Overview
A bug has been identified where active ads—specifically long-term or “legacy” ads that have been repeatedly renewed over a period 1+ years—fail to correctly link to the seller’s public profile on the web platform.
While the individual ad remains live and searchable, clicking “View Profile” from the ad page incorrectly states that the user has 0 ads, hiding all their other listings from potential buyers and impacting user conversion and success.
Technical Symptoms
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Profile “Zero-State” Error: On the desktop/web platform, clicking a seller’s profile from an impacted ad returns a message stating the user has
no ads, despite the footer or side panel indicating they have multiple active listings (e.g., 200+ ads). -
Cross-Platform Discrepancy: The issue is currently isolated to the Web/Desktop platform. Testing shows that user profiles and ads render completely fine on the Mobile Application.
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Review Count Discrepancy: The ad page correctly displays user reputation markers (e.g., “14 reviews”), but the profile link fails to query the user’s active inventory.
Root Cause Analysis (RCA)
Based on internal investigation, the issue is directly tied to user behavior regarding the renewal of legacy ads.
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The Trigger: The bug occurs when a user continuously renews very old ads (typically ads that are 1 to 10 years old, or long-term service/item listings from 2024, 2025, and older).
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The System Conflict: The account itself might be an older legacy account (e.g., User ID 64057). When an ancient ad is renewed, the database updates the ad’s timestamp, but the relationship mapping between old ad schemas/IDs and the modern web profile view fails to index properly.
User Experience (UX) Impact
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Broken buyer journey (Buyers get a dead end when trying to view a trusted seller’s other items).
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Sellers may be misled into thinking their active ads have been deleted or deactivated because they do not appear under their Kijiji profile, even though the ads remain live and searchable on the platform
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Confusion caused by conflicting UI data (The page says “207 ads” at the bottom, but the profile says “0 ads”).