Most of my listings have disappeared over night - no warnings, no known account issues

[ojewellery]

I can't believe I'm here again.  No email messages, no account warnings, I've been very careful with selected categories and my listings have just dissapeared.

Trying to remember to breathe and stay calm.  There goes the relaxing weekend.

[ojewellery]

Thank you for the messages of support.  No change yet. 

I have played around with which way to move forwards but with the indication that its a glitch I don't want to end up with duplicates by relisting.  Nothing is in ended on eBay but I have the master listings in my third party software so whilst labourious and I can replicate acurately but would still need toopen each listing to upload each video again.

I hate limbo - I need clear eBay direction, which hopefully I can get by end of day tomorrow, then at least I'll know where I am to begin moving forwards again.

[1956glyn]

As difficult as it is for your business i would leave everthing as it is until you can speak to Ebay again tomorrow as i fear you could really mess up your account/listings if you change anything now 😞

[divine0606]

Sorry to hear that i've experienced the same on one of my business account 8 months ago i lost some 6 listings with loads of sales history on them one had 50000 plus and they just disappeared like yours they were not showing up in ended listings i checked my messages for vero take downs or ebay listing removals but nothing spoke to ebay and they had no clue what so ever and at the end after waiting 3 days to see if they come back i had to relist again at the end ebay was no help. 

Personally i wouldn't trust what ebay tell you i've been fed lie after lie over the last 18 years of selling on this decling platform. 

[ojewellery]

Over the years I've lost the odd listing which I write off as autorelist type glitches, but this is over 500 listings.

Its very odd because they have these sort of ghost impressions - they're in the system but not indexed against their item numbers and not ended.  Thats completely new to me.

@divine0606 thank you for sharing your experience.  Did someone at eBay ultimately advise you relist or did you just go for it after three days of frustration waiting for them to act?

[divine0606]

No they were suppose ring me back within 72 hours to follow up on the issue but never did and to be honest i couldnt wait as some of my listings were converting well selling 100's a day on one listing so i just couldn't wait so i just went to my paid and dispatched and re-listed luckily they kept there ranking history as when i relisted they were still ranking at the top. 

[ojewellery]

Thank you for that - whilst I can access the ghost listings by going in via sold items, I don't have a relist option as they aren't technically ended.  They're disassociated with their item numbers so I don't know which bit the system can see.  I could do sell similar but run the risk of then the system seeing duplicates - albeit the originals don't exist in search.

Hopefully Monday morning will enable me to ask an eBay Dublin person and they'll give some feedback and indications of actions I can take by end of day.

[btr.style]

They aren't ended. They are just hidden. The link to them will still work. It's a bug affecting some members and will be removed at some point. 

[ojewellery]

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@btr.style wrote:

 The link to them will still work.

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Thank you for that snippet.   What do you mean the link to them will still work?  Any listings that haven't sold I have no way of linking too.  Its only items that have recently sold I can get up what appears to be an active  version of the listing.

The listing number doesn't bring up the listings, even the ones that I can get to the version of.  I can't bring any of them up in search.  The third party listing software is identifying them all as ended in eBay.

[magpiecorner1 · Accepted solution]

Did you manage to speak to someone at eBay?  I checked on eBay.com and only 268 listings there.

I have a chat with CS last week, had the poor guy stumped, he passed me through to 'the selling team' - might be worth asking for them instead of repeating yourself!  Best of luck, sure it will get sorted.  

[ojewellery]

Oops hit the wrong button.

I did speak to eBay Saturday morning.  The chapmi spoke with was quite thorough and said technical blip should be resolved very quickly.  

I thought about calling again today but I'd like to speak with someone whose response I can trust and with whom I can agree an action plan. I will try first thing Monday

[vintagewatchpart]

Any joy with this today? 

[ojewellery]

I've spoken to a couple of helpful people.  Been advised to sit tight they will get back to me.  We decided it would not be great to relist as it probably would flag as duplicates, create violations and end up with the relisted items being removed.  The violations would then muddy waters with finding resolution on the original issue.

