Items Are Disappearing, or Not Showing

[kwsdiscgolf]

For the past few days I've had a lot of issues with selling. I'm not a noob, been doing this for 20 years, but wow am I lost.

1) Many Items are completely gone. 
- Item does not show up in searching Seller Hub

- Item does not show up in the "Unsold" section of Seller Hub
- Item does not show up in searching my store

- Item does not show up in searching all of ebay.

2) TONS of items that I listed today do not show up in ebay search

- 6 hours and no views, no watchers, no bids on 50 items

- Cannot search for them on ebay

- They do show up in Seller Hub
- They do show up when clicked on from Seller Hub

Literally nothing has changed with my store in 20 years. I know for a fact I didn't accidentally change anything. Anyone else seeing any issues?

[bauble-babes]

@mam98031 

"Indexing is not "malarkey", it is a fact."

*** This thread is about an INDEXING ISSUE as reported by the poster on June 8. I'm here to report that it is STILL an issue months later.

The "Best Answer" poster hyzerfarm spoke with CS Manager, Dave on 6-9...did you bother to read this? 

hyzerfarm said:

"In short, about 3 days ago a big update went in to the system. As per Dave this issue with the listings getting indexed and being delayed up to 24 hours was an "unexpected" consequence of said update. While the indexing protocol has been in play for years, it applies differently to different accounts. For new accounts, the first 25 listings they make automatically go into the indexing protocol and are listed within 24 hours (may be 24, may be sooner). Once through the 25 then it becomes a random indexing hitting about one out of one hundred.

Sellers that have been doing this forever are normally supposedly getting hit with the very random indexing and we are just not noticing it. It seems that the update kicked veteran accounts into reading as beginning accounts. Reportedly I am the sixth one today that he has had to discuss this issue with. All of this is per Dave."

"Check in your Seller Hub under Active Listings. They show up there from the moment you post a listing. If it isn't there, it didn't get posted."  

*** Ya think? I already stated that my sister (White Raven) and I are both VETERAN sellers.

"Revising listings is different. Revising a listings should not cause it to disappear. You should likely contact Ebay ASAP with that problem as it is just not normal."

*** Apparently, you didn't fully read my above post which clearly states, "Called CS who said that any New or Revised ltems may take up to 72 Hours to show due to Indexing."

Further, CS also told me that Indexing is a random event that will only happen every now and then. My sister REVISED some 50 listings on the morning Aug. 30 and by Aug. 31 late afternoon, NONE showed in her store OR an eBay wide search by item #. That doesn't sound very "random" to me, looks like there's still an Indexing Issue.

Today's report:

Me: My new listing & revised listing from 8-31 show today.

Sis (White Raven): Only 3/50 REVISED listings show after 2 days. I'll report back on her items tomorrow.

[ktastic]

Fun fact, I have been experiencing a new bug all day long that makes items showing up in searches appear as delisted. More than 50% of the listings I've clicked on this morning, the pages give the error message "this item has been removed" and I have to edit the URL and remove all the meta data to get the page to load correctly.

If I didn't know any better, I would think eBay wants people to stop using eBay entirely.

[mam98031]

@bauble-babes 

Look, I'd be happy to carry on civil conversations with you, but since that is not what you want, I leave you to it.  I have no need to reply to someone that is rude.

[mam98031]

---

@ktastic wrote:

Fun fact, I have been experiencing a new bug all day long that makes items showing up in searches appear as delisted. More than 50% of the listings I've clicked on this morning, the pages give the error message "this item has been removed" and I have to edit the URL and remove all the meta data to get the page to load correctly.

If I didn't know any better, I would think eBay wants people to stop using eBay entirely.

---

I don't see that you have any listings under this ID, therefore it would only be guess work in trying to help you.

No need to go over the top.  Ebay is in business to make money.  How in the world would dumping sellers do anything positive for them????

[ktastic]

I mean as a buyer. I keep clicking on listings I want to purchase and im getting this error. I just clicked on 4 different listings to check them out for the sake of this post, 3 of them all displayed the same error as in the pics below. Take note of the difference in URL. First pic is the URL ebay takes me too after clicking on the item, second pic and URL is me deleting all the meta data and manually fixing the URL to get the page to display. Most buyers will NOT understand how to fix this problem.

I don't see how it's over the top to suggest that is what's happening when that is literally what is happening.

[gloryglorygifts]

As to the ones that have disappeared I believe that they are in the process of being relisted. Like, in my seller hub today I have 1,413 listings, but if you look at my store it says I have 1,385. 29 of my listings are ending today. It's not a glitch, it is the normal course of business for listings that are ending and they take up to 24 hours to show up again. 

