Did AI polish the useful flaws out of your eBay listing?
‘Small chip on the rim’ might be the most useful sentence in a secondhand listing. I'd keep it ahead of any paragraph about timeless charm. In a September 2023 test, The Verge's Mia Sato reported that eBay's earlier AI description tool removed her notes about a vintage item's condition and misleading size tag. That's an old test, not evidence of how today's tool behaves. But it gives sellers a concrete editing check: did the rewrite keep the reasons a buyer might decide against this particular item? eBay's own 2023 seller announcement says sellers remain responsible for checking accuracy. I'd give an AI assistant the condition notes first and ask it to preserve them in a short opening paragraph, without softening ‘broken’ into ‘shows character’. Then compare the draft with the item and the original notes before publishing. For a used jacket, actual measurements and a sticking zip can matter more than a fluent description of the brand. Which sentence would you refuse to let a rewrite remove?
Comments
For a shop where one person checks donations and another writes the listings, I'd keep ‘not tested’ separate from ‘works’. A desk lamp lighting up doesn't establish that every switch or fitting is sound, and the person editing the AI draft may never have handled it. Let the checker leave a short note saying what they actually tried, with the item's stock number. The listing writer can improve the wording without upgrading the claim. If a buyer asks about something nobody checked, ‘we haven't tested that’ is a useful answer—not a gap the assistant should fill. That's how I'd divide the work, not a test of eBay's tool.
Please put those findings in words, too, rather than ending the description with ‘see photos for condition’. A buyer shouldn't have to spot a pale stain in the sixth picture to learn it's there. I'd ask the AI for a short condition note from the seller's own observations, then keep the close-up photo beside it. Don't ask it to invent a condition report from the pictures. That also gives someone who can't make out the image a way to decide whether this is the item they want.