No account issues they can find and spoken with the various teams who remove and no known issues so not them (well not intentionally).  They can't understand why the listings are active but not available, not showing unless searched in seller hub and not available to customers.

I'm hoping to hear back today but the time is ticking on, so I think its going to be morning phone calls until I find a way forwards.

So glad I'm not all eggs one basket and you lovely folks on here keep me sane when I could go down a rabbit hole of catastrophisation on my own!

[vintagewatchpart]

At least it sounds like they are being helpful, I was wondering if it was some sort of unknown bug with the third party stock management system connected with Ebay.

I think this could have been so much worse for you but you have the backup of the item thankfully, I bet if most of us had this happen it would be relisting from scratch.

Will be a shame if you lose the item sales history and ranking though.

[ojewellery]

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@vintagewatchpart wrote:

.., I was wondering if it was some sort of unknown bug with the third party stock management system connected with Ebay.

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This was one of the first things eBay said.  The thing is that system, Selro, shows ended in eBay and if it, the third party software, had ended them  - eBay would be showing them as ended not in limbo land. We think, but I'm hoping someone with greater system integration knowledge will be investigating.

I do get software, especially with so many legacy elements, isn't straight forwards and we don't always get answers just need to find solutions.  It is a relief its not widespread across the platform, not a nice place to be.

I'm thinking if we get towards end of week without my listings back, I'm going to chat with eBay and see if we can end the phantoms and then recreate the listings, via the third party, as fresh listings to hopefully reduce risk of recreating the issue down the line.

Fortunately its my quietest month so if there is a positive to be found its the smallest loss time of year!

[technthread]

The main thing is getting the listings reinstated but thinking forward I would also start to estimate how much money they are costing you per day in lost sales.

This would be with a view to asking eBay about compensation such as a period of free shop subscription fees or other account billing adjustments to go some way towards making this right.

[rainbowtrax]

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@vintagewatchpart wrote:

I think this could have been so much worse for you but you have the backup of the item thankfully, I bet if most of us had this happen it would be relisting from scratch.

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For anyone who has an ebay shop that was subscribed to over 2-3 years ago, you have ebay's Inventory system available to you. It's well worth saving all listings to your Inventory and getting in the habit of saving any new listings as you create them. That way, if something like this happens, you can at least get all the listings back up and running if you need to.

[pg_kicks]

Do you see different active listings on the app to desktop?

I'm pretty sure mine has changed again with a few more disappearing from the desktop figure but still appearing on the app.

[ojewellery]

The app says 792 but when you click on the 792 it changes to 269 that you can actually scroll through (which is the 275 I mentioned earlier in thread minus 6 I've conciously deleted as they sold and wont be replenishable).

Being an eBay wrinkly, I've checked different browsers, app, apple device, we (eBay and I together) checked incogneto, it is a consistent error.

 technthread wrote: The main thing is getting the listings reinstated but thinking forward I would also start to estimate how much money they are costing you per day in lost sales.

I do take your point but I think generally eBay do attempt to do right by sellers and on balance will see me back operational.  Its all a bit of give and take and I'm confident whats happened is not a malicious act - we're in a symbiotic relationship, if I'm not earning they're losing the income from my sales so whilst I'm a small seller and a drop in the ocean of sales, I'm still confident its not their intent to damage any sellers/ their income.

[pg_kicks]

I just checked and mine does the same, should have really checked that earlier. Its going to be fun to try and work out the 15 that are missing. Im going through all my listings and taking new pictures and removing promos but this is just another thing to add to the list I guess. 

Lets hope its sorted quickly.

[ojewellery]

If you have the same issue, I'm sorry to hear that.  What I've found is if you use reports and download active listings, it includes the listings not showing.

If you're happy playing in excel, you can convert the csv download to excel format and sort by eBay category to establish how many items you should have in each category then search your shop by category to see whats missing.

Again if its the same issue, seller hub will bring up the invisible listings if they're searched for so this is misleading.  

If you want to check invisibility of an item, use the general ebay search bar and enter the ebay item number found on the download report - first column (needs converting to number).  If it comes up blank you've found a hidden item!