Seller sales of quantity showing fake inflated sales!

[wto8585]

It has come to my attention after reading about offering quantities of items that a seller can pull an item and claim it sold off of E-Bay, therefore, inflating actual sales on the platform. Besides being deceptive to potential buyers, it's false selling information, it's false sales, it's false inflated popularity of an item.

E-Bay needs to change it's sold numbering policy on sellers using this. ONLY tracked sales should be allowed to show on the item with quantities! I know of a seller who is doing this, they have been scamming people for a very long time and one way to see what they have done is to go to the item with quantities and look at the edits being done! A lot of edits are happening and they relate to the number they claim have sold.

This seller is NOT a big seller, but I know for a fact he's gaming the E-Bay system in this way. The item he's selling is a junk mining rig, over priced and showing almost 100 sales, but the edits match just as many sales. Wouldn't an actual sale on E-Bay change the quantity? Why would a seller need to edit if it was a real sale? Just my thoughts.

E-Bay needs to only show actual tracked sales from the platform as actual sales for buyer confidence.

I'd like to hear from buyers & sellers on what you think about this policy that can be abused by rogue sellers. Personally, it's made me more leery of buying when quantities are offered to do more research on the sellers edits.

[releasethekraken_1]

Where are you seeing that eBay counts items as "sold" if a seller pulls the listing? You asked, "Wouldn't an actual sale on E-Bay change the quantity?" Yes, that's how it works. Sold quantity increases when a unit is sold ON EBAY.

And how is this a scam?

[wto8585]

Because the seller is revising the listing 1-2 days around an alleged sale. They are revising quantity, description and shipping on the listing about every few days. Also, when hitting the qty sold it shows a much lower of sold items than is being posted on the listing. Example: let's say the listing has 20 sold with 10 available. But when one looks at the link for # sold it shows 3.  The alleged number sold on each of the 4 items they have listed doesn't coincide with feedback, actual sold number and the revisions add suspicion.

I'm not sure what they are doing, maybe I should alert E-Bay to just look into it. I don't like people inflating sold numbers that are not legit. Why lie about the # sold?

BTW this person is a known scammer on YouTube, he's been scamming people for almost a decade, 100% fact.

Thank you for your reply that the system should change the quantity automatic, but that seems to NOT be happening with this seller.

[releasethekraken_1]

Please provide an example.

[bonjourami]

"Because the seller is revising the listing 1-2 days around an alleged sale. They are revising quantity, description and shipping on the listing about every few days. '

How is that even possible?

[inceptions]

Sorry, you are making false assumptions. A seller cannot change the quantity sold. That number is posted by eBay ONLY for items sold.

I might have a listing up for a few years that shows I sold hundreds of units, but if you click the quantity sold, you'll only see the most recent transactions. Again, this is displayed by eBay automatically - the seller cannot manipulate it.

[simba6]

All those counters are subject to error.  Since they are just for show, I suspect the programmers don't want to waste server bandwidth on them and they get updated only when things are not busy. 

[pargran3]

It isn't possible.  Description and shipping cannot be altered on a listing that has had a sale.

Of course it can be ended and then redone, but what the OP is describing is simply not possible.

Radine

[yuzuha]

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@wto8585 wrote:

Also, when hitting the qty sold it shows a much lower of sold items than is being posted on the listing. Example: let's say the listing has 20 sold with 10 available. But when one looks at the link for # sold it shows 3.  The alleged number sold on each of the 4 items they have listed doesn't coincide with feedback, actual sold number and the revisions add suspicion.

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Yes... that's how it works. The sale history only shows the sales that have occurred within the past three months or so. Any sales before that will have been deducted from the total number of items available, but the details of the sales won't show up in the sales history after a certain point in time.

[fern*wood]

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@pargran3 wrote:

It isn't possible.  Description and shipping cannot be altered on a listing that has had a sale.

Of course it can be ended and then redone, but what the OP is describing is simply not possible.

Radine

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I had a multi-quantity listing that ran for several years.  I regularly revised it to adjust the shipping cost without ending it.   The list of sold items, though, only showed for a limited amount of time.  The full list was not kept for all to see. 

[releasethekraken_1]

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@pargran3 wrote:

It isn't possible.  Description and shipping cannot be altered on a listing that has had a sale.

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That limitation does not apply to multiple quantity listings.

[amrad.io]

You can modify a listing after the inventory is sold and it will carry over the number of sales.  So if I sold 100 of item A, then changed the listing to reflect item B, it appears I sold 100 of the latter item.  This approach is how some items appear to have sold xx,xxx units - it's the culmination of several years of changing the listing.  The seller did sell that many units, but the most recent item may not be as popular as it appears.

[soh.maryl]

Why would you be under the impression that sales outside of eBay could possibly count as eBay sales?

[inhawaii]

There is one way to kind of  manipulate the "sold" number.

That is to use a old listing that already shows some sold.   If you use the out of stock feature and you have a old  listing that shows "0" in stock, you can manipulate that listing for a new product and it will still show how many you sold of the old product but customers don't know that.  

[katzrul15]

This can happen on a variation listing, but also if the Seller uses OOS (out of stock) and then changes the quantity.

It can also happen on a "relist", where the quantity originally shows only (1) and it ends, you re-list the item, it now shows (1) sold and (1) new (or insert any other quantity).

We no longer use OOS option for multi-quantity listings, but have noticed in the past it seems to pull the prior history into the totals on the listing to show so many sold previously.  Not even certain how far back it shows/tallies the total sold when you keep using the same initial listing.

There is no way to incorporate off-site sales into a sales history on a listing on e-Bay.  (If there was, it wouldn't be just 1 seller doing it....lol)