Question about when eBay relists an item you sold and it "sells" again

[this4chris2012]

There are a couple of threads going on about this happening.  You sell an item and days or months later eBay puts it back in your active listings and it sells again, only you don't have it (since it sold) and have to cancel the sale. Does this result in an out of stock defect?

[timemachine777]

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@this4chris2012wrote:

There are a couple of threads going on about this happening.  You sell an item and days or months later eBay puts it back in your active listings and it sells again, only you don't have it (since it sold) and have to cancel the sale. Does this result in an out of stock defect?

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Not sure. You would be better off asking an eBay rep. I do know that a lot of people were having this problem last year. I was ending up with random active listings showing up in my unsold section, which couldn't have been caused by me since I always did bulk uploads and bulk relists. 

[sparkysretroelectro]

the phone rep can look at the item id's, and that may tell them whether it was an error on your end or theirs- or at least claim to know.  triple check to make sure you dont have any auto relists enabled before you call.  and look for the post last night about this, there was much more advice in that discussion.

[rolenboy01]

Yes it does because they refuse to admit the problem exists they will just tell you it's YOUR JOB to keep on top of it which we already know is impossible.

[uvmmmdu]

I know they weren't helpful to me and my customer sure didn't appreciate it either. It has happened 2x to me over the years and it's assumed by ebay that I must be at fault. They don't even look into it and say that's why we give room for errors in tallying defects.

[evry1nositswindy]

I have seen multiple posts about this phenomenon, but have not  had it happen to me.  I am trying to see if there is a pattern.  Do you use Turbo Lister or an automated listing system?  Were the items in your unsolds?  Were they listings you had deleted and they came back from the dead?

[castlemagicmemories]

It would result in an OOS defect if you used that reason.

I believe a poster said yesterday that a CSR advised them to use buyer requested, and explain that it was a ghost listing that had previously sold, but please check that other discussion to be certain, and you may want to check with CS yourself.

[chinaunlimited]

Technically it would be an out of stock defect. You can contact the would be buyer and see if they would like to retract their purchase, which would allow you to instead cancel the order as per buyer request. Or you can sometimes work out a similar item you may have in stock to send them.

The more listings you have the greater chance of this occuring. It's gotten less prevalent over the years, but it does still happen. We've had at least 30, that I can remember, over the years. It's been recommended to us to check for 'phantom' relistings about every few weeks, or every month.

[castlemagicmemories]

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Just-Got-An-Email-That-An-Item-That-Sold-On-March-4-Sold-Today...

Just checked this thread and it says you need to call CS and have them delete the item so that it doesn't pop up again at a later date.

[pvcliff]

Then there are the times you swear the item has already sold, but it hasn't. I had a heart attack Saturday night when a crystal heart box sold. In my mind's eye I could SEE myself packing that heart a week or two before Valentine's Day. I was positive it had already sold. Being too lazy to go downstairs I reviewed my feedback left for the last three months and had pretty much satisfied myself that I was mistaken, confirmed when I went to  my office yesterday to find it sitting there!

[mystuff2yourstuff]

This has happened to me twice in the past couple of months. It's a heart-pounding experience. 

[thevintagesilvershop]

While I have no doubt Ebay has glitches, I have never had this happen to me.  These are the preventative things I do to make sure it doesn't happen to me:

1.  When I end something, usually because I sold it on another site, I delete it from Unsolds.

2.  When I re-list something, I delete it from Unsolds.

3.  When I sell something, I archive it after I ship it.

4.  About once or twice a week, I do an advanced search by my seller ID and sort by newly listed.  I review the newly listed to make sure it corresponds with what I actually listed that week.

You can get into trouble if you do bulk re-lists from your Unsold section because Ebay has a recurrent glitch there where they mix up the re-listed and not re-listed.  Bulk re-list can pick them all up without you realizing it. 

Ebay should be able to analyze your transactions on their database and pin point exactly when a Sold item got re-listed and how.

If they would actually help those of you that have this happen, then they could verify whether it was caused by you or caused by a glitch in their system and consequently fix it.  Why they don't take the time to do this to determine if there is a problem with their programming/database is beyond me.