Sold Items Getting relisted by Ebay not me

[keq11]

I'm a long time seasoned seller with 9600 feedback. For many years I have been having this problem with sold items getting relisted without my knowledge and then getting resold down the line. It used to just happen a couple times a year but now it's happening once a month.  I have a store and  when I sell something it should be out of the sysyem but a month later I sell it again and it's driving me nuts. I am not relisting these. I have 700 to 1200 items in my store that there's no way to take inventory and check if an odd past sale is back in a listing. 

When I talk to Ebay they tell me I am the one relisting when I know I'm not. I don't ned to relist. The item is in my store, it sells, done deal. They are just magically back online.

 Not usre if any of this is making sense but is anyone else having a problem with sold items appearing back in listings?

[bitbeat]

I've had multiples not reducing # left correctly -

haven't had a sold item relisting itself as far as I know!  Like you, I'd have a problem checking the stock to see what's still there, if that's what's happening..

[rockz1101]

I only had it happen twice, many many many moons ago. Both times with one of a kind distinctive crystal items. First time, I did the double take and my brain went ..how? and I noted to eBay I never got the warning "this item is already listed".  So I ended the duplicate listing. Second time, I had record of this item already been sold and shipped to a completely different buyer and location, according to eBay sold section and my records.   It was a one of a kind item, I had no more like this item to list or anything even close in appearance,  so there was no need to set up a new listing or use the "create a similar" listing option either. This phantom duplicate listing was purchased but by a different buyer ID and a completely different ship address.  I can relate to your frustration,  I promptly refunded the customer and apologized as I didn't have any thing to offer as a substitute. I haven't seen that customer since. Ghosts in the machine! I called Ebay the first time it happened, but not the second time. Had it happened a 3rd time, I would have been on the phone with eBay for as many calls needed,  until it was fixed.  I hope eBay can get this issue resolved asap. 

[lillianhelene]

Last August, I did a mass relist on ebay and within an hour, a recent buyer of an auction style listing emailed to ask why did I relist something they just bought?? So I went back through what I had relisted and started seeing other previously sold items had been relisted. I had relisted almost 1000 items and did not have time to go through every one so I hurried and ended them all but not before 4 more previously sold items had sold again. We all know that equals 4 defect ratings for out of stock! The first tech apologized and credited my store fees and acted like they would take care of everything. That didn't happen. In fact it took 4 very frustrating phone calls over the next 6 weeks before someone finally admitted it was a bug with the seller hub. And I suspected that because it was the first time I relisted through the seller hub. In the end, 3 months later and cross referencing all 1000 relisted items against sold item emails (because going through an inventory that large would be ridiculous, thank goodness I save emails), in the end there were nearly FOUR HUNDRED relisted items that were previously sold. I still hold my breath every time something sells but I also immediately opted out of the seller hub. Since then I have had several instances where quantity has not updated properly and I try to handle those as it happens. But with over 2000 listings, I feel like its Russian Roulette everytime something sells that I won't have the item. Don't let them keep telling you it is not a problem. If you do not use the right wording they won't help you. Mention Seller Hub and good luck!!!

[lillianhelene]

Consequently, don't assume the problem started in August. One of my items had previously sold in February of last year and not only did it resell once in May but then AGAIN in August. So that item snuck into the relist cycle many times! We really don't know when it started because sometimes an item can take months or even a year to sell. And once it is erroneously relisted one time, it becomes active inventory for every relist that follows. It's an ugly situation.

[dhbookds]

Everyone may know this........but there are a couple of ways sold listings end up  in unsolds......

ie.  making a second chance offer on an auction and making an offer directly from a question in messages on an unsold item  (the .....this x ended.....do you still have it for sale....message)....

both of those "create" a new listing, while the old listing is still being shown (and remains) in unsolds.  If they aren't deleted from unsolds, manually, it's easy to relist when you do a bulk relist.......

Not saying that's what's happening, but two "sold" items did relist this way for me.....

[lillianhelene]

Definitely a good point. It wasn't the case for me but good to put that out there!

