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.  

[12345jamesstamps]

Selling multiple items under the same listing might do that.

It might be an error somewhere you made in listing multiple items.

They were not single items but more than 2+ items on the same title listing.

I thought sometimes this also with my single listings...but alas, it's because I couldn't find the item when I had to ship it.

I be looking for something for like hours and give up. And then find it later.

7000 items is not a small store.

I have 4000+ and consider that a lot.

I can't imagine how you store all that...

[mam98031]

Ebay only has two types of listings.  Auctions and GTC.  The Good Till Cancelled listings are fixed price and stay active for buyers to see until they are completely sold out if there is a multiple quantity on the listing.

Do you use the OOS option on your inventory.  That is a setting that when you have a listing sell out, it stays active but with no inventory to be purchased.  Buyers can NOT see this listing.  The seller can in their Seller Hub under Active Listings, but buyers can not see or access those listings.

They stay active for the seller so that when you get more inventory in you can update the listing with the quantity you now have and then it becomes active for buyers to see again.

I see that your currently have about 3,700 live listings, all are GTC.

[hartungcards]

You lost me at, "I expect to get 3-4 orders a YEAR that for some reason I am unable to find."

[tobaccocardyahoo]

This is a long time problem on Amazon which has never been fixed because it cannot be fixed.

One of the Amazon old-timers who was a pioneer in computer networks and communications has repeated claimed that this is an insoluble problem in distributed database networks which has been known since the 1970s. It is impossible to provide the equivalent to "record locking" which occurs on single processor multi-user systems. As a result some of the copies of the database will have conflicting information.

Amazon has handled more transactions than Ebay for many years, so the likelihood of noticing these ghost or zombie listings has been higher. Ebay may have crossed a statistical threshold where ghost listings are appearing more often.

The way the internet has grown has been so dramatic that the absence of a technical oversight structure has allowed technology to exceed its capability. There will continue to be surprises.

[mam98031]

What the OP describes is unlikely Ghost listings.  They have too many of them.  It sounds more like there is a specific reason it is happening to them.  I asked a few questions earlier and am waiting on @lisapeterson16  to answer with more information.

[tobaccocardyahoo]

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@mam98031 wrote:

What the OP describes is unlikely Ghost listings.  They have too many of them.  It sounds more like there is a specific reason it is happening to them.  I asked a few questions earlier and am waiting on @lisapeterson16  to answer with more information.

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Would that it was true.

Excess latency and peak periods of system load can make multiple related errors probable, and errors can compound in a way that affects one seller more than others.

I too have seen what appears to be ghost listings on Ebay. In most, but not all of my listing errors the problem was relisting items which had multiples in the original listing, but I had only one additional unit in the relist and did not change the quantity to 1. But I have had ghosts which never had a quantity of more than 1 and never were relisted.

[redlinear]

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@hartungcards wrote:

You lost me at, "I expect to get 3-4 orders a YEAR that for some reason I am unable to find."

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I'd guess that to be fairly accurate for 5,000 listings

[powell-collectibles]

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@tobaccocardyahoo wrote:

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@mam98031 wrote:

What the OP describes is unlikely Ghost listings.  They have too many of them.  It sounds more like there is a specific reason it is happening to them.  I asked a few questions earlier and am waiting on @lisapeterson16  to answer with more information.

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Would that it was true.

Excess latency and peak periods of system load can make multiple related errors probable, and errors can compound in a way that affects one seller more than others.

I too have seen what appears to be ghost listings on Ebay. In most, but not all of my listing errors the problem was relisting items which had multiples in the original listing, but I had only one additional unit in the relist and did not change the quantity to 1. But I have had ghosts which never had a quantity of more than 1 and never were relisted.

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Excess latency / peak periods wouldn't cause "ghost listings."  Sure, you might get a delay in a listing going live, but that's it.  These "ghost listings" are a crutch for those that don't like to admit fault, and don't want to learn and improve. 

[stephenmorgan]

There is a known defect in the programing for Variation Listings that is known by eBay for years.  I learned about it five years ago and came up with my own fix.

Sometimes when a Variation Listing is relisted, items that have been previously sold will repopulate to their original amount.  eBay knows about this defect in their programming and are apparently unable to fix it.  So what they have done is to add a TIP to the section of

Multi-quantity listings and listings with variations

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/multiquantity-listings-listing...>

The TIP insinuates that if you use Good 'Til Canceled that this will not happen.  Not true, it happens if you cancel the listing and then relist it yourself or if it automatically relisted with Good 'Til Cancelled.  This does not happen with every relist, it is sporadic and that may be why eBay apparently gave up on trying to fix it and provided the TIP instead.

With Variation Listings I have only one of each variation listed for sale.  The fix I have is to go into the listing and delete the sold item.  I wait to delete the sold item until after the buyer received it for a few days or they have left a Feedback.  Sometimes between this time period of buyer receiving item the listing will auto-relist.  As a reminded I have a checklist of what I need to complete Post Sale so that I do not forget to delete the sold item.

Changings item in Variations Listing can be complicated.  It is a two-step process of Saving the changes and Revising the changes.  If you only complete the first step you listing will appear as you changed it.  But a while later (system update) it will revert back to how it was prior to the changes. 

Getting a defect on your account because of a known error within the program, I would discuss with eBay on getting that defect removed.  Even though eBay posted the TIP it is still only a TIP because it will not always happen so why should you be penalized?  Most people will never read far enough into the policies to see this TIP that is posted.

[mam98031]

I didn't say Ghost listings don't exist.  I've had one myself.  I'm saying it is highly unlikely the OP is experiencing this on the level they are saying they have an issue.  But we may never know or be able to assist them as they aren't participating in the thread and answering questions asked of them.

[mam98031]

I can attest to that.  The one Ghost listing I've had happened on one of my Variation listings.

However Relisting a listing is NOT the cause of the problem.  Mine was a GTC listing, had been relisting for years actually as it is one of my bigger selling items.  It only happened once on a variation I was sold out of.  I removed it from the variation listing so it would never happen again.

But if you have a listing that has closed for any reason and you go to relist it, YES it will relist with the information on the listing originally.  This is nothing new and has nothing to do with Ghost Listings.

[stephenmorgan]

I had it happen twice and luckily it was within weeks of the first sale so the records and my mind were fresh to show I already sold the items.  I could not figure out why until I thoroughly read the policy and found that TIP.  It takes a lot of attentiveness to details to keep up with eBay.

[mam98031]

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@stephenmorgan wrote:

I had it happen twice and luckily it was within weeks of the first sale so the records and my mind were fresh to show I already sold the items.  I could not figure out why until I thoroughly read the policy and found that TIP.  It takes a lot of attentiveness to details to keep up with eBay.

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Still not a Ghost Listing if it happened from a closed listing that you relisted.  That is just a simple mistake on the seller's part not updating the listing before posting.

For me, my listing had been active for years.  It was a GTC.  Several months before it happened, I sold out of one of the items.  Then suddenly I had a purchase for the sold out item some months later.  Sure enough when I looked at the listing there was an available quantity on that line item in the variation listing.  That was a ghost entry on the listing.  And I know it wasn't there a few weeks earlier when I had updated a couple of line items in that listing for quantity available.

[stephenmorgan]

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.