Anyone else having stock level issues?

[tabletop-hobbies]

Ebay has in an utterly random act of ineptitude adjusted my stock levels upwards on variation listings so i now have to do an emergency stock take to re-establish my actual stock levels.

Has anyone else experienced this?  Two annoyed customers so far due to overselling- Thanks ebay!!

[handstitcheruk]

I had this.  I had 2 items sold for which I had adjusted the stock to zero in January - both variation listings.  Both had sales in February.  Fortunately, I still had enough stock to fulfill the orders.  However, I went back in to end one of the listings and the other one was a discontinued item, so I removed just that variation from the listing by deleting it.  I checked it 24 hours later and miraculously, it had re-appeared with a stock level of 4.  Now I'm off to check it again in a slight panic!

[ojewellery]

Sounds very frustrating!

I maintain my stock levels across multiplatform via third party software, Selro, so don't experience this issue for long.

The only time I have experienced it, is when I've ended and sold similar/ relisted items with variants.  If a particular variant has sold out, it defaults back to the original available level in the new listing.  

The only other random thought is do you use the inventory feature in eBay - if so could any settings there be causing issue?

[tabletop-hobbies]

I've been on to CS and apparently older listings can get corrupted which messes up the stock.  I've put my shop on time away until it's sorted, as they said they'd get back to me.

Not appreciating the hit to sales this means especially as things aren't exactly red hot at the moment.

[bravergrace]

I've had two problems recently with stock levels:

(a) a few weeks/months ago,  eBay changed its system when you relist/sell similar a listing with variations, so it was sometimes (but not always) "restocking" the sold-out variations.  So any variation with a zero stock level, was being "replenished".  This was a really annoying aspect of the MVLs when they were first introduced.  Then eBay stopped it happening for several years, but it recently restarted.  It's not "old listings getting corrupted" - it's an unannounced system change.  I don't have many MVLs, but it still plays havoc with my stock levels when I end an MVL and go to relist it, because I now have to adjust all the stock levels manually, or risk selling a variation that I sold out of months or years ago.

(b) sometimes when relisting a batch of finished items, eBay sends up a rogue error message.  This says something like "196 items relisted.  There were errors with the other 4.  Do you want to try again to relist them?"

So I find the 4 that haven't relisted, and relist them.

But - unknown to me - those 4 didn't "fail to relist".  They actually relisted first time, but with a delay (sometimes a few seconds, sometimes a few hours).  Result: 4 duplicate listings, because that error message was untrue, but I had no way of knowing it was untrue.

eBay of course is only too happy to gaslight us, telling us it's our own fault or we're imagining it, or it's our responsibility etc etc - but these are two current SYSTEM FAULTS which are causing stock levels to go haywire.

[ojewellery]

@tabletop-hobbies Based on eBays speed of getting back in touch, In your shoes I think I'd consider doing a download of all listings/ stock and then setting all multivariant listings to zero stock.

That way single variant listings can keep selling.  I did a quick count and if all your multivariants also have price variants it looks at a glance like we're talking only 25 of 569 listings.

You could then work through relisting those with low traffic into new format and stock checking and making available those with higher traffic.

[tabletop-hobbies]

CS did come back to me and told me I'd need to end and relist two of the affected listings as they were 'corrupted' and this is something that happens to old variation listings albeit rarely.  The account hasn't been hacked i was assured.  Apparently age of listing and amount sold isn't that important to the search now so I saved them as templates and relisted with the correct stock and original promotions.

It's all very quiet so far but it's hard to distinguish between other stuff going on lately (impressions have fallen off a cliff recently, thee economy woes etc) and me having to can two of my best selling listings which is likely to affect my sales over the weekend.

Not that any of this could come at a good time but this hasn't come at a good time at all.

[siestapets]

Yep me to.  Sell spare parts and 1 item was out of stock but sold. I thought I had made a mistake as it said 23 in stock, we don't stock that many of the item.   managed to find one to fulfil the order and reset to zero.  Next day sell 2 more, the stock had gone back to 23.     Still not as bad as when random orders were printing random items on picking lists.  We had to double check every order

[twofourdeltasurplus]

I have been suffering with this as well, even had a sold out closed down listing go live saying I had 12 in sotck, one sold and I go mental looking for the one sold, trash the container looking as ebay say I have 12.

luckily so far customers have been understanding, wonder for how long.