A buyer from Hong Kong has placed a bid on my auction item but now wants to buy it now,

[tiggyw59]

Hi,  a buyer from Hong King has placed a bid on my auction item and sent messages overnight ( time difference) but now wants to buy the item starightaway, auction still has 4 days to go , what can I do ?

[m25jet]

There are three ways that you could deal with this.

First of all, you could choose to end the auction now, using the option to sell to the highest bidder.  That way the buyer from Hong Kong will get a notification to pay for the item.  However, if you were to do that, then you could end up losing out, as other people may well decide to bid later on if you were to leave the auction to run to the end.

The second option would be to cancel the bid, end the auction and relist the item using the Buy It Now format, making sure that the asking price is set at a level that would ensure that you still got the amount that you wanted for the item, even after eBay (and PayPal, if you have not yet been switched to eBay Managed Payments) have taken their cut of the sale price.  However, this could end up going wrong on you in that if you did do this and somebody else got in quick and purchased the item once you'd relisted it as a Buy It Now listing then you would not be in a position to sell it to the Hong Kong buyer, as you would be contractually obliged to post the item to the buyer who had committed to the purhase and had made payment for the item.

Another thing to consider with ending the auction to relist the item as a Buy It Now listing is that if you were to end the auction and relist the item then you would still be charged 10% of the highest bid that had been placed at the time that you ended the listing, and in the event that you did relist the item as a Buy It Now but the buyer changed his or her mind then you'd end up paying fees on a cancelled listing and may potentially end up losing out on a sale if other potential buyers who had the item on their Watch Lists the first time didn't notice that the item had been relisted and therefore didn't commit to purchasing the item.  In this case the decision to  end the auction and relist as a Buy It Now could end up backfiring on you.

The third option would be to tell the buyer that now that she has placed a bid you can't end the auction and will have to let it run until the end of its time.  If the buyer is really determined to get the item then the buyer may well have already placed a bid high enough to ensure that he or she wins the item, even if other bidders decide to place a bid.  If the Hong Kong bidder hasn't ensured that the bid he or she has already placed is high enough to secure the item and he or she subsequently ends up losing the auction then you will have to sell the item to the winning bidder once you have been paid.

At the end of the day you need to weigh up whether or not you feel it is worth ending the auction to either sell to this buyer for her current bid or to relist the item for her to buy outright, but if you are willing to consider offers for auction items you could always put the Best Offer feature in on the listing.  This would give a potential buyer to submit a Best Offer before the auction gets underway, at which point you can decide whether to accept the offer, make a counteroffer or reject the offer, but if somebody were to place a bid on the auction the Best Offer option would vanish from the listing and you would not be able to reinstate it.  You'd also be charged for including it on the listing, even in the event that nobody made use of the function, regardless of whether you received a bid on the auction or the auction ended with the item being unsold.