Venting About AI’s Limitations in Selling Practices
Though I haven’t used eBay AI to create my listings, I have used AI in my pricing research and strategy in the past, and I have concluded that it is often more wrong than right.
I have found myself arguing with AI and getting so very frustrated with its responses. Most of the time, AI tells you what you want to hear, and no matter how flawed your argument is, it tends to agree with you, even if you ask it to point out your mistakes.
For example, I wanted to list an item where I couldn’t find any comps on (eBay sold Item search), and asked AI to recommend a conservative listing price. What I got was such an inflated price of about 10 times what it was actually worth, and I spent about 30 minutes arguing it.
I find that I am using AI less and less these days, mostly for spelling, grammar, and word structure, and sometimes to find an Excel formula that I need.
AI is no substitute for doing your own research and making your own decisions. I learned that the hard way. AI is so very limited in terms of e-commerce decision-making and day-to-day operations, and in my opinion, should be avoided at all costs.
Just venting and wanted to know if anyone has experienced the same thing.
Note: I did not use AI at all in this posting. LOL
crand.kathe
OP5 months agoI just was made aware a major mistake I made in trusting AI with the listing of a Zebra DS2278 Cordless 2D Scanner w/ Cradle. I plugged in all the information about the scanner into the AI I used at the time, including describing the cord that had a two-corded tail (USB-A and barrel-type power). AI assured me that the power adapter was optional and the unit was powered by the USB. I listed it that way and sold all 7 I had.
A week later (today), I received a question from one of my buyers of this unit that the listing was misleading, as the shipped product was not complete and he had to purchase one on his own and sent me a photo of the receipt. I checked and found the original manual online (which I should have done before listing), and found that the buyer was correct and my AI was wrong. The buyer requested a partial refund to cover the cost of a power cord, which I promptly gave, plus an extra $5.00 with my sincere apology.
I also sent the same refund for all 6 others that I sold. Though they didn't ask for a refund or address a concern, my listing was clearly misleading, and it was the right thing to do.
It is not AI's fault that I failed to do my own independent research and confirm with the correct source. That's on me. I am the seller and the one responsible. Just an example of what could happen.
kibble-net
·5 months agoMaybe we ought to stop referring to it as "artificial intelligence" and call it what it really is, "half-baked auto-googling".
What we have now is nothing near intelligence, it's just an algorithm.
18704d
·5 months agoI use AI (ChatGPT and Google's AI) a lot. I trust it about 95% with certain conditions, and only after I've double checked it's advice and facts.
As others have said, AI has been trained on a lot of different things for a long time. I've had AI tell me an item sells on eBay in comps for far higher than current completed listings show now.
For me, it's easy to ignore AI's fluffy talk. It's responses like "I can see you're thinking like the most successful sellers do by asking questions like that!" are just designed to be friendly and make the user feel good. So I always double check and challenge AI's advice. I will counter and tell it that it's wrong, that those high priced sales in comps are because of certain factors (which the AI didn't consider) and then I watch it generate a new answer.
One of the worse AI responses I had when considering listing a .925 sterling piece: Google's AI told me that the "current price" of silver was $30.00 an ounce ... But I was asking over a month ago, when silver was at around $110.00 an ounce.
On the other hand, AI has been expert in helping me identify and describe rare unique items. After inputting all the patent numbers on the back one of my old items, AI told me the month and year which my item was produced. (because it failed to contain additional patent numbers after that date).
I've had Google AI totally fail to identify a vintage 1990s product by UPC number alone, then ChatGPT not only finds itby UPC, it even gives me a history of my item based on the variations I read on my item's packaging and labeling.
Again, this is like that old GIGO philosphy. Garbage in, garbage out. I find you have to 'press' AI to double and triple check it's results to ensure it's accurate.
onefootflipper
·5 months agoAI has the basic problem in setting prices in that the best it can really do is base the prices on the solds. Thus it is only looking at the winners. If this is an exact item with a barcode that sells frequently then that can work very well.
However here are some real problems.
Free shipping versus pay shipping. Most AI programs ignore that entirely. Flowlister now takes that into account after I talked to the developer about it.
People paying for your software are often the same sort of people who absolutely do not want AI pricing their items "low" so developers are forced to suggest the higher end of the market. Some AI listing products actually have options for this in them.