There's a delay in new items being uploaded by ebay too. That can take up to 24 hours.

[bauble-babes]

9-2 Report: After 3+ days, only 3/50 of my sister's (White Raven) REVISED items are showing in her store or in an eBay wide search.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

Sometimes (but not always) when I get that, if I refresh a few times the listing eventually appears.

It's annoying to say the least.

[mam98031]

@ktastic 

You need to contact Ebay and report the problem.  It is the only way to get it fixed.

I would suggest that you contact Ebay for Business on Facebook or Twitter for the better trained CSRs.

Here are your options for contacting Ebay Customer Service.  Please be aware that for social media CS, you send them a Private Message and briefly explain what your problem or issue is.  Feel free to leave your Name, address, phone number and/or your email address in this message.  It is private and secure and it may help to speed up the response for you.

https://twitter.com/askebay

https://www.facebook.com/eBay/

Your options will be on the left.  If you use the link below you can only get to the Automated Assistant or Chat box type AGENT in the box and hit enter. You will then get more options.  Not all options are available 24/7.  It will depend on staffing available.  So sometimes you can request a call back and sometimes you can't.  Sometimes you have the Chat option available and other times it won't me.  If it is important to you to use one of those options, just try back later.

If you use a cell phone or other mobile device, you may need to turn off your Spam filter so that Ebay can call you.

If you are a seller outside of the US or Canada, you will need to use the Chat Option.

https://www.ebay.com/help/home

[ktastic]

---

@mam98031 wrote:

@ktastic 

You need to contact Ebay and report the problem.  It is the only way to get it fixed.

I would suggest that you contact Ebay for Business on Facebook or Twitter for the better trained CSRs.

Here are your options for contacting Ebay Customer Service.  Please be aware that for social media CS, you send them a Private Message and briefly explain what your problem or issue is.  Feel free to leave your Name, address, phone number and/or your email address in this message.  It is private and secure and it may help to speed up the response for you.

https://twitter.com/askebay

https://www.facebook.com/eBay/

Your options will be on the left.  If you use the link below you can only get to the Automated Assistant or Chat box type AGENT in the box and hit enter. You will then get more options.  Not all options are available 24/7.  It will depend on staffing available.  So sometimes you can request a call back and sometimes you can't.  Sometimes you have the Chat option available and other times it won't me.  If it is important to you to use one of those options, just try back later.

If you use a cell phone or other mobile device, you may need to turn off your Spam filter so that Ebay can call you.

If you are a seller outside of the US or Canada, you will need to use the Chat Option.

https://www.ebay.com/help/home

---

No. I'm not going to do that for two reasons.

One, it doesn't affect me, I've already figured out how to get around it and honestly, the less other buyers out there who can use eBay properly, the better it is for me since that means fewer people competing to buy stuff and cheaper prices for me.

Two, eBay does not pay me to Q&A their software. In fact, eBay is already costing me countless more unpaid labor hours just to use their service that gets worse by the day, and quite frankly, I'd rather see eBay as a company cease to exist because they have been complete a**holes for years now.

Why would I lift a finger to benefit a company that routinely treats me like s**t, and tells me I should like said treatment, while simultaneously making it worse for me by increasing competition for items I want to buy and thus in the end, costing me MORE money? Think about that for a second.

You contact eBay support and waste a day of your life if you care so much for a company that can't be bothered to test their own platform to ensure they keep making money properly. I've already done enough just documenting this problem.

[ktastic]

I have a fun little story about why I will never again go out of my way to help eBay as a company, and why you all should be cautious about how much you trust their desire to look out for you as a seller.

12 years ago, I used to own a small eBay shop that was a fledging little business selling Magic the Gathering cards, back when "Store Listings" were still a thing. For a lot of reasons, most that I'm not going to get into for brevity's sake, these were essential to running this type of business. MTG are largely low value items and the reduced fee structure was essential to me being able to sell them. Also buyers of MTG cards knew to look at Store Listings for items, so it helped with that specific item type to have those listings separated. 

When eBay announced they were going to remove store listings and make them all regular fixed price, they advertised left and right how it would make things better and cheaper for 99% of sellers out there. While I would question the veracity of such a claim, I know I was definitely in that 1% category, because when the changes went into effect, my fees skyrocketed by something like 150% while my sales dropped by more than half, and practically overnight my business was ruined with fees outpacing my ability to generate profit.

eBay said they would assist people like myself, or offer some sort of help to keep people like myself in business. The help offered? Pay a few hundred extra dollars a month for a higher store subscription tier so I could pay maybe only 75% higher fees instead of 150% higher fees. Well that didn't help with the sales part and those few hundred extra dollars basically ate up everything I would have saved.

