Listings disappear

[joes_deals99]

I called an eBay representative, who was little to no help. I'm going to relist the items that disappeared from my store. I'm currently using time away from my store, with 40 days of handling time as a safety measure because like half of my inventory has magically disappeared. 

I can be patient with this issue, but imagine this happening to someone who made this their full-time income? eBay needs to fix its technical issues, they have hundreds of conditional errors like this all over their platform. 

I'm going to relist the inventory and open orders back up when errors like this are fixed. In the meantime, I'll be using a combination of other online marketplaces such as poshmark and facebook marketplace. 

[chris13]

There is AFAIK always some sort of audit trail left behind.  I do see you only have 5 items active. 

Items that get taken down by eBay generate messages that dont expire

Items that end without selling can be found for 90 days under Selling > Unsold

I can see both sold and unsold items for you in the last 30 days. You have 100 completed listings in the last 90days. I cant check places like 'drafts' or see a history of your listing fees. If the number was large you should be able to reconcile [total listing fee count] - [unsold listings] - [sold listings] - [active] and they should net out pretty close to zero, though you'd have to be careful with time periods being apples to apples.

How many vanished?

[pargran3]

Sorry, not following this.

40 day handling? You can do that?

You called an eBay rep? How did you do that?

What kind of disappearing listings? What disappeared?

[inhawaii]

FYI ... If ebay removes your listing (for whatever reason)  it does disappear. 

You wont find it anywhere. 

Ebay has access to it but you don't.

You have to start all over again from scratch.

Be careful not to re-list again with the same violation.

You could be permanently suspended for that.

[chris13]

@inhawaii I have no experience directly with this so can you share what you know? 

Dont you get some kind of message/notice that eBay has removed a listing? Or at least what violation occurred?

It seems unhelpful to have behavior change if you never get told somehow you did something wrong. This is why I pointed the seller to a review of their messages. 

PS: love your community stats. Thanks for all the help!

[inhawaii]

I'm not sure if that's what's happening with the OP.

I just wanted t let the OP know that IF  the listing was taken down by ebay that the listing does in fact literally  disappear.  I've had that happen to me.   I was hoping to just fix the listing then re-list  but the listing is nowhere to be found. I had to start from scratch.

And yes, ebay does send you some kind of notification if they end/remove your listing.

[frodobagginskennedy]

I have had random items just drop off active listings.  I have over 1200 items listed and have inkfrog end before auto renew.  Even before this auto renew carp this has been happening.  Just today I found a backpack and a dinnerware set that apparently just disappeared.  Never in unsold  as I check that EVERYDAY and will relist within a week with tweeks.  NO take down for violations etc. No messages, nothing. 

Just wait until you have several thousands active listings. You sold an item 6 mths to whenever ago and one day you see a sale again for the same item.  WTH!!  Yup e bay relisted it at some point.  MANY MANY times I have had this happen as have MANY sellers that post on the boards.  

Ebay will never acknowledge this has opened though they have been given dates of this happening.  There response to my numerous happenings is that it is a glitch.....  

[chris13]

@frodobagginskennedy  That day of having 1000 items wont ever come for me as I am retired thankfully. However I did love my job where I took the debugging escalations that stumped all of the support folks and the engineers stepping through code with breakpoints set or the SiteCatalyst analysts who poured over network traffic with numbers that didnt balance... thats why I hang out here till Im no longer helpful or welcome 😉

You mention Inkfrog and immediately I went OOOOOh. Yeah, that. 

When sellers use APIs through third party integrations it adds *another* layer of potential faults. Every backend change eBay makes updates an API that has to be consumed 'properly' by those using it in their integration. eBay cant test how their code is consumed. Integrators dont get looped in as to the 'why' when something gets changed.

I know better than to suggest help with these tools. Always good to call this out if you report a problem though as it is critical info for debugging.

[fashunu4eeuh]

Hi @joes_deals99 the overseas call center you phoned is usually populated with subcontracted customer service reps who are poorly trained and many times a waste of one’s effort. Try contacting the  reps on eBay's Facebook for business. They are stateside, are actual employees and have authority to fix things. Good luck and hope this issue gets resolved to your benefit. 

[joes_deals99]

Yeah, I've come to that conclusion as well. I reached out to them on Facebook yesterday and they have yet to get back to me. 

In the meantime, I'll research cross-listing. I have no issue selling on a different platform with fewer fees and better representatives. Maybe I'll develop my own reselling website that solves these issues and blows eBay completely off of the market, who knows?