Escrow?
You asked — “Escrow?”
Well, that would make sense, if everything else was equal. In fact, I thought so, myself — at first.
But, apparently, all else isn’t equal. It seems that Escrow companies (in general, for online sales) have got a real bad name out there. You’ll find a lot of sellers refusing to have anything to do with Escrow companies because of a lot of fraud in that sector. Mind you, this is just from what I read from others and their experiences. And so, it makes me awfully wary.
There’s just way too much fraud out there — individual to individual — for online sales of things. By this I mean pay online and receive the product by shipping. I have shopped online for a used computer, but only for the contact information. I’ve then gone and looked at it, to make sure it’s as advertised and nothing else was wrong with it. Then I simply paid in cash. And everything was fine.
There is one area where you can minimize that kind of fraud, online and individual to individual (at least that I’ve found out about). That’s through Amazon sales (the individual sellers on Amazon, that is). Amazon will back it up 100% if something does not get delivered or it’s not as advertised.
Even with eBay they won’t do that (no matter what it may appear that they do). You just have to read very carefully the “fine print” with them. And..., there’s massive fraud on eBay. While a lot of people do okay with eBay, it doesn’t take too much fraud to make your chances really bad for buying stuff over a period of time. On top of that, with eBay, there’s big-time problems with PayPal, one of the primary paying mechanisms with eBay. In combination, eBay and PayPal is a nightmare for people (again, over a period of time — you’re going to get bitten).
I just don’t see the online sales (individual to individual) as — at all — practical for people. Business to individual is quite another story and it’s basically good, as long as you follow up with doing some initial research on the company you’re going to do business with.
Regards,
Star Traveler