A few months later, my store was shut down and my ability to sell suspended permanently, because I couldn't afford to pay nearly 2,000 dollars in fees that had built up, because I was literally on the verge of homelessness at that point. I spent the next 6-8 years being pretty much destitute all the time, and just barely avoided winding up homeless a second time (I was previously homeless in 2008-2009 and managed to get out of that pit by some amazing fortune and immense struggle)

I have since, tried to offer to pay said fees still outstanding to get my rights to sell on eBay back again, but despite explaining my entire situation to them, and being exceptionally clear on the fact that paying those fees at the time, or within the time period they had wanted me to, would have absolutely, 100% resulted in me having no money to feed, clothe or house myself, eBay has routinely turned down my offer to pay that money by basically saying they refuse to guarantee any sort of change to my banned status, basically telling me, "sure you can pay us this money, but because you didn't pay it to us back then, we wont reinstate your selling privilege."

I was literally told multiple times by these people, that because I wasn't willing to sacrifice my life to pay them back (which even giving them every dollar I could possibly give, would still have left me in debt) that I was forever banned from selling on eBay under my name ever again.

They literally wanted me to die in a f**king gutter, more than they wanted their money.

P.S. When they banned my seller account, they also screwed over anybody who purchased something in the days leading up to the ban, because they also removed my ability to fulfill any of the orders placed that hadn't been shipped out yet. I was still getting emails (despite my account not working) from buyers complaining about this, but I couldn't even respond to those messages to offer apologies, to still ship the items, or any sort of concession to make up for the issue.

That's the REAL eBay at work.

[bauble-babes]

9-3 Report: After 4+ days, only 3/50 of my sister's (White Raven) REVISED items are showing in her store or in an eBay wide search.

CS said it could take 24-72 hours for Revised or Newly listed items to show. It's now been close to 100 hours for my sis and only 3 Revised items (from 8-30) have populated. This is unacceptable and a definite problem exists!!!

[mam98031]

That is quite an attitude you have!  🙄

[mam98031]

---

@bauble-babes wrote:

9-3 Report: After 4+ days, only 3/50 of my sister's (White Raven) REVISED items are showing in her store or in an eBay wide search.

CS said it could take 24-72 hours for Revised or Newly listed items to show. It's now been close to 100 hours for my sis and only 3 Revised items (from 8-30) have populated. This is unacceptable and a definite problem exists!!!

---

Per our User Agreement it is 24 hours.

[hyzerfarm]

Well, here it is just over three months from the start of this issue and I have the sad news that nothing has changed. I have now logged hundreds of new and revised listings and how they act when you hit the button to either "list" or "revise" your listing.

When it comes to a new listing, you can have it in a draft for as long as you want but it doesn't matter. Until you hit the list button the clock does not start. Once you hit the list button then 24 hours later your listing will go live for public view. Every time, no fluctuation.

When you revise a listing there appears to be two scenarios:

If your listing has not been newly added or revised within the last month, when you revise it (even something as simple as a quantity change or shipping preference adjustment (as mandated by the USPS change) then your listing will do an odd thing. You hit the revise button and your listing will go "live immediately" and be able to be seen by the public for four minutes. At that time it then disappears from public view and you can not even search for it in your own Active Listing page of your Seller Hub. It is there in the Seller Hub, but it can not be searched for. Exactly (and we mean exactly) 24 hours later from the time it disappears it will reappear in public view and will return to being searchable on your Active Listings Seller Hub page. This is not an approximation, this is not a "will take up to 24 hours" this is an absolute time answer over the course of months of survey and hundreds of listings. This is not a bug, this is now an obvious "feature" of what is happening with our listings.

If you item was recently (within the last month) either added or revised, you are in luck. Every listing in these parameters that we have revised will list automatically when you hit the revise but once you are done with the revision. Why these revisions are different than revising a listing that is 40 days old we don't know. Why you can have a listing with multiple variations that has been up for years that you have revised 50 times suddenly needs a 24 layover....we have no idea.

We have been in constant contact with ebay for this last 3 months and will continue to try and get the true answer as to what is happening. If anyone wants to send their disappointment story to ebay, please do and make sure to note that when you are getting ready to add any listing, one of the last options you are given is to "Schedule a Listing" and this is the text that is in that box:

Schedule your listing

Your listing goes live immediately, unless you select a time and date you want it to start.

Yep, it does not say it goes live in "up to 24 hours"...it says immediately. Which in the 20+ years of being on ebay we have always had happen for us. Why did it change in the first week of June? We are still in pursuit of that answer.

Thanks for all your help and let's get some answers to why we are being held back on making money!