Oy, what a mess!

Sorry I haven't written anything new in a while - not much to report. Some nice sales, but nothing too spectacular...until yesterday.

I sold three copies of a card at $7.50 each. Not bad....but something seemed off to me. I quickly checked, and my instincts were right. I only had one copy of the card!

How could this have happened? I listed three, but I only had one. The last time something like this happened, I'm pretty sure it was because I copied the previous item and forgot to update the "number available" - but that couldn't have been the case here as I only had one copy of the previous item, so I know I entered "3" as the number available!

Okay...some investigating reveals that I had previously sold off two copies of that card, so I should have had only one left. Then it hit me - this was one of the items that renewed after 30 days...did the renewal reset the number available? And if so, did that mean that a ton of my inventory was now messed up? Would I have to take everything down from the store, reinventory my collection and update the files, then upload them all again? YEUCH!

I quickly checked another item that I knew I had sold a few copies of, and I knew had reset after 30 days. The number eBay showed available matched what I actually had in my collection - so not everything messed up. Was this card a fluke?

Then some more investigating (and a spark of memory) finally revealed the truth (as I believe it to be now). I believe that after the two copies sold, I put the remaining 1 up for auction one week, and it didn't sell. After that, I chose to "relist" the original store inventory item, which had been closed when I moved it over to auction. HOWEVER, when I chose to relist it, the number available was reset to the original amount, and I didn't notice. So, it was in fact my fault and not eBay's.

The story has a happy ending. The nice people in eBay's customer service told me how to file an unpaid item claim which indicates that the buyer and seller mutually agree to void the transaction, so I got my Final Value Fee returned, and neither of us get a "black mark" on our accounts. Then I relisted the one copy, and sent the specially coded URL to the buyer (hello Matthieu to in Belgium!) who proceeded to purchase and pay for the one remaining copy.

I also have used this method for that comic book that I couldn't find back in late April (remember that?). Hopefully that buyer will be equally as understanding as Matthieu has been, and I will get that Final Value Fee back as well. That would be nice.

The moral of the story - look carefully at your item when you relist before you hit that final "list item" button! And also: get more nice, understanding, Belgian customers. I think that's in there somewhere, too.