How do you keep Ebay from randomly deleting old listings without telling you?

[nujik]

I've noticed over the years that I will randomly find items on my shelves that have no listing. I chalked it up to a mistake but I suspected this was an ebay "feature". I've seen rumors of the same thing on Reddit and such, but now I know for sure.

I recently did a partial audit of my inventory and found many, many items that have no listing. No evidence of sales when going back as far as the history allows. All the boxes in question were quite dusty so it seems that ebay is in fact deleting my old listings without telling me. Now I have go through 10,000+ items to audit the whole thing and see how bad the damage is.

I can't even imagine how many thousands of dollars of stagnant wares I have and how long they've been sitting with no listing. Is there any way to avoid this?

[dhbookds]

There are various programs (6 bit comes to mind) that I think can "synchronize" listings which I would assume could add in any that are deleted without cause.  Channel Advisor is also one that I know handles large accounts........at least they used to.....  They cost $$, of course.

I've often thought that keeping up with the # of listings each day would "indicate" losses, but would not help in identifying which ones....

[jonathanbrightlight]

There's no exact criteria, but I believe I've even seen in a policy document somewhere (though I'm having trouble finding it right now, probably because I don't remember the wording clearly enough) that older listings without enough activity may be removed.  I can look right now and see listings that have been active for 10+ years from some sellers, while other sellers have come to the boards and reported things removed that were 1-2 years old (I don't recall any that were more recent than that).

We don't have the space for items to sit around that long, so we just manually purge items after around a year.  That kinda just avoids the question of whether eBay would remove them if we left them up longer and didn't get any/enough activity on them (presumably meaning views and possibly other interactions).

[short_circuit.lineman61]

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@dhbookds wrote:

There are various programs (6 bit comes to mind) that I think can "synchronize" listings which I would assume could add in any that are deleted without cause.  Channel Advisor is also one that I know handles large accounts........at least they used to.....  They cost $$, of course.

I've often thought that keeping up with the # of listings each day would "indicate" losses, but would not help in identifying which ones....

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I have listings get unlisted all the time, I have tried tracking # of listings to see if I could catch it happening and what I found when I tried this is that the number of active listings with available qty changes both ways for no apparent reason, at least if you just click on "sellers other items"

[lacemaker3]

@nujik, and @jonathanbrightlight 

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/removed-hidden-listings?id=465...

 

[jonathanbrightlight]

@lacemaker3 

Thanks!  That's even more clear than I was remembering.  I wonder if I was misremembering or if it used to be less clear about the criteria?

[cstpos]

I've asked about this too. If ebay would notify us, we could decide if the item was even worth relisting. We could then donate or scrap it. It's the not notifying us part that's aggravating. 

[short_circuit.lineman61]

 I have many listings 7, 8 10 years old still active never ever got a message that they were removing one

[lacemaker3]

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@short_circuit.lineman61 wrote:

 I have many listings 7, 8 10 years old still active never ever got a message that they were removing one

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They aren't all necessarily going to be removed when they reach one year old. It says one year "or more". 

I believe that eBay probably uses an algorithm to judge the amount of interest in the item, perhaps using views and click-throughs. But they don't publish anything about this algorithm.

[dhbookds]

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@short_circuit.lineman61 wrote:

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@dhbookds wrote:

There are various programs (6 bit comes to mind) that I think can "synchronize" listings which I would assume could add in any that are deleted without cause.  Channel Advisor is also one that I know handles large accounts........at least they used to.....  They cost $$, of course.

I've often thought that keeping up with the # of listings each day would "indicate" losses, but would not help in identifying which ones....

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I have listings get unlisted all the time, I have tried tracking # of listings to see if I could catch it happening and what I found when I tried this is that the number of active listings with available qty changes both ways for no apparent reason, at least if you just click on "sellers other items"

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Sorry, I wasn't clear about keeping track........ listings #'s will change just due to being renewed each 30 days........   I meant trying to keep track manually...... 10 new ones today, 4 sold....based on the number in active listings on seller hub.....I believe (could be wrong) that the # of active listings there isn't effected by the renewals.....  but again, the number isn't going to help identifying  which ones are missing.

I've never had any go away.....many been relisting since 2020, when I relisted everything........and frankly, I've never seen anyone mention a notification from ebay saying something was removed due to longevity.  

[reallynicestamps]

At one time eBay notified us if an item had been 16 months without activity.

That was useful because I could review the listing and either update or remove it.

With my long tail and small items, long term storage is not a problem.

A return to the 16 month notice would be a benefit.

[kensgiftshop]

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@jonathanbrightlight wrote:

There's no exact criteria, but I believe I've even seen in a policy document somewhere (though I'm having trouble finding it right now, probably because I don't remember the wording clearly enough) that older listings without enough activity may be removed.  I can look right now and see listings that have been active for 10+ years from some sellers, while other sellers have come to the boards and reported things removed that were 1-2 years old (I don't recall any that were more recent than that).

We don't have the space for items to sit around that long, so we just manually purge items after around a year.  That kinda just avoids the question of whether eBay would remove them if we left them up longer and didn't get any/enough activity on them (presumably meaning views and possibly other interactions).

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Years ago, I would get an email saying that so and so item has been listed two years without much activity and will be removed on a certain date.

I don't know if they still send those emails or not?

[lacemaker3]

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@dhbookds wrote:

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........ listings #'s will change just due to being renewed each 30 days........   

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@dhbookds, sorry but you're mistaken about that. Listing #s do not change when the listing renews each 30 days. That is one of the advantages of GTC listings; they keep the same item number so they don't lose their history in search engine results outside of eBay.

They will only get new item numbers if you end the listings and relist them.

[chapeau-noir]

I only have a relative handful of listings up, never have anything listed for a year (I roll things over at 60 days) and still experience loss of listings. For me it's one here, one there - about every season change I notice a few listings gone. I just see it as 'new' inventory and make a new listing. 

If I had a lot of listings, like OP, I would invest in archival software like 6Bit or inkFrog because at that level it would be an expensive and aggravating problem. 

Like the 'ghost' listings, I see some of this as database loss. 

[inhawaii]

Do you really think ebay "randomly" deletes listings?   🙄