back to top rated plus.  So I guess I am to be punished for a month now with 10% less discount and lower placement in the search engine.  So annoying.  Why is there no CS that can help any sellers?

[gjs_16]

I am sure this isn't the case here but I have had this happen, only to find the item in question months later as well... This has led me to implement an entirely new inventory keeping method, to where I pack the item as I list it, then I label the box, then I place it in a location AND I enter that location in a "remark" in the html of the listing itself...
So that when it sells and I can't find it, all I have to do is view that html in the listing and it tells me where I put it.

[tomb52547]

Hi  I have had this happen twice in 30 days.  This morning I received an offer foe an item I listed in 2021 and sold in June of 2023 and it receives an offer today.  eBay refuse to help with this.  Very frustrating.