Why eBay saved search alerts stop, and what actually fixes it

eBay gives you one switch per search, and no schedule

When eBay saved search emails stop, there are four things worth checking. The email is landing somewhere you don't look, the alert on that search got switched off, the search has stopped matching anything new, or a setting elsewhere in your eBay account is getting in the way. Don't spend the evening hunting for a frequency setting. eBay's help page doesn't describe one.

What eBay does describe is a single control on each saved search. eBay's help page for saved searches puts it like this:

By default you'll receive email alerts to your registered email address whenever new items match your search or if there are updates to your saved search. You can unsubscribe from these emails at any time.

The way you unsubscribe, and subscribe again, is the envelope icon next to each search on your Saved searches page. The page's opening line puts the timing like this: "We'll send you email alerts when new items matching your search are listed."

Here's what that page offers against the things people usually go looking for:

So there's nothing to tune. What's left is a short list of things that can break, and you can work through it in a few minutes.

Four things to check, cheapest first

Go in this order. The first check is the quickest to rule out.

1. Search your whole mailbox for the last alert you got, instead of scrolling the inbox. Then look in spam, the promotions tab, any filter rule you set up months ago, and your blocked senders. A saved search alert is ordinary email, so anything that eats ordinary email eats these too. A filtered alert and an alert that was never sent look the same from your inbox, and only one of them is eBay's problem.
2. Open Saved searches on eBay and look at the envelope icon on the search that went quiet. If its emails are off, the search is still sitting in your list, but it's a bookmark now and it won't write to you. While you're there, remember that eBay saves an edited search as a new saved search with your new filters. If you changed the filters recently, make sure you're looking at the envelope on the version you meant to keep.
3. Run the search yourself, sorted so the newest listings come first. No new listing means no email. A narrow query with a price cap, a condition filter and a location filter can go days without a single match. If nothing has been listed since your last email, silence is what you'd expect, and the alert probably isn't broken. eBay's page has a related tip: "You might need to update your saved search if a product's name or other details change." When sellers start calling an item something new, a search worded the old way stops matching it.
4. Look through the email and notification settings in your eBay account. They're separate from the envelope on any single search, and eBay's saved searches page doesn't say whether they can stop these emails, so spend a minute ruling them out before you decide the per-search switch is the whole story.

If all four check out and the search stays quiet while running it by hand turns up new matches, delete it and save it again. A newly saved search starts with its emails on, so you're back to a clean copy.

If step 3 makes you want to tighten the query, test a search operator before you trust it. eBay's current help pages don't list any.

If it helps, you're in company. Threads on eBay's community forum carry titles like these:

• "Not receiving SAVED SEARCHES emails past few days"
• "No longer receiving saved search notifications"
• "Not getting email notifications for advanced saved searches"
• "Saved searches not resulting in phone notifications"

So if yours has gone quiet, don't assume you set it up wrong.

There's one gap the four checks won't catch, because nothing ever looks broken. If a seller typed "porcelane" when you searched "porcelain", that listing usually won't reach your alert, even though it's sitting on eBay the whole time. eBay's own auction tips page uses that exact pair when it suggests searching misspelled words, and gives the reason in one line: "Fewer people will find a listing with a typo." If a misspelling of your item is common, save it as a second search. Our post on searching eBay for misspellings covers the free tools that write the typos for you.

How many saved searches can you have on eBay?

eBay doesn't give a number on its saved searches page, and we haven't seen it state one anywhere else.

The figure you'll see repeated online is roughly 200. It comes from complaint threads on eBay's community forum, so treat it as something buyers report. If you have a couple of hundred saved searches and new ones have stopped sticking, you've probably hit the wall those threads describe, and deleting searches you no longer use is the obvious thing to try. If you have eleven saved searches and the emails stopped, a cap isn't your problem, and the four checks above are where the answer is.

People asking about limits sometimes mean the watchlist, which is a different tool. A saved search watches for listings that don't exist yet. The watchlist keeps track of listings you've already found. eBay does publish a watchlist number, and it gives two different figures on two of its own help pages.

Does a relisted item count as new?

eBay says alerts go out "when new items matching your search are listed", and it doesn't spell out what new means.

That gets awkward with relists. When a seller ends a listing and puts the same item straight back up, it isn't new in any sense a buyer cares about, and the page doesn't say whether its alerts treat it as fresh. So don't count on a relist reaching you, or on it staying out of your inbox.

Getting a second pair of eyes on the search

With no stated schedule, you can't tell whether eBay checked and found nothing or never checked at all. The fix is a second way of looking.

The free one is to run the search by hand on a rhythm you'll keep, newest listings first, and skim the top of the page. It costs nothing and always works, as long as you actually do it. Leave eBay's own alerts switched on as well. They're free, they're tied to the account you already have, and turning them off can only leave you knowing less.

The other is a tool with a stated schedule. FindersKeepers re-runs each saved search that has alerts on once an hour. Each run looks only at listings that started after a time we keep on the search, so start time decides what's new to us, not price. A price cut never turns an old listing into a new one, and a relist counts as new whenever eBay gives it a fresh start time. The one limit worth knowing is that an hourly run can be skipped when we're short of eBay search capacity. If a couple of hours pass with nothing, open the search and look at the newest listings yourself.

Our side-by-side page on eBay's own saved searches goes through the rest of the differences.