How does the Buy It Now option work on Ebay?

Question

If an item is up for auction and people are bidding on it, how are you able to select the Buy It Now option? I'm confused! Isn't the whole point to bid on one item? What if more than one person wants to Buy It Now? Someone explain this to me!

Answer 1

The point is to bid on the item, however, if you know you want it and don't want to have to wait for the bid to end, or you don't want to chance that you'll lose the item to someone else, you can select buy it now. this allows you to literally buy the item right then and there, however, you usually pay more with the buy it now, because the bid didn't get very high

Answer 2

you can either place a bid, or buy it now for a higher price but you are sure of getting it