Sold items being relisted

[programgirl]

Is anyone else having a problem with items that have already been sold, magically being listed and bought again? This has happened to me twice now, and it's so frustrating! After looking through all of my items twice, I then have to contact the buyer to apologize and explain that I can't find the item. Makes me, the seller, look so incompetent! So I cancel the sale, refund the buyer, and decide to go through my records for my own piece of mind. I found the shipping receipt for the item that I'd previously sold- the sale was over a year ago! WTH is going on?

[fast_n_cheap]

yup happened to me about 15 times in the last year... eBay doesn't care at all... lets just pile on more fee fees.

[dtexley3]

Just a "normal" occurrence in life at eBay.  Happens several times a year for me.  Sometimes I catch them before they sell, sometimes I'm lucky and get an offer on the item and sometimes the buyer will agree to cancel.  The rest sit there, a time bomb ticking away....

I also see the other way, listings mysteriously disappearing.  Over 120 now since Nov of 2019, just a few each month, but poof, listing is gone.

[dtexley3]

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@janet9988 wrote:

Just how does ebay still have that listing on file when they only keep it for 90 days??  LOL

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They only ***SHOW*** it for 90 days.  It's still there long after.  I used to be able to link to old items from google and other sites such as picclick , not as often anymore, but I doubt they've actually removed any of them.

[femmefan1946]

@dtexley3 

Yes!

That is the other half of this mystery.

My books are long-tail, so it is not unusual to have the 16 month warning show up on a few every month. I usually take them down and relist a month or so later.

But.

A few years ago, we retired, sold our house and moved to BC.

In the process I culled  my ten eBay bookcases which held about  1500 books.

Which was when I realized that I had only about 900 of those books listed on eBay.

Nothing went into the Book Porch until it was listed so where did those  600+ listings go?

Well, the cull sent about 75 bankers boxes to the Friends of the Library, but a remarkable number of those unlisted books came west with us and have sold since.

Same thing happened this Spring when I took down all my book listings because we were replacing carpetting with hardwood.  About a third of the titles on the shelves were not listed, even in Unsolds.

[im-poor]

There was only one of the items and it had been sold.

[ksedar]

YES!  Just happened to me tonight.  Thought I was going crazy.  This is the second time this has happened to me.

[millie1220]

Anyone figure out why this is happening? I just had to cancel 2 orders for the same thing. Both were sold well over 90 days ago. Gonna kill me with cancellation rate. UGGGG

[classactor]

• Yes this has happened to me again!! They third time in about 3 months!  I'm so tired of it.  The first time I thought it was my fault.  Then I remembered selling the item.  What can we possibly do to save our reputations?? 

[thefrostynutcrackerllc]

This has been a very long time glitch that they are very well aware of. This especially happens often in your variation listings that auto re-list. When you have a lot you just can not catch the glitches until it sells again.  It is unfortunately a part of their margin of error. This has happened to me many times since I started in 2000. The issue I have is that we are not allowed to have that same margin of error although it made a huge difference when they turned the case request over to us allowing us to fix things instead of dinging us right away like they use to. If this happens we are suppose to refund the buyer on a "out of stock" but I always message my buyer and ask if there is anything else they would like to purchase and if they say "no please refund" this gives me the back up to process it as a "buyer wants to cancel" option. This also protects your feedback and detailed seller ratings as a seller.

Here's the policy on leaving feedback in a Cancellation:

If your buyer cancels a purchase, they can't leave you negative or neutral Feedback or low detailed seller ratings about the transaction.

So although eBay has the margin of error we do as well you just have to work around like they do with us. 

Many people complain about how they can not leave feedback on canceled listings but most do not understand this dilemma we are in as sellers. Most of the time it really is not our fault. 

[donsdetour]

Ghost listing are a problem,

eBay so far has not found a solution.

I can not be of much help other than what I said.

[elizabethowen]

Yes and items that I've listed in the past that are mysteriously not listed any longer.

[prettywoman-2012]

Unfortunately, this software glitch has been around for years. Which would not be really tragic, in and by itself, but when it comes with penalties for the seller's performance account because the seller has to cancel an order due to the item being out-of-stock, then it becomes really annoying. 

Additionally, while on our buying account we can go back year or more to check the Purchase history, for some weird reason, eBay insists that our selling accounts would only show the last 3 months of SOLD items. When one has only a handful of items listed, that may do the trick, but when there are hundreds or thousands of listings, it can be impossible to check when we sellers suspect the item has already sold, unless we manually go through bins and shelves of inventory. 

Good luck

PW🤔

[1grandmashope_1]

Thank you!!  Thank you!!!  I thought I was finally losing my last brain cells.  

Grandma

[lotzofuniquegoodies]

@janet9988 

I had a buyer looking for something I sold well over 2 years ago but no longer have stock. In came up magically in a google search for him easy peazy. For chuckles I clicked on the item and my original listing came up in its entirety. When I try a search on eBay for something older I get that wonderful error message that the system cannot find. When a seller sells unique 1 of a kind items(which lots still do) they need eBay search to work. They shouldn't have to rely on it being magically found with Google.

-Lotz

[gosumagic]

This just happened to me last week. This is the second time this year. I don't think there is a solution to it. There is some problem with Ebay not removing the sold item from the unsold listings. I don't think they care or will ever fix this. It's been like this for years. As far as I know, no one has looked into this.