[craftydeals4u]

This has happened too many times. I have read it happening to other sellers too. It just happened again last night.

 One thing is if you press sell similar the listing remains in the unsold list. So you have to go back in and delete them. I have noticed sometimes if I check them they did not take, so now I look twice to verify.

 What is the worst part of this is ebay punishes the seller when it happens. I gave up on variation listings they never updated right and the numbers and sizes were always wrong. Lost top rated seller status from a bathing suits listing that was always wrong. I double checked inventory many times, it was not me...

I love selling on ebay and wish this would get fixed.

[poetryinpower]

I can totally relate to this problem.   I'm guessing that you have seller manager pro and you use the search function in UNSOLD.

Your problem is duplicate listings.   Somehow you listed something twice and one of them sold.  The other one is drifting around.

It's really easy to do and there's nothing in eBay Seller Manager Pro software that catches the problem.

If you have stock numbers, it's best to download your active items using eBay File Exchange, copy the numbers into a spreadsheet, sort them, and find the duplicates.   Remember that when you have duplicates, subtracting them = zero.    =SUM(A1-A2) down the right column will yield zeroes that you can use to pick out your duplicates.

Going forward that will help the problem, which I know is very frustrating.

Andy

[motorgirl63]

It is happening to me daily I found 5 this morning and that was because I was trying to find my missing listings 

I am supposed to have 1200 items I have 524 items they are not in sold unsold ended or active I tried to call ebay no help at all 

the girl knew nothing about ebay functionality and she sounded like she was eating her lunch t

This has been going on for months I am below standard because 5 items sold I did not have 

If I sell a pair of shoes out of my closet I am not going back to the store to buy another pair 

Ebay has been broken since seller hub was introduced and beyond 

repeat customers cant even find me and send emails 

I dont understand why they do not repair this 

[aitattic]

ANOTHER call I was getting ready to make to eBay and I found the issue right here in Knowledge Base. And I'm not to happy to hear that they are blaming the Sellers and not taking responsibility for this problem because I KNOW EXACTLY HOW IT IS OCCURRING in my situation.

Here's what is happening, for instance, I have a listing that is ending in 30 days and going to the Unsold Listing category.  I want this to occur b/c it gives me the opportunity to update this specific listing with lots of new additions and re-arrange the list manually alphabetically, or in some cases, by style or type.  When the listing is "Active" you cannot change these types of things around, or delete, and must add items to the 'end' of your list... which messes up my (ocd, lol) alphabetical or specially ordered listing.

NOW, while it is Unsold it has the correct number of "Available Quantity", lets say, 30. AS SOON AS I HIT THE RELIST button, the "Available Quantity" magically changes to the QUANTITY PLUS ANY SALES FOR THE MONTH... say I sold 15.  Because NOW MY QUANTITY is 45!!  I check my PAID AND SHIPPED ORDERS for the last 30 DAYS and VOILA'.  There are my 15 Sales for the month AND in checking the UNSOLD listing, the quantities for the listing are back in there (matching the paid and shipped orders) - Very Noticeable - especially when they are unique and I'm dealing with "1" quantity sold items.

NOW, being a prior Customer Service Rep AND ending up a COMPUTER PROGAMMER for nearly ten years I am going to call eBay and give them all of this information.  There is no way they can blame me or anyone else about this very specific flaw in their programming and it should NOT be adding back in any sales for the month.  AND, if I were dealing with 1,000s or ten of thousands of quantities it would have been a very hard situation to catch and quite honestly it probably would have caused me to give up on my eBay experience b/c I did "resell" items that I did not have before I figured out this problem.

Trying to explain what I did not know to customers who probably thought I was back pedaling only made me look bad so I'd really like to know how the big-time sellers get around this flaw.

"Fixing" this manually for me on the few slightly large listings I have takes quites some time every month; I can only imagine the 99% of you who have so much more.

And "maybe" eBay does know some part of the problem. I haven't called them yet. SO... here's hoping... and I will update as soon as I get feedback from them and have a moment.

