items being re-listed or double listed that have already sold or been ended

[mamabeardsley]

Multiple times I have had items appear in my active sales that I had previously ended or sold. Searching through my active listings I have found some that I know I ended early (to avoid re-listing automatically) or that had already sold and were obviously out of stock. Anyone else experience this mysterious phenomena? I received a defect for being OOS in one incident for an item I know I had already sold and that had a quantity of one. It's as if they float in out of some eBay cloud. landing back in my listings. I am not referring to listing of multiples, where upon re-listing the quantity did not automatically change (another eBay glitch that they can't seem to fix), just randomly-appearing old listings.

[tunicaslot]

My OOS defects for the past 7 years is because of this glitch we refer to as ghost listings. I've had listings that were sold the prior year - no remnants of them in unsolds as those drop off after 90 days and no remnant of them in archived - but they suddenly pop up in my active listings and get sold. You really have to keep watch.

Sometimes it may be human error - where we relist something but get distracted and don't go back to the unsolds to delete the listing - so human error may account for some of these - but the older ones have us all puzzled. I get relists like that about 3 times a year. I'm waiting for them now as in checking my listings - 7 items that I had in unsolds just disappeared so I had to make up all new listings for them. I'm sure in future - those items will magically re-appear for sale!

[castlemagicmemories]

It's called a ghost listing, and they have been reported for years.

[squinkercat59]

I've had this problem for years. YEARS. But I found this handy tool I use about once a week, that detects duplicate listings:

www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

Of course, it won't help if you've sold one and one remains, or is re-listed, but it will detect any duplicates currently.

[compscrap]

has happened to me several times.  along with the opposite. Active listings just disappearing. when i discovered that i went through a bunch of my used items that used to sell but then stopped.  found over 40 items that were no longer listed.   

also there is the problem listings that are active and not visible.  I have started to uncover numerous listings that I can not find in a search. competitors one up but mine do not.  All are items that had weekly sales and then just stopped selling.  I have to end them and then do a sell similar.  after that they are visible in about 5 minutes. Just to make certain the problem really existed I searched for some of these items over a multi day period and never found them in the search one single time.

do you know how difficult it is to go through 2300 listings to find the ones that are not visible? 

Not to mention active listings just vanishing?

eBay is a  hot server mess

[castlemagicmemories]

Those ghost listings create a bad experience for buyers and sellers, so fixing it would be a good idea.  Buyers are upset and I have seen one neg left for a seller that said something like, Said eBay relisted a sold listing. Yeah, right!, and sellers are put on the spot and blamed for something that was not their fault.  Buyers are disappointed as they can't get their item and the seller is wrongly blamed.   It lessens or destroys a buyer's overall trust in eBay.  Sellers are penalized for OOS but essentially this is creating an OOS that is not the seller's fault.

Not a good thing from any direction.  

[castlemagicmemories]

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@squinkercat59 wrote:

I've had this problem for years. YEARS. But I found this handy tool I use about once a week, that detects duplicate listings:

www.isdntek.com/ebaytools/DuplicateListings.htm

Of course, it won't help if you've sold one and one remains, or is re-listed, but it will detect any duplicates currently.

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Yes, the problem has been around for years; apparently it is not a priority to fix that.

[nc-daydreamer]

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@compscrap wrote:

has happened to me several times.  along with the opposite. Active listings just disappearing. when i discovered that i went through a bunch of my used items that used to sell but then stopped.  found over 40 items that were no longer listed.   

also there is the problem listings that are active and not visible.  I have started to uncover numerous listings that I can not find in a search. competitors one up but mine do not.  All are items that had weekly sales and then just stopped selling.  I have to end them and then do a sell similar.  after that they are visible in about 5 minutes. Just to make certain the problem really existed I searched for some of these items over a multi day period and never found them in the search one single time.

do you know how difficult it is to go through 2300 listings to find the ones that are not visible? 

Not to mention active listings just vanishing?

eBay is a  hot server mess

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I don't have 2300 - only about 800 - but I do know how time consuming this is. I, like many other responding here, have had old listings just re-appear out of thin air, sold listings becoming available for sale again (creating defects when sold before I can catch them), and like you, now have active listings just vanish.  On top of this, I have pictures that are in listings suddenly become missing. Doing this evaluation review process I have found that one category of items were all changed to "local pick up" and charging $5.00 for it - Now I know why sales in that area stopped. I have a few hundred of these left to revise. If I had not started investigating, I'd never had known it.

I am going through my listings this week one by one to catch and correct such 'glitches'. It is frustrating to say the least, and just downright wrong. Another problem that seems to get ignored while the features that work flawlessly constantly gets broken these days.

I just can't understand why a company with billions of dollars in the bank can't hire decent programmers and get this travesty fixed. As many have pointed out - this has gone on for years now.

[somanypostcards]

Yes, it happened to me.  I had a listing that had sold out.  GTC had just been initiated, so this was not a user error on my part as eBay relisted the item even though they showed me a count of zero.  To add insult to injury, I got a defect for OOS.