The further an item gets away from being a brand new, specific item with an exact name and a barcode the worse AI is going to do at setting the price. Lets say you are selling a St. Louis cardinals hat. There are thousands of different St. Louis cardinals hats and many of them pretty much look the same. Those comps it gets the price from are only coming from the winners, the 2800 sold hats. Not the 24,000 unsold ones. Fact is that you might have a loser of a hat, going to in all reality take 4 years to sell at $9 shipped. However AI will not know that and will price it at $15 plus ship drawing information from the most similar ones that actually sold.
AI often cannot tell the difference between product variations that sell at wildly different prices. This becomes even worse when it is trying to price something that also swings wildly in price from one sale to the next. Modern sports cards a huge example of that. There are so many variants, and serial number sequences (1/1, 1/100, etc) that many variants have never once come to market, and even if they do, they often sell in huge price swings from one sale to the next. Best you can do is to try to price around similar cards, but even that has to learn the strangeness of the market. Like in sports cards how most cards fall of heavily year over year. This years 1/10 Mark McGwire autograph card with a piece of a bat in it might be $500. However a 2025 1/10 Mark McGwire autograph card with a piece of a bat in it might be $200. Most markets have these peculiarities and variants and the data that can be scraped is often not enough for our AI models to ever figure them out.
meme6253
·5 months agoRemember the old saying, If you want something done right do it yourself!, & if you are actually arguing with A.I. you need to step away, That is a toxic relationship.
simba6
·5 months agoAI is very over rated. It still has a way to go before it can be trusted.
antflan77
·5 months agoI get a kick out of tacking the AI description of a product at the end of my own description just for grins and giggles. I won't include it if it's flat out wrong and many times it is. I just get a shiver though when I see a seller has used an AI description and they didn't read it, just added it and walked away. I am gobsmacked (or maybe flabbergasted) when I see how many of them have wrong info, just begging for an INAD claim.
This statement is also not a product of AI and I approve this message.
ten_o_nine
·5 months agoMost of the time, AI tells you what you want to hear, and no matter how flawed your argument is, it tends to agree with you, even if you ask it to point out your mistakes.
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Sounds like an eBay CSR.
AI calls it "sycophancy".
mcdougle4248
·5 months agoBefore the latest USPS GA fuel surcharge, I was pondering how to raise my prices to cover the increase in shipping costs. I asked ChatGPT to recommend a price range for my handmade ornaments. I uploaded several photos of my items to the query. It came back with a price range of $15.99-$24.99 per ornament with free shipping. It suggested a "sweetspot" of $19.99 with free shipping. Then, it went on to suggest lowering the price to $16.99, with free shipping, after 1-2 weeks if there were no sales. The suggestions made me laugh. I probably will not ever do that again. I just relied on my own instincts and added 50 cents to my flat rate shipping charge.
tobaccocardyahoo
·5 months agoThere are many sellers who would recommend a similar strategy. Some of them might even post the recommendation on this forum.
Pricing strategies make a lot of assumptions and AI accepts the ones which its training materials included.
There are many Ebay sellers who assume all prices are elastic, which means if the price is lower - you will sell more. There are many items which are price inelastic. You will not sell more if the price is lower.
Some items will not sell if the condition is not suitable for a collector, others will sell if they are rare enough and there are no others.
Ebay prices are often valid solely for the day the last sale was made, for items with low demand which are scarce. Many Ebay items are sold by people who have no clue what they are worth, and take a pittance for a valuable item. Some rare items are skunked by a sale years ago which was recorded and is displayed by Worthpoint. (Warning to sellers who will take any offer which is profitable).
I use AI to help me identify items I know have merit and better describe them, but I cannot get decent results unless I know something about the item and correct the initial errors made by the software. It is like brainstorming with someone who knows something you might not know, but is not an expert.
onefootflipper
·5 months agoI use flowlister AI to create most of my listings, however I manually reprice darn near every single one of them. It is the first of a half dozen different AI listing tools that I actually liked enough to use. The developer is also very responsive to feedback and bugfixes. Often fixing problems or implementing changes within hours of me suggesting them.
caldreamer
·5 months agoNo, no, no do not use Ai to create your descriptions (especially when selling tech products). This could get you in a lot of trouble with "not as described" returns.
I had to laugh, I just read a news article about a corporation used Ai and Ai purposely "delete their entire operating system and backup files". This is what happens when you allow Ai to make decisions for you.
Personally, I hate when sellers use Ai decisions (a lot of fluff and doesn't give accurate information).