[aitattic]

see message 11 of 11

[chelsey_love]

This is happening to me as well and I basicly know why I think.  It happens to me so much that my cancelations rate is about to drop below that 2 percent threshold.  Its a glitch when using the back button on my brouser.  I use back button often.  When i'm in a draft or looking at details of a listing and hit the back button, it makes a copy of the listing and saves it into drafts!  Sometimes when I keep editing a draft and exiting it by hitting back, thinking I dont need or want to save the listing, I will make like 4 or 5 different copies of the same listing one right after another saved there in drafts!  No **bleep** and maybe its just the Chrome brouser i use, but I can make it happen at will just by using that back button.  

Its the back button on my brouser the makes copies of listings.

I think that the copies only came up in drafts.  I'm so use to it now that i usually notice the copies in drafts and erase them.  And the problems is I have all my listing saved in drafts for final review before listing and often I don't notice which ones are copies and end up listing them myself.  

It got bad when I jumped up to 1000 listings.  Ebay has a half attempt to prevent this problem and I'm sure they are aware of it.  They compare your draft as you list it to all your active listings to make sure it isn't a double listing, and they will prevent you from listing this item if it matches another listing.  But if the item sells, and you happen to have a copy in drafts, now you can list the item.    

Knowing all this, I think its as simple as not listing items anymore from drafts and perhaps adopting an offline listing program and uploading my listings.  But I otherwise have not adopted this solution and even though I'm aware of the problem, I continue to do it.  And I continue to sell items i dont have becasue I already sold them and cancel sales racking up my cancelation rate.    

Or the problem I think can also be fixed if I can just stop using the back button on my brouser.  Bad glitch I'd say.  I'm not sure if its ebay or the brouser and I'm embarrsed to say I havent tried to see if it still happens in another brouser.  

Try it yourself please and youll see.  start to create a listing and hit the back button on brouser.  Its a real pain becasue the only options when creating ir editing a listing are to either list the item you're working on or save it in drafts.  Well, what if I just want to cancel?  

I hope all this makes sence because this happens to me all the time.  

I think it also happens when I have sold an item.  I sell lots of used items and sometimes have to open the listing and check to make sure the listing matches the item.  And then I hit that back button-and bam!-sold listing is copied and saved into drafts waiting for me to list again which I appearantly do quite often.  Ebay and everyone having this problem needs to know about this problem, but I tell you I've known about it and still continue to let it cause problems for me because I'm not sure what reasonable actions to take to prevent it.  

**bleep** back button is so tempting.

[bra_desires]

You have no idea how happy I am to have found other sellers going through the same issue. I am a long time seller with normally around 1k-1300 items posted. While I  barley remain "above average" that this point. I fall so low in the listing search, I am honestly struggling to continue on ebay. I have so many cancellations it's ridiculous for the last year. I have called ebay three times in the last month and they do nothing. I feel like they don't care either. I asked to speak to a supervisior and she was all giggly and laughing. It really sucks and I have no recourse. The 600 items I do have currently, don't move even when I put them on sale. Its just very upsetting. Ebay keeps making seller's jump though these hoops that it's like I'm not encharge of my own business. 

[flea_market_mom]

Glad I found this thread! Thanks all for sharing.  This has happened to me three times this month!  The other two times, I blamed it on myself -- thinking that I just lost the item or it fell behind somewhere in my stock room (garage).  I only have about 500 items and about 20 bins.  The third time it was today, and i distinctly remember selling this item!  I called eBay and they admitted it is some type of glitch but didn't go into it futher.  The rep confirmed that I had already sold the item.  They asked me to contact the buyer and initiate a cancellation with the reason "buyer requested".  I said that's really not truthful, and the buyer could just ignore it.  He said that they have everything "documented" as far as the call I placed, and if the buyer refused, or left me a negative feedback that it would be removed from my account as a defect.  This is just unacceptable!  How can sellers continually double check their inventory to make sure these ghost listings are not appearing for sale! I think perhaps it is done on purpose so that TR status can be taken away?  Thoughts?