How can a seller increase quantity on a listing that ended?

[fergua3]

I bought an item yesterday from a seller based in China.  He just had the one item listed, i purchased it and the listing ended.  Normal.

I went back to check the listing today and it's still active and says 1 available/1 sold.  Same listing number as the one i bought.  I checked revisions and the quantity was changed AFTER i purchased and the  listing ended.    How?   The seller has not canceled my sale.

[ricarmic]

If a seller sets the (I believe it is called) out of stock setting, when an item with count of 1 sells it drops the item count to ZERO but it does not close it. It of course isn't visible to buyers when the count is zero.

The seller just changes the count back up by one (or any number) and it becomes visible again. (I believe the reason sellers want to use it is that the views etc are kept so it increases the visibility in the search algorithm - PS that was the case wayyy back when I used it, don't know if thats true now)

At one time I used this but back in the day my items were cross polinated on other sites and they couldn't translate the "zero" count and they were running them as instock when they were actually zero, so I quit back then. That's quite a while ago but I am sure the feature still exists, just not 100% what it is called now.

[brettjet38]

This is an option when you set up your listings, you sell out of the item...

The listing goes into stealth mode but remains active, as soon as the Seller adds more inventory it reappears in the search results again, without losing its placement or sold history.

It was introduced ages ago...

[recped]

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@ricarmic wrote:

just not 100% what it is called now.

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It's still called the out of stock option and works the same as always. I use it on  my listings.

https://www.ebay.ca/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/multiquantity-listings-listings...

[fergua3]

thanks for the replies guys.   Never heard of this before.  Funky.

I can think of one good use for it.   You can keep your listing on permanent 'last one available' mode so it may incentivize buyers to purchase now, lest they miss out.  The drawback of course is that you will only sell one item to each buyer,  instead of potentially multiples of the item to one buyer.  So you'd have to use it on items that are not likely to be purchased in mutlitples by the same person..

[regs43]

Out of Stock makes it so you cant easily see sales history on a sellers store by checking recently sold / ended items

Also if you do use the feature be aware that you are charge insertion fees each 30 days for those listings even if they are 0 and hidden as they are being held waiting for you to activate them again adding quantity (unless this has changed).