Old listings relisting themselves

[lisapeterson16]

So I have a small store with about 3600 listings----all said and done with the variations of those listings I have about 7000 items for sale (all clothing BTW) About 10-12 weeks ago I started getting orders for items that had previously been sold.  1-3 a WEEK.   I expect to get 3-4 orders a YEAR that for some reason I am unable to find. Or stock is damaged or I have made an error in the listing.  I started looking into some of the issues and it seems like most of the time it is on a listing that has a variation.  I had an example of a sale today that I had completely sold all the items on the listing well over 4 years ago.  All of a sudden the listing is renewed even though stock for the listing has been previously sold.  Again, I expect to see a few instances a year based  on my previous experience since I started selling back in 2014.  I am doing nothing new or different and as mentioned this started all of a sudden.  Just wondering if anyone else had noticed something let's say "unusual" in the last couple of months.  EBAY was absolutely no help as is typical.  Meanwhile I am racking up the defects and getting nasty grams from Ebay about such defects.  

[inhawaii]

Ghost listing vs. human error.

I'll bet on human error every time.

[grand-and-glorious-purpose]

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@lisapeterson16 wrote:

About 10-12 weeks ago I started getting orders for items that had previously been sold.  

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There are 3 or 4 posters in here that will say it is entirely your fault and ghost listings do not exist but anyone who sells full time knows the opposite.

Supposedly there is a blue out there that can take the item numbers and...do something or something. It has never been made clear what ebay actually does.

I've had 3 in the last 2 months all stuff that has been long gone for more than 5 years.

One that was a return that was refunded and then pitched because it got damaged in the return. Lo and behold here it is sold again. I sure as heck didn't relist a damaged item. I even pulled a piece out and sold it months ago. 

[mam98031]

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@stephenmorgan wrote:

I did not assign a name of anything to what happened to my listing, only that it happened.  What you describe as happening to your listing sounds like what I tried to explain.

A item sells then the listing shows "0" for that item in the variation listing that has other items available, but when it relists it is repopulates to 1, the original amount I started with.  

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Then you just missed the distinction between the two different ways that a relist happens.

A closed / ended listing can be relisted.  That is when you that note you provided earlier about your new listing will be the original form of the listing you are relisting from.  Meaning if it was originally posted with a quantity of 5, your relist will be for a quantity of 5.  It does not consider anything that was sold off the original version.

The other, which is where my problem occurred, was a GTC listing.  A live fixed price listing that relists each month automatically until it gets sold out or I end it.  This is not the same kind of relist as described above.  Each month the quantity available does NOT revert back to the original quantity of when the listing was started.  It relists for the qty still available after subtracting any sales.

So there are two very different ways to relist on the site.