Disappearing Drafts

[doc_scribe]

I have - or had - 130+ work-in-progress listings in my Drafts folder a couple of months ago.

Then before I could complete and schedule more than a handful of these works-in-progress, they began disappearing, and in no discernible pattern. Initially I dropped under 100, followed by another 15 or so more in subsequent days and weeks. But then yesterday, after relisting a couple of drafts my remaining total dropped by 20 plus. This morning I woke up to another one gone. 

Today, I'm sitting at 51 drafts total out of my original 130+ roughly 6 weeks ago with less than 20 relisted during that period. FTR, none of these drafts had gone without an update and save within any rolling 30 day window.

Any idea how or why this might be happening? Has eBay's draft reterntion policy drastically changed recently?

[kawartha-ephemera · Accepted solution]

It's been my experience that relying on ebay to keep drafts alive for any length of time is akin to playing the lottery. I feel the primary reason that folder exists is to provide somewhere for failed listing submissions to be kept alive on a very temporary basis, beyond that it's never been reliable. Whenever I'm preparing listings that are not for immediate listing for whatever reason I use the Scheduler feature, if they're complete and ready to go I'll select a firm date a week or two off in the future. If the listing is a work in progress I often schedule it for weeks later
knowing I'll revisit the listing well before the scheduled listing date and time. Quite often I'll return to an incomplete scheduled listing, add whatever details were missing, then toggle off the Scheduler and submit it for immediate upload to Active listings. Definitely not an ideal solution but with a little organization it's possible to use Scheduled listings as a Draft folder. I've never had files disappear from that folder, but I do have to pay attention to Scheduled dates, possibly moving them further off in the future when necessary.

[doc_scribe · Accepted solution]

FYI update: Since the original post my Drafts have diminished from 125...to 90...to 50...to just 1 left this morning. FTR, all of those Drafts had interim updates and saves, ready to go live whenever I needed one. Some tireless script must now be crawling through that folder auto-trashing work-in-progress based on ORIGINATION date not LAST SAVE. Anyway, thank you both for your comments and suggestions, but a hard lesson has been learned here. I guess Scheduling tricks are the only sure way to avoid a loss of Drafts like this...

[kawartha-ephemera · Accepted solution]

What an awful experience this must have been, very discouraging I'm sure. FYI eBay with their recent bulk editor changes have sort of ruined the listing Scheduler tool. They removed start time from the edit menu ... as a result the only way to change the start time now is to revise each listing one at a time. Previously, I routinely changed start time using the bulk editor to either start them immediately or at some future date and time. Huge omission!