eBay Glitch Increases Quantities & Relists Sold Items 5-27-23
UPDATE 6-2-23
eBay community staff have confirmed the $0.30 per order fee will be refunded for sellers who cancelled out of stock orders due to this issue.
We just wanted to provide an update that credits will be automatically processed back to affected sellers for the .30 cent fee so sellers will not need to reach out for that. The anticipated date of those credits being processed is early next week.
UPDATE 5-30-23
eBay has now also finally announced there will be seller protections for those impacted by this issue and acknowledged this issue was caused by international shipping as many sellers suspected.
On May 26, 2023 an update was made to listings with international shipping options. As part of this recent change, we inadvertently increased the quantity on some listings.
We understand that this may have caused sellers to cancel orders or issue refunds but we’re working to correct these quantity errors. Here’s what you need to know about the recent update:
- We’ve updated any listing to show the correct quantity available and quantity sold.
- For listings where sellers manually revised the quantity, we won’t make any changes.
- For sellers who had to cancel orders, received negative feedback, or had stockout strikes during our update, we’ll ensure that their seller rating isn’t affected.
As always, thank you for selling on eBay.
The announcement does not address what will be done about the $0.30 per order fee on orders cancelled due to this issue.
Per eBay's fee credit policies, the fee is refunded if it was buyer canceled or issue with buyer address, but not if out of stock.
Those fees absolutely should be refunded, but it remains to be seen if they will.
If you were affected by this glitch and don't receive the promised protections, I want to hear about it!
Leave a comment below or if you prefer to remain off the record, contact me.
UPDATE 5-30-23
eBay has finally added this incident to the Ongoing Technical Issues board in the community.
Incorrect available quantity shown in the listings (May 30, 2023)
Reference ID: ALERT14709
Provide Seller ID:
Provide Item Number:
UPDATE 5-30-23
While there has still been no direct communication from eBay, sellers are reporting they are starting to see some. but not all, of their affected listings being automatically reverted back to the correct quantities.
Amazing...it looks like ebay has fixed this. I did have to go in to a few listings and manually fix qty's.
Yes, my store updated with many fixes as well...but not everything. I still have a bunch that were not fixed, so I am still a bit worried and unsure exactly what they did?
Many of my item qty's seem back to normal but not all.
Most of the ones that had a sale since the glitch are not fixed yet. Not sure if that's common thread.
They did something for sure, but obviously not a complete fix yet. Hoping they still come through with a complete fix, I have a partial fix on my store currently (weird) and I still can't be fully confident about my listings overall. If anyone gets an update on this let us know! I'll be calling today as well.
UPDATE 5-29-23
eBay has still not communicated directly with sellers about this "known issue" and those who contact support are still receiving conflicting answers as to whether they should be correcting their inventory manually or waiting for eBay to reset it.
There has also been no announcement as to whether eBay will provide seller protections for out of stock cancellations, service metrics penalties, or negative feedback as a result of this issue.
It is absolutely unacceptable that eBay is not proactively communicating about this issue through the system status page and eBay community forum, leaving sellers in the dark.
At this point my advice would be put listings on Time Away until this gets sorted out to avoid selling items that are out of stock.
Sadly in situations like this, eBay has somewhat of a perverse incentive not to suggest the Time Away option to sellers.
As Less Then Three Records alludes to - eBay will still be able to count all of these sales in Q2 GMV, even if they are immediately cancelled and refunded.
UPDATE 5-28-23
@askeBay on Twitter has finally acknowledged this is a "known issue" but so far eBay still has not added this major disruption to selling to the eBay System Status page or sent out a sitewide announcement to inform sellers what will be done to correct the issue and protect their accounts.
UPDATE
Some sellers report support is telling them not to edit listing because eBay will revert the quantities.
Other says support is saying there is no way for them to revert and sellers will need to manually correct their own inventory.
Some sellers are also suggesting the problem may be caused by the new eBay International Shipping Program and that it may be related to another issue that is causing eBay to automatically create new business and shipping policies without sellers' input or consent.
The numbers being added for quantity also don't appear to be random. Sellers say the they match up to adding back in the total number that had been sold historically - for example if the listing was supposed to have a current quantity of 10 but had previously sold 500, it was changed to a quantity of 510.
Unfortunately at this point everyone is just guessing because there has been no direct communication from eBay about the problem.
Meanwhile, @AskeBay appears to be clueless, despite multiple suggestions that they should read the threads in their own community about this issue to have it escalated & proactively communicate with sellers about how it will be resolved.
Sellers report eBay's inventory systems have gone berserk, randomly increasing inventory quantities and relisting sold items.
Probably going to have to close my store for good. Have about 8,000 items, most of which were available in variation listings. The listings have apparently all renewed with original quantities showing customers that I now have 21,000 items up for sale. But those 13,000 additional items were all previously sold.
This is the second time this has happened. A couple years ago it did this and I was running the store full time. I spent the time to fix it. Now, I'm working a full-time job and will have to just end all of the listings. Huge waste of time and money.
Today we came to the office to realize about 40% of our inventory on eBay has changed. Some cases adding 10 pieces and in some multiplying. I would email eBay but I know the drill here. They play like you're the only one with the issue until a month later when they admit they have a glitch. Anyone else having this issue?
