So who pays me back for a botched listing?

You've got a lot of invalid HTML in your template since you're using one of your own creation.

Fix that and I would think your problems would go away.

My guess is it's something to do with the unwiredbuyer garbage since everything before that shows on eBay, and everything after it doesn't.

The thing is, I've been using the same template for over a year with no problems.

I'm hoping it's just a fluke and it hiccuped on the post.

What part of the html is invalid? Maybe you can point me in the right direction. I use FrontPage to set up the template since I can never get the editor to work in Auctiva. Any time I try to create or edit a template I get a stack error or just a blank template screen with the message saying to enter HTML code. This is after I have set it all up and try to save it. AND, this happens in both IE and Firefox.

Anyway, I'll look into it while I wait for some other input.

Thanks

quote:

I've been using the same template for over a year with no problems.

I've been speeding when I drive to work for a year and haven't got a ticket. That doesn't mean I might not get caught today.

My suggestion was to take out the unwired buyer stuff. It uses javascript and eBay is very picky about what javascript they allow and will often change the rules of what they allow and what they strip out as they find new ways th at hackers use it to put things into eBay that eBay doesn't want.

There are sites that you can put your HTML into that will show you all the errors in it. Find one of those and paste your template into it then correct everything they suggest. A search on google for "HTML error check" brings up the correct site as the first result. http://validator.w3.org/

JEFF: I DO NOT THINK YOUR ARGUMENT HOLDS WATER.

I have just discovered that MANY of my Auctiva-listed auctions have the exact same problem. A header, an image and nothing else. If you argument were correct and you put the blame on a home-grown template that no longer will run because eBay changed the way they process HTML, then every time a "wrong" template would yield this same result, right? Not so. Here are 2 entries using the same home-grown template, both listed through Auctiva. One that listed just fine, the other with just the header. Good listing: 130134066180 Bad listing: 130133855062.

It seems I've been running bad listings for a few days now, which could be a reason for my poor sales this week. I spend about $50 a day in listings, you count up the loss.

While having Auctiva is nice, I will now need to check every listing that I have launched through the service, because I can no longer trust that the listing will actually show up as intended.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that this is an Auctiva problem, an eBay problem or my own template problem, I can not tell yet. But it's a problem nonetheless that I need to fix.
All my auctions use the exact same home-grown template.

I'll run my 9 different listings through the site you mentioned and see if/where my listings contain "bad" html...

UPDATE

I've gone through every single one of my 100+ listings and found 8 that were botched. All 8 had been straight lists through Auctiva. None of my manual re-lists were affected. I manually relist auctions whenever I'm at my computer and those relists are usually auctions about a week old, so this problem seems to have started within the last 7 days.

Weird thing is that even though there were 8 listings I had to fix, I had good listings of those exact same auctions as well, so it's a hit or miss thing...

The only listings that were affected were for the WUSB11 wifi adapters, ATI Rage XL and ATI Rage LT video cards, the tripods and LED USB hubs. But, again, there were also GOOD listing for those items that went through Auctiva.

So, in the end, I'm still none-the-wiser. I'll have to run my HTML through that site Jeff mentioned, alter today....

Hi Community,

Ebay experienced a technical difficulty that began on the afternoon of Wednesday, 7/11/07, and was resolved the next day at 11:26 AM PT, that caused descriptions to be truncated or completely missing from certain items submitted through the API(which we use), and even through the "Sell Your Item" form.

Based on the times the at which the items in question were listed, I believe this issue was responsible for the behavior decribed by both "www.WindmillTrading.com" and "Help and Sell" earlier in this thread.

If anyone has examples of listings that posted incorrectly after 11:26 on Thursday 7/12/07, please let us know by filing a support request using the appropriate link on our help page: http://www.auctiva.com/free-auction-software-help/help.aspx

-Mike

Excellent, thanks Mike!

What do you think our chances are of getting a refund from eBay for botched listings that obviously did not sell?
I don't know how many of my listing were truncated, but I bet it's more than a few. I'm going to have to go through them for that time period and see which ones were bad.

Hi WindmillTrading,

You're welcome! ...I'm happy to be able to provide clarification

While I'm certainly not an authority on eBay's refund policies and practices, I would think the chances of receiving a refund of your listing fees are pretty good considering an item doesn't have much of a chance to sell(to say the least) with no description.

-Mike

I'll give it a try early next week. As a silver Powerseller I have a dedicated phone number to call at eBay, so I don't have to deal with an email android or dumb drone. I'll report back in this thread how my refund effort goes.

UPDATE

Turns out I only had 6 listings that were affected by this glitch. Not worth my time to sit on the phone for 20 minutes with an eBay-bot to try and get $3 back.

Glad Mike knew that this was an eBay API glitch and not Auctiva's doing....