Disappearing Listings

[brightlightbookseller]

We've noticed in the past a listing or two would disappear from our Active Listings, and not be Ended or Unsold, but simply vanish, and we'd have to find the item and retake photographs  and recreate the listing from scratch.  Annoying, but we didn't think it was a huge problem until recently.

The other day, we completed a big project in our warehouse and in the process discovered that nearly 75 of our 1800-ish listings were gone.  Vanished completely without a trace.  While that's a relatively small percentage, it's a big number, and a good number were large dollar value items.  All ages too, some listed for years, some listed only days.

Has anyone else run into this, or have any insight into why this may be happening?  We're not a small seller, though we're not one of eBay's largest either, but certainly if we're seeing these numbers, it's not isolated to us unless there's some type of problem in our account, right?

[reallynicestamps]

EBay has been doing this for years, and refuses to admit there is a problem.

My solution was to keep all my Descriptions and all my scans/pictures in folders on my desktop.

Although listings continue to disappear (or worse to duplicate existing or sold listings) I can redo them relatively quickly with those most time-consuming tasks on file.

[brightlightbookseller]

No other real solution?  We have too many listings to keep copies, especially since we have multiple employees who list from multiple computers.  That would be a nightmare to keep track of.  It's probably easier to simply check once a week or month to see what's disappeared, and retake photographs and relist them, even though that itself is a huge pain.

[meme6253]

Yes It Happens from time to time, Don't understand it, Don't know why, I know that doesn't help you except to know it's not just you!

[kds99]

I stayed up half the night last night with the apparent loss of two of my listings, and was in shock that I might have lost many more. I LOOKED EVERYWHERE (or so I thought). I was afraid that I may have accidentally deleted a batch somehow,, which of course is possible. Of course I also thought there might have been a system problem. After a tremendous amount of research I found that both listings still existed and I had simply failed to find them. One had a title that had keywords I didn't recall, for example. I can't explain why I couldn't find it by product number, which was attached to the item. My only real conclusion I have is that the more listings one has, the harder they are to manage.

[blacktopautoparts]

This has been a common problem for years, it just doesn't seem to be getting any better. Don't get me wrong, I bet we do cause some of this ourselves......but when you have a decent sized inventory this kind of stuff gets out of control. We've spent the last few weeks at our warehouse updating our SKU's and we are finding each day a decent amount of product that is sitting on our shelf and not any longer listed on eBay.

Last week I had enough and have contracted a developer to build a database that keeps track of our listings. This way we can keep track of this kind of stuff that keeps occurring. We also do use a listing management system that we pay for each month to pull our data in, but those also seem to have room for some error.

[natoman777]

I sell a lot of hats, clothing & books.  Currently I believe eBay has ended probably 25-40 items in the last 5 months.  Why?  I have to go back thru my listed items to see what is no longer listed.  Annoying.  When they went to the 30 days and automatic relisting I thought this would not happen.  It has, and is still.  Would love to have a real answer from eBay on this

[hartungcards]

If you're looking for "real solutions," maybe you could shift one of those employees who's wasting their time listing more items, to spending their time more usefully by keeping copies of what the rest of your employees are listing.  You know, give them something more important to do than listing more items that someone else will have to spend hours identifying and relisting.  If you have an inventory issue, and you obviously do if you're losing that many listings and "have too many listings to keep copies of," you may want to put someone on that instead of just having everyone throw more fuel on the fire.

Or, you could just keep pulling your hair out and doing a lot of tedious, time-consuming and ultimately avoidable work every time you check your warehouse inventory.  Allocate your employee resources better.

[motor5411]

we have lost many. also they relist sold items

[brightlightbookseller]

The mods might close this thread since it's old now, but I appreciate the input.  Perhaps we need a new thread, but I don't have much hope this will stop anytime soon.  Thanks for reminding me that I need to do another check for missing listings, though!