eBay Removing Old Listings

[axeman05]

Does eBay remove listings that have been listed for a certain amount of time without selling? I have had multiple listings just disappear with no notification from eBay, they just vanish. I have 2000+ items listed, but after going thru my entire inventory, about 200 of them are no longer available. Again, with no notice from eBay. Wouldn’t you think that we could at least get a notification that an item has been taken down due to being on for too long, or had little traffic, so we could at least be able to remove the item from inventory or relist it? 

[ms.rodriguez*]

Yes, ebay does remove stale listings.   It would make too much sense for ebay to send a notice. I bet they do that to keep a seller from ending the stale listing and then relisting it.   On my 2 seller accounts,  I end nearly every listing and restart them eventually.  I kinda cycle through them so that I do not go over my 250 free listings.  I always try to make a change to a listing if it does not sell the 2nd time around. I either adjust the price,  tweak the title, change the category.    You might just have to do something similar.  I know it's a lot harder with 2000+ listings but if they have been up there for months and not selling, something could be wrong.   Goodluck now trying to sort your inventory.

[mybigsale]

Yes, eBay can remove listings that have been on eBay for over a year. They can also remove listings for other reasons.

You should receive a message from eBay when they remove listings with the reason why they were removed.

Removed listings | eBay

[sextons-sweet-deals]

Is it possible that your unsold listings sat too long in your unsold or draft folder and were then deleted?

[axeman05]

That’s the problem. I ‘should’ have received a notification, but didn’t. 

[axeman05]

Not likely. I list them as Buy It Now and check ‘Good Until Canceled’. In theory they should stayed listed until they’re sold or I cancel the listing. 

[rosszonebricks]

I've had some that have fallen off from not selling for a year, and it's worth to note I've never received a notification from eBay that they were removed at all.

[1richdoug]

with a store and BIN only sales, mine always get re-listed each month.  recently have sold  some baseball cards up for 6-7 years being listed!  i never remove ,because they still sell, and cost nothing to list.

[toomuchstuffagain35]

BUT ebay also expects sellers to keep control of their listed inventory.

Figures.

[ed8108]

The appearance of fresh merchandise, motivates collector buyers to continue checking ebay for possible new material.

[rudy2828]

Nor will you.

[chapeau-noir]

Having listings disappear is an old problem and I don't think it's always because eBay removes them - it happens to me on a regular basis and I never run anything longer than 90 days.  I've had them disappear after 60 days and a few times even just after 30 days. Every season and transitional, I go through inventory and find about 5 or 6 things that have been lost (I only have about 180 listings max running so my problem is a lot smaller) either find the photos in my directories or just take new photos and relist them as new items, and then they sell.

I'm definitely not the only one who notices stuff gone even if it's not old.

It's like ghost listings, which thankfully are not as common, at least for me - I think they get dropped from the database during some of its operations.

[lakefor94]

I agree, eBay should at the least be moving any random listing take downs into the ended listings folder.

Having items stored and not listed is almost as bad as having live listings without inventory available. 

It would take me a month or more to do a complete re-inventory to check that. 1250 listings.

I have some running since 2017 but have not ever noticed my listings being deleted. I don't relist or sell similar with a lot of those because they are long tail and have solid Google placement.

[iamalwaysright]

I recall there used to be a policy for this, like unsold listing for 18 months or something. But many have said in the last years that ebay stopped doing that. I can agree with that as I currently have a few stale listings sitting on 2.5 years unsold and they are still active.

But on another note, I tend to see my active listings lower itself and never come back up. Usually it comes back up because I might be looking at a number as a few of my GTCs are "renewing themselves" at that very second. Just the other day ebay removed one of my listings and I can't for the life of me find which listing it is.

I believe it's just good ol' glitchy ebay at it again and the listings are randomly ended without notice.

[iamalwaysright]

---

@1richdoug wrote:

with a store and BIN only sales, mine always get re-listed each month.  recently have sold  some baseball cards up for 6-7 years being listed!  i never remove ,because they still sell, and cost nothing to list.

---

Right. It can be something unpopular but rare enough to stay listed. And it costs nothing to leave them up there, also I might be too lazy to revamp the listing. So just leaving it up there a years, maybe decades before selling is better than removing and never bothering to revamp to list it back up.

An active badly designed unattractive listing is better than no listing at all.

I get about 5 of these listings ended a year maybe. Not common thankfully.