Going to a website to check pricing is more effort than the other two options you stated?
This is a commodity product that has numerous alternative vendors with brick and mortar stores. So not only will customers choose partially on price, but I'd think they'd prefer to buy something they can actually test out first. Giving customers a 100-day return policy isn't a solution, as it requires the customer to make the purchase and then deal with the hassle of a return.
It's not unreasonable for a little-known startup to display a "starting at $X" to at least give some idea of what price point they're competing in.