This is true when you are considering buying goods or services online. But hopefully as more time passes on, more merchants will be accepting bitcoin in some sort of way so you would be able to buy goods at a store in real life and not have to worry about trusting that person to give you the good since you are right there. The problem that comes from this, is that everyday purchases of goods will come with more micro transactions on the block chain and start having the capability to start maxing out a lot of blocks. Maybe there will be a good proposal that can fix these types of issues.
In a way though, using escrows are somewhat a paypal'ish form of transaction that helps make sure you get the good before they allow the funds to be deposited into their account.