eBay

cherry*fizz · ‎10-15-2018

I have had this happen at least 3 times now. An item I have sold will suddenly sell again. I am very careful when I do relistings on unsold items, make sure I do them within a day or two of ending, etc... But I have had 3 items that have magically shown up again as sold and I have to cancel them. Luckily they have been on 3 different accounts so it hasn't given me too many defects. But it's annoying, and I hate having to disappoint buyers with this. I guess at this point I will just have to look at all my listings on all 3 accounts and compare what is listed with what I have in my inventory. I just don't understand how this can happen.

castlemagicmemories · ‎10-15-2018

That has been happening for quite some time. They are called Ghost Listings.

Sorry they are happening to you.

cherry*fizz · ‎10-15-2018

Ahh, ghost listings. I knew I had read something at some point about this. If I was a conspiracy theorist I would wonder if eBay wasn't doing this on purpose to get people into that higher fee category! 😉 Thanks for your reply and your compassion.

castlemagicmemories · ‎10-15-2018

Cherry, just now realized this OP was you! Love your posts. These have been happening for years, but I don't doubt you are right and the next spin of this will be exactly what you say~Ebay is trying to get more into the 14% fees bracket.

Oh, and you are welcome. I think it is sad to have something like that happen through no fault of your own and then get a defect besides that. Adding insult to injury as it were.

gew6463 · ‎10-15-2018

I had this happen last month. I sold a stocking hanger, and turned my house upside-down for days looking for it..until I suddenly remembered it had sold months ago. I thought I was going crazy for a short time...;) thankfully the customer was understanding, but I had to cancel and get my only defect this year (bummer). So I'm glad you caught it in time.

Anonymous · ‎10-15-2018

Ghost listings do happen - I've experienced it myself - but it's not that frequent. If you're experiencing a lot in a short period then it could be user-error. Maybe you're using sell similar and forgetting to delete the items from your Unsolds then posting them again. We all make mistakes, even if we're usually careful. Without item numbers it's hard to help.

This is a useful tool to run every few days:

http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

lightlily_arts · ‎10-15-2018

I don't know why that happens but it does and more frequently in the past couple of years. I haven't been able to figure why something I already sold is popping up especially since I only had one so it clearly wasn't something I could have done by mistake. I am constantly looking over my active listings to try and catch them. I also noticed that it happens more frequently when it's a listing where I had multiples of an item available for sale. It seems to occur primarily with items I was selling in the health and beauty category and I really don't know why. Also, if for any reason you end a listing early make sure you delete it from your unsold list because I see those pop up again too. The one problem I've had the past couple of months and I don't know why is duplicate listings. Those surprise me because generally if I try to relist something that is already active I get an error message that it's a duplicate listing which isn't permitted.

shoptalkid · ‎10-16-2018

I have had quantity sold not being credited, which results in another buyer purchasing the same item but there is'nt enough quantity to fill their order. I check my listings and quantities periodically to make sure the counts are correct and I clearly remember when the last buyer purchased 3 of the item, but ebay's system didn't deduct those 3. It doesn't happen often, but grrrr. it really gets my goat when it does.

previously known as boardnpostsid

ersatz_sobriquet · ‎10-16-2018

Does ebay get a defect for out of stock for that?

lightlily_arts · ‎10-16-2018

That has happened to me as well. It occurred very recently with some golf shirts I was selling. Fortunately, I had the same golf shirt in another color, and the buyer was willing to take that one instead so I avoided getting an out of stock defect for another one of eBay's screw ups. Since for me these problems seemed to occur only when I had listings that offered multiples of an item I have just been sitting on the additional items without offering them and just relisting when the one item sells. The exception is whenever I list an item in health and beauty where I need to have those multiples available I watch those numbers carefully. Lately I have been too busy to manage that type of listing .

cherry*fizz · ‎10-16-2018

@castlemagicmemories wrote:
Cherry, just now realized this OP was you! Love your posts. These have been happening for years, but I don't doubt you are right and the next spin of this will be exactly what you say~Ebay is trying to get more into the 14% fees bracket.

Oh, and you are welcome. I think it is sad to have something like that happen through no fault of your own and then get a defect besides that. Adding insult to injury as it were.

Thanks castle! I love your posts as well! 🙂

cherry*fizz · ‎10-16-2018

@gew6463 wrote:
I had this happen last month. I sold a stocking hanger, and turned my house upside-down for days looking for it..until I suddenly remembered it had sold months ago. I thought I was going crazy for a short time...;) thankfully the customer was understanding, but I had to cancel and get my only defect this year (bummer). So I'm glad you caught it in time.

Well so far I haven't caught them in time lol. But I am going to go through and make sure there everything I have is listed and nothing is listed that I no longer have. The first time it happened I looked through everything and could not find the item, and then I found it in my sold items. I hated having that first defect, hopefully it will be my only one! Thanks for the reply!

cherry*fizz · ‎10-16-2018

@Anonymous wrote:
Ghost listings do happen - I've experienced it myself - but it's not that frequent. If you're experiencing a lot in a short period then it could be user-error. Maybe you're using sell similar and forgetting to delete the items from your Unsolds then posting them again. We all make mistakes, even if we're usually careful. Without item numbers it's hard to help.

This is a useful tool to run every few days:
http://www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

I will run that tool just in case, but the ones that this has happened with have been items that have sold already so I've never (to my knowledge) had two dups listed at one time. I have accidentally went to list one I already had, but it's stopped me warning of a duplicate listing. I used to do sell similar and then delete the old one right away, now I just do relist.

It hasn't happened too frequently (maybe once every 3 months or so, I guess that's frequent enough). The last one was easy because the item "sold" again just a couple of days after I had sold it, so I remembered sending it out. I wouldn't have done any relisting or selling similar since I am just selling my extra items and I never have dups. Thanks for the reply! 🙂

cherry*fizz · ‎10-16-2018

@lightlily_arts wrote:
I don't know why that happens but it does and more frequently in the past couple of years. I haven't been able to figure why something I already sold is popping up especially since I only had one so it clearly wasn't something I could have done by mistake. I am constantly looking over my active listings to try and catch them. I also noticed that it happens more frequently when it's a listing where I had multiples of an item available for sale. It seems to occur primarily with items I was selling in the health and beauty category and I really don't know why. Also, if for any reason you end a listing early make sure you delete it from your unsold list because I see those pop up again too. The one problem I've had the past couple of months and I don't know why is duplicate listings. Those surprise me because generally if I try to relist something that is already active I get an error message that it's a duplicate listing which isn't permitted.

Yeah, I've had that error too! I don't know what's going on with this ghost listing thing but it's interesting that you say it happens in health and beauty because that's my main category!! Thanks for your reply! 🙂

cherry*fizz · ‎10-16-2018

@shoptalkid wrote:
I have had quantity sold not being credited, which results in another buyer purchasing the same item but there is'nt enough quantity to fill their order. I check my listings and quantities periodically to make sure the counts are correct and I clearly remember when the last buyer purchased 3 of the item, but ebay's system didn't deduct those 3. It doesn't happen often, but grrrr. it really gets my goat when it does.

I have only done one quantity listing in my "career" here, but I can see where that would be annoying! I will watch that one that I do have. Thanks for replying! 🙂