"Is this still available?" on Facebook Marketplace: why buyers send it and how to answer fast

Buyers send it with one tap, so it says little. Fix Marketplace notifications, use five replies that sort real buyers from browsers, spot scams, and auto-reply.

By Omar Jayed, Software Developer

Published October 31, 2026

Buyers send "Is this still available?" because Facebook hands it to them: under a listing there is a Send button that fires off a ready-made message with one tap, no typing. So the message tells you almost nothing about how keen the buyer is. It only tells you someone is looking right now, probably at several listings like yours.

That is why your first reply matters more than its length suggests. A reply that answers and asks one useful thing back sorts the real buyers from the window-shoppers before you have spent an evening on either.

Why do buyers send "Is this still available?" on Facebook Marketplace?

Facebook's own help page for buyers lists two ways to contact a seller. Message lets you write your own. Send sends a message that asks whether the item is available, straight away. The wording on your screen may differ by a word, but the mechanism is the same: it costs the buyer nothing, so they send it to everything that looks close.

Treat it as a raised hand. Some of those buyers will never answer you back. One of them wants the sofa today.

Why am I not getting Facebook Marketplace notifications?

A buyer's message has to get through three gates before your phone makes a sound, and any one of them can be shut.

The first is Facebook itself. Marketplace chats sit in the Marketplace inbox (the Selling tab) and also in Messenger, so the alert can come from either app. In Facebook, go to your profile picture, then Settings and privacy, Settings, and Notifications under Preferences. That screen controls how you get notified and what about. Check that push notifications are on, and look through what you get notified about for anything covering messages or Marketplace.

The second is Messenger. A conversation you muted once stays muted, and Messenger has its own notification settings separate from Facebook's. Open a buyer's chat and check it isn't muted.

The third is the phone. On iPhone, Settings, Notifications, Facebook, then Allow Notifications; do the same for Messenger. Check Settings, Focus too, because a Focus that lets through only people in your contacts will hide a stranger asking about your bike. On Android, open Settings and search for "Notifications", find Facebook and Messenger and turn them on, then search for "Battery" and stop the phone from restricting both apps. A phone that kills Messenger overnight to save power delivers the morning's messages in a lump at 9, after the buyer has moved on.

Test it. Have a friend message one of your listings and watch what your lock screen does.

How to reply to "Is this still available?"

Answering "Yes" alone wastes the one message you get. Some sellers will disagree, but look at it from the other side: the buyer sent one tap of effort, and if you send back one word, the next move is theirs again. Plenty of them never make it. Answer the question and ask one back, a question that sorts the people who mean it from the tappers.

Five to copy and change:

• "Yes, still here. Price is firm at $120. I'm around this evening after 6 if you want to pick it up."
• Pickup times do the sorting for you: "Yes! Pickup from Midtown, Saturday 10 to 2 or weekday evenings. Which suits you?"
• "It is. Do you have a truck or a large car? It's about 7 feet long and won't fit in a hatchback." A qualifying question like this one gets answered by people who have already pictured it in their living room.
• "Sorry, it sold this morning. Thanks for asking."
• For the in-between state: "Someone is coming to see it at 5. If they pass, I'll message you first. Want me to?"

If you want these to go out on their own, the phone you sell from decides it. Replies that send themselves work on Android only. iPhone does not let any app read Messenger's notifications in the background, so the best you get there (with OLL.E, through the PinG keyring) is a draft you tap to send.

Either way, mark items sold or pending in the listing as soon as they are. Every buyer who asks about a sofa that went yesterday is a message you have to answer for nothing.

Is "Is this still available" a scam?

No. The message itself is the default Facebook offers, and almost everyone who sends it is a normal buyer. The scams start in what comes after, and Facebook's scam page for Marketplace lists the usual ones.

• A buyer asks you to read them a code that was just sent to your phone or email. That code is for your account, not theirs. Never share it.
• They "accidentally" overpay and want the difference refunded.
• They offer more than you asked, often so that movers or a courier can collect it for them, or they ask you to ship to someone else.
• They send a screenshot of a payment instead of a payment, or want to pay in gift cards.
• They push you to carry on over WhatsApp, text or email, away from Messenger.

Check money has actually arrived in your own account before anything leaves the house.

How do I auto-reply to "Is this still available" on Marketplace?

From a personal profile, I could not find one in Facebook's help pages. Facebook Pages have instant replies, an automatic first response to new messages, but that is a Page feature, and the Marketplace help I read says nothing about automatic or saved replies for ordinary sellers. If you sell under your own name, that leaves the phone.

On Android the route works like this. An app you give Notification access reads each notification as it arrives, and Messenger's notifications carry a Reply action, the same one you use from the lock screen. The app fills that in and Messenger sends it as you. The generic auto-reply apps match on a contact or a keyword. That is a poor fit for Marketplace, where every buyer is a stranger and half of them send the same five words, so a keyword rule ends up answering your cousin as well. We went through the same mechanism for WhatsApp in auto-reply to clients on WhatsApp from a personal account, including what breaks it.

Do Poshmark, eBay and Mercari offers work the same way?

Offers on Poshmark, eBay and Mercari expire, and an offer that runs out while you were at work is a sale gone. The fix is the same as for Marketplace: take the notification the app already sends to your phone, or the email it sends you, and turn that one message into a call. Email is the easy case, because it doesn't depend on reading phone notifications, so it works on iPhone as well as Android. I won't give you each site's expiry rules here; check them in the app, as they are theirs to change.

Where OLL.E fits

OLL.E, our app, uses the same Android route, but reads what each buyer is actually asking. You name the items, write the watch in a sentence and approve the reply text. It replies through the Messenger notification, only to messages about those items (the Facebook app's own notification may have no reply option, so Messenger is the one it answers through). "Can I grab it at 6?" rings your phone with a real call. "Still available?" gets the template.

It doesn't log in to Facebook or read your listings; it works from the notifications already on your phone. On iPhone it needs the PinG keyring, bought on its own, and replies are drafts you send. Pro is $19.99 a month; the free plan is enough to try it on one listing. More on how replies work at auto-reply. Your Facebook password never goes near it.