Why I’m Stepping Back from eBay

I am a longtime eBayer.  I started buying on eBay in about 2000 (can’t find anything in my account history to tell me exactly when, but I know it was around then).  I started selling a couple years later, at first under another account, and then under my own name, which I later changed to reflect my Against Doll Odds branding.

I’ve been with eBay through a multitude of changes, but 2026 is the year I’ve decided to walk away.

I haven’t been buying much in the past year since my husband was unemployed, but I started seeing complaints from other collectors in the community about eBay’s AI-altered photos.  It made me hesitant to sell anything on their platform, even when we needed the money.  And why feed my listings into their AI, when I can post in one of the Facebook groups instead — and reach a targeted audience of trusted buyers?

Look, geniuses.  If you allow sellers to alter photos with AI — or if you even kind of encourage it as a feature of your AI listing assistant — buyers can no longer trust that what they see is what they get.  You’re opening the door to unhappy buyers, an increase in complaints, and a lack of trust in your platform.  Not to mention all of the ethical issues that are leading many of us to avoid AI — the environmental, economic, and community impact of AI data centers, the theft of people’s intellectual property, etc. — are now tainting your platform as well.

Sellers have been listing on eBay for decades without AI assistance.  They will be fine if they can’t use AI anymore.  But crucially, if buyers can’t trust that they’re getting what the pictures show, they’re going to stop buying on eBay, and turn instead to platforms that discourage AI usage — such as Facebook groups and other online communities that have made rules against it.

eBay is no longer the only game in town.  Far from it.  They need to stop acting like they can do whatever they want, and we’ll have no choice but to keep using them for lack of alternatives.  We have alternatives.  We’ve had them for years at this point.

eBay: Start listening to what your buyers want.  Maybe some sellers want AI (it seems to be especially popular with the Boomers), but there are absolutely 0 reasons a buyer would want this.  And unless you pay attention to your buyers, we’re going to take our business elsewhere.  It is BUYERS who make eBay possible.