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Ok, folks, this is a little long…but I am so curious to see if anyone else out there has experienced this.
Over the past several years, I have had probably a half dozen occasions where I’ve sold an item and then discovered that it is no longer in my inventory. Now, to be fair, we’ve moved 3-4 times in the last 6 years and that means moving thousands of items in eBay inventory as well.
Having said that, I am always extremely careful to keep all the listed inventory separate and easy to access during these moves.
Several times when I’ve sold something that I can’t find, I have this nagging feeling that perhaps I had already sold that item. But, of course, it was so long ago that it no longer shows up on the 90 day paid and shipped list. Usually, I just figure it’s my fault, I notify the buyer that the item is no longer available and take my licks.
Then, this week, I finally got proof that eBay had relisted a sold item…or rather, they never moved the sold item off the active item list.
I sold a tablecloth last week and I was getting ready to print several packing slips for that and the other items I had sold. At the same time, I had decided to tweak some active listings, change prices, add make-an-offer, etc. While I’m tweaking said items, I see the same tablecloth is still in active listings…..whaaaaaaat??? I open the “sold awaiting shipping” tab and yes, it’s still there too. Now I’m beginning to get that nagging feeling that I have already sold this…I go down to my office and pull the packing slips and shipping label receipts for the current year.
I find the packing slip, showing that I sold the table cloth last Feb. Now, I’ve “sold” it again, AND, it’s STILL in active listings….oh crap!
I call eBay and basically he just shook his head and said he couldn’t explain it but I should delete the active listing and then tell my buyer that it’s no longer available. I said “what about my defect rating?”. Since this is clearly not my fault. The best he would do is put a note on my account saying I had called in about it and if I got a defect, I could fight it.
So I’ve been wondering about this for years, and in one way, I’m relieved to find out I’m not crazy…plus, it’s only been a tiny percentage of sales over the last 10 years, so probably not such a big deal, but annoying when it happens.
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This has never happened to me, but I recall hearing someone else talking about it on the forum. Perhaps you could use the search function to try and find it.
I’m curious as to whether the item number changed between these listings. Are you able to compare numbers on the sold one, the second sold one, and the active one you ended? If the numbers match, then I would double-check the quantity and make sure you didn’t put a number larger than one in there.
If they don’t match, then eBay is creating new listings when the old one sells. Now that would be a crazy glitch!
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Sharyn this is true. If a typo took place and any number larger than 1 was entered, then if one sold, the listing would still relist itself, but as you said under the same item number. Also the store listing should say, “1 Sold and Only 1 more available” or “Last One”,…something to that effect.
mike at MDCGFA
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Hey Jenna:
Yes we have had this happen about 4 or 5 times in about a 6 year period. The way we discovered it was through our 3rd party listing software. The first 3 or 4 times we were using WonderLister and these programs keep all of your records for every transaction forever, including stats, financials, sales history and even buyers home addresses, phone numbers and eamil addresses. We run a cross check every quarter for sales vs. existing inventory and found 3 or so that had been sold and were still showing as in stock. We delted the Ebay listing and our WL was accurate.
But a few years ago we started our Etsy store and cross listing about half of our stock there. We had a buyer want 2 of something that we only had one of and she bought the one on Ebay and then within a minute or less bought the same one on Etsy. Well turns out that the new SixBit sogtware we now use, couldn’t process the transaction quick enough and we had to cancel one and complete the other. The buyer was very understanding.
The last instance was an item we sold but it was our own fault. We use a numerical inventory system and can find most things in a heartbeat. But in a case where we have to go and pull an item because of a buyer question and then replace that item back into storage but in the wrong bin, we are screwed. We told the buyer we couldn’t find it and had no record of a previous sale, but if we found it we would send it to him free of charge. He was the only one who gave us a neg. feedback and said we were full of bull. But we did find it about 3 months later and sent it to him free as we promised. Not a peep out of him.
But we did have some sold items that Ebay must have never deleted or got relisted some how.
But as you said it has only been a few times in years and years, so we just rolled with the flow.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art.
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I have talked about this on the forum for the last six months. This happens to me all the time on both Ebay and Amazon. Daily I check my orders versus my inventory to make sure my sold items have been removed. It happens on both platforms at least 3 or 4 times a week for me.
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@Sharyn Yup, it was me that posted this because I found a batch of items. Mine were sold in the previous year and then relisted this year!
@jumbleandclutter My saving grace (in more ways than one) has been Easy Auction Tracker. It’s an Excel spreadsheet program that pulls all your sales for the year and does all your financials. I just open the spreadsheet, type in the keywords of the item I’m searching for, and it finds them for me. The only stuff it doesn’t find is Bonanza sales, but I don’t have a lot of those, so it doesn’t matter. Can’t recommend this program enough – it does my financials AND helps me find sold items that eBay glitches back to Active. eBay’s response to me was to “just do a stocktake.” -
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I’ve been developing inventory management software for eBay and this was one of the most interesting things to see come up as a result of it syncing local on-hand inventory with what was live on eBay. At times I could believe that maybe I accidentally double-listed or messed up a quantity (30 of the same VCR?) but other times it was very apparent something weird had gone on internally and caused something to show up when it shouldn’t have.
I’m especially suspicious of quantity listings as they seem the most prone to error.
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@IndySales I’d be interested in hearing about your software, when you have it ready. For the sake of your research & development, just to let you know that none of the items that reappeared in my Active listings were multi-item listings originally. All of them were one-offs, although a couple were Sell Similar.
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