Same Here - They took all that has sold and added it to existing inventory. If I sold 500 small black and had 10 in inventory, now I have 510 in inventory
Yes, same here in both of my stores. A nightmare and lots of emails and refunds. " Sorry this is not in stock..."
Where are you looking to see if something has multiplied?
I assume it's "quantity" under "active". How do you know which have and which haven't?
Most of my items have quantities of 1, just a handle have variations. My magic numbers are 2, 3, and 4 times. One is 50. Some I can just look at and remember I only have 1 of those in inventory, but others I don't remember. It looks like I'm going to have to spend a whole lot of time going through physical inventory and checking it against the listed quantities.
Any word from Ebay about this glitch yet?
i just check my account and alot of listing quantity available is changed to higher number . does anyone else experianced it ?
Yes just checked mine and a lot of them have last updated on May 26, 2023 17:19:35 PDT and May 26, 2023 17:19:34 PDT. I was going to change my password but wanted to check here first as how can so many listings change at the same time. Now to try to get customer service right!!!
Same exact thing happened to me simultaneously 1100 items were added to my existing listings. I contacted Ebay for Business on Facebook and they were useless. They said "Rest assured the information on our end shows the correct number of listings and quantities." Totally inept. They will do nothing. It is absolutely impossible for me to have instantaneously and simultaneously added 1100 items at exactly 6:36:07PM on every listing affected.
But "rest assured they will make sure everything is resolved and post it here once it is." Are they going to come here and re-inventory everything they corrupted in my store? And what happens when the defects start rolling in for items sold that aren't in stock because ebay randomly decided to add 1100 items back in that were already sold?
Mark my words. First it will be to try to gaslight us that we ourselves did it to our own listings. And IF, and I mean IF, they ever take responsibility, absolutely NOTHING will be done to help us. 20 plus year old platform that is patched together with duct tape and bubble gum and apparently cookie cutter responses meant for us to simply go away while they collect their fees.
It’s a system glitch. My inventory practically doubled due to this.
I've seen this pop up on the message board a couple times. But the only responses I see are other people saying they have had the same problem and ebay saying contact us.
To refresh: the issue is I am doing nothing, happily enjoying my day, then look at updating a listing and the quantities of the items are 22, 35, 12, 17, etc. A bunch of unusual numbers for items I have 0, 1, or 2 of. Major problem of course.
Can ebay fix it using a restore to before they messed it up or do I have to go through one at a time and do it myself hoping that it doesn't happen again like it appears to have happened to other users?
This is also happening with single item listings as well. And for example, I had one single item listing change from quantity three to quantity 92.
Woke up this morning to sales of some items I know I am out of stock on or do not have the amounts to meet the ordered amount. Looked at the listing and saw the available quantities were 70-90 per size variation of this particular item.
Checked my listing page and noticed my total inventory value of listed items jumped to almost a million dollars and nearly 90,000 items. Did a sort by quantity and some listings show over 8000 items available. This is nor multi-variation and single item listings. Wow, what a huge system glitch!
This all happened sometime on 5/26. Luckily, I have a bulk edit file on the store PC from 5/25 I can use to update all 1800 listings. Hopefully I do not sell too many out of stocks before I can get into the store and get the listings fixed.
I’m getting the same! I woke up to orders flying in for items I haven’t had for months, even a year. I need to start canceling sales. What happens to my stats when I cancel these??!! How am I going do I correct all of the inventory quantities?
Same, with no logical reason. I have listings with counts ranging from say 5 to 500. over 2/3 of my almost 1000 listings jumped from 5 to 75 or 5 to 1000. my 50 counts jumped to 200 or 2500. No logic and now my entire store inventory is jacked.
Just another GIANT HOOP to jump in the eBay "sorry for the inconvenience train" aka the third highly unacceptable event this week.
Went to my listings page to check on inventory and noticed some strange numbers under the "available quantity" column. Huge numbers that I did not input... in fact, many seemed to mirror the number sold. This seemed to affect approximately 10% of the listings... the others were fine. Has this happened to anyone else? I went to the listing page and it did show that large number available as well... which could have been inconvenient if someone actually tried to buy 44pcs of my stock that I only had 4 of!
I called eBay and they are aware of the glitch. The rep told me to not edit my quantities as they were going to revert it back. It was some type of encryption glitch.
How long are we supped to wait? How many sales will we have to cancel?
As of this morning, buyers are purchasing our items that are out of stock because overnight the listing quantities have miraculously been revised without any input on our end.
How can I stop items from re- listing after they are sold , I don’t sell multiple quantities, I only sell one item 1 quantity at the time
Never had this happen. These are single item sales,not multiple quantity. Sold them, paid for and shipped and going thru yesterday and today to see them still listed??? Again, these were single items,not multiple. What is happening? Anyone know?
This issue could be related to or compounded by another glitch that is currently preventing some sellers from being able to create or revise listings.
Liz Morton ~ Founder
This could be a massive problem for sellers as Memorial Day weekend is typically the kick off to Summer and a major sales event for many retailers.
Will eBay protect sellers from cancellations, service metrics penalties and negative feedback for listings that are oversold due to this glitch?
So far eBay has not acknowledged these issues and of course as always, the eBay system status page shows no current outages or disruptions.
Stay tuned for updates and let us know in the comments below if you are experiencing problems with eBay changing quantities or relisting sold items.
