What does it mean when someone offers me the starting price of my auction.

[sam-597106]

It’s already happened 2 times where someone’s offered me the same price as the starting price for the auction. Why can’t they just bid on the item? Should I accept the offer?

[greatmidwestcoin]

You do realize that you can buy your only listing item BRAND NEW for the same you are offering your used or open boxed item - with a warranty? $169 with free shipping(your shipping $69) at many outlets. Your high shipping will keep you from getting more interest. You should able to ship that at 1/3 of that.

[jaaron7]

I auctioned a book with a $150 opening bid within the last couple weeks.  I received a message from a potential buyer asking if I'd accept $150 as a buy it now.  For all my auctions, when someone asks about purchasing immediately, I ALWAYS reply "I prefer to let my auction run their course to the end".  For this particular book, it ended up selling for $405 to the same buyer who asked about purchasing for $150.  

[iart]

That's the best lesson there is. Thank you.

Same thing happened to us a few years back. But the numbers were $200 and $3,200.

It is very bad advice to suggest someone settle.

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@jaaron7 wrote:

I auctioned a book with a $150 opening bid within the last couple weeks.  I received a message from a potential buyer asking if I'd accept $150 as a buy it now.  For all my auctions, when someone asks about purchasing immediately, I ALWAYS reply "I prefer to let my auction run their course to the end".  For this particular book, it ended up selling for $405 to the same buyer who asked about purchasing for $150.  

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[wesk_36]

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@greatmidwestcoin wrote:

You do realize that you can buy your only listing item BRAND NEW for the same you are offering your used or open boxed item - with a warranty? $169 with free shipping(your shipping $69) at many outlets. Your high shipping will keep you from getting more interest. You should able to ship that at 1/3 of that.

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It depends, to my area shipping is $28.

Someone in OR may pay $19

It may seem like rocket science to a new seller in new territory.

[wastingtime101]

• It could be someone that doesn't want to wait for the auction to end.
• It could be someone trying to get a deal that thinks the price will go much higher.
• You're a brand new seller in a high scam category. It could be a scammer that has no intentions of paying and instead attempts to get you to text them off eBay and send a fake payment message so you'll ship them the item for free.

Proceed with caution.

[sam-597106]

I bought the item new for $190 off of the Logitech website. I’m already selling it for 50% off. Also I have the shipping buyer pays because I don’t want someone to buy it for $100 and then I got to pay $100 for shipping. I’d get nothing except lose the item. 

[sam-597106]

I did that last time someone tried to offer me the starting price and they never ended up bidding on it. I think that proves they were just trying to get me to sell it for that cheap.

[releasethekraken_1]

Buyers can offer the starting bid; they can offer more than that; they can offer less than that. There are logical reasons for each of those choices, depending on the item, the starting bid amount, and what it's worth to the person making the offer. I've watched auctions that ended up being bought for an offer price that was lower than the starting bid, so the seller was obviously OK with it for his/her own reasons.

Given the inflated prices I've seen for the past year on nearly everything I might want to buy, offering low would be my one and only strategy.