eBay

richard26wolf · ‎19-10-2023

I had 56 unsold items that I haven't had the chance to relist. Now they've all vanished - is there any way of getting them back?

tressygirl · ‎19-10-2023

Unsold items rmaain in your unsold listings for 60 days if you are on My eBay Selling and for a maximum of 90 days if you are on the Seller Hub. After that all details of the items are permanently removed, there's simply no more room on eBay's servers to keep them any longer.

You will need to start again with descriptions and photos for those items to relist them for sale.

suelel1968 · ‎19-10-2023

Hi, does anyone know if you edit an "ended" listing after a month or so, will it go to drafts and give you another 90 days?

clearingmyshelves2024 · ‎19-10-2023

I found one of mine once by googling but it might have only just gone.

This 'may' be useful - PicClick UK • Search eBay Faster. Find it first!

douglaspuglas · ‎19-10-2023

@suelel1968 wrote:
Hi, does anyone know if you edit an "ended" listing after a month or so, will it go to drafts and give you another 90 days?

According to eBay drafts last 75 days nowadays.

But if you go into the draft and save it again the timeframe resets.

So if you keep doing that in theory you can keep drafts indefinitely.

eastern-lights · ‎19-10-2023

@douglaspuglas wrote:
@suelel1968 wrote:
Hi, does anyone know if you edit an "ended" listing after a month or so, will it go to drafts and give you another 90 days?

According to eBay drafts last 75 days nowadays.
But if you go into the draft and save it again the timeframe resets.
So if you keep doing that in theory you can keep drafts indefinitely.

I don't think that is correct. It is 75 days from the first time you save. (I've just tried editing and saving a listing I have had in draft for a few weeks and the expiry date is unchanged.)

if you want to keep an item in draft you have to go through a process every so often of listing it, ending it, sell similar, save to draft. Unless anyone knows a better way? But to be honest I find 75 days plenty.

douglaspuglas · ‎19-10-2023

Yes you are right, I've just looked at a draft and it does say drafts expire after 75 days after the creation date and are automatically deleted.

Mine doesn't seem to have a creation date that I can see only a last updated date.

It used to be useful when revising a draft reset the timeframe.

richard26wolf · ‎20-10-2023

Thank you. Oh well, lesson learned.

eastern-lights · ‎17-02-2024

@eastern-lights wrote:
I don't think that is correct. It is 75 days from the first time you save. (I've just tried editing and saving a listing I have had in draft for a few weeks and the expiry date is unchanged.)

if you want to keep an item in draft you have to go through a process every so often of listing it, ending it, sell similar, save to draft. Unless anyone knows a better way? But to be honest I find 75 days plenty.

Replying to my own message regarding how long listings remain in draft, it seems to have changed. It is still 75 days but you can reset them by simply opening them and saving them to draft again. Well, that's how it is working today.

eastern-lights · ‎09-03-2024

@eastern-lights wrote:
@eastern-lights wrote:
I don't think that is correct. It is 75 days from the first time you save. (I've just tried editing and saving a listing I have had in draft for a few weeks and the expiry date is unchanged.)

if you want to keep an item in draft you have to go through a process every so often of listing it, ending it, sell similar, save to draft. Unless anyone knows a better way? But to be honest I find 75 days plenty.
Replying to my own message regarding how long listings remain in draft, it seems to have changed. It is still 75 days but you can reset them by simply opening them and saving them to draft again. Well, that's how it is working today.

Replying again to my own message(!) it seems that the most recent advise I gave above is wrong. I've just lost a couple of dozen draft listings by relying on it. It seems:

Draft listings stay for 75 days from the first time you save.

if you want to keep an item in draft for longer you have to go through a process every so often of listing it, ending it, sell similar, save to draft.

m25jet · ‎09-03-2024

Although I no longer sell on eBay, there was one thing that I used to do when I was selling on eBay to guard against this very problem. What I would do first of all would be to save the photos onto my computer, along with a listing title and item description typed out onto a Microsoft Word document. I would then do any editing and make any final tweaks to the item description on the Microsoft Word document, then when it came to setting up the listing on eBay I would upload the photos of the item and copy and paste the title and the item description into the selling template, then just select the various postage options that I wished to include on the listing and either list the item for sale, or schedule it to go live at another time.

By prepping the listing on my own personal computer and saving all of the details there I knew that in the event that something went wrong with the listing and it vanished without trace I could easily just reinstate the listing again by adding the photos onto a presaved template for that type of item, then I would copy and paste the item description into the body of the template and list the item again. It certainly saved me a lot of time doing it this way, as I didn't have to start again from scratch, taking a new lot of photos and writing out another item description as though I was preparing the listing for the very first time. Perhaps if you were to try this out it may well save you some time when it comes to relisting items that have mysteriously vanished from eBay's website.