Topic: Recommendations for a new Escrow Service/Escrow Website (Read 621 times)

Hello all,

As a newish member to bitcoin and these forums one thing I've noticed, and this hardly needs repeating, is the amount of scammers and theft of honest and trusting peoples BTC. It's become clear that escrow services are almost 100% mandatory to fully instill confidence in both the buyer and seller. John K has apparently taken the crown as the most trusted escrow provider here on the forums although there seems to be a good amount of other escrow providers as well.

And so, I'm here to gauge the need and recommendations for what people want to see in their escrow services. All criticism will be taken constructively and I truly look forward to reading everyone's responses.

Here are a few things we would be incorporating into our escrow service.

-Multiple party controlled; right now three people will have the ability to respond and handle transactions allowing us to process them faster. Each transaction would have one dedicated person in charge of that specific escrow to negate the possibility of mixed up orders. Our current "staff" includes an IT Professional, a Website Designer and a Shipping/Sales Specialist.

-Buyer AND Seller escrow deposits to insure transaction confidence and prevent trolling (~2% of total sale price, higher if both parties agree). Buyers deposit can be held and released back to buyer after sale, or rolled into price paid to seller. Sellers deposit will be released in separate transaction once item is verified delivered and working.

-Full transparency of transaction to all parties involved.

-Once we start we'll offer the first two weeks of escrow service free to transactions under 100BTC (.5% fee on larger transactions). After that, transactions fees are .5% of transaction total, 1% on transactions over 100BTC. These prices will be changed if they are found not to be inline with current escrows services as our intent is not to drastically undercut anyone.

-On certain items, we will have a "Delivery to Escrow" option(subject to current escrow workload). This will allow sellers with high value items or those afraid of shipping scammers(those that claim they received an empty box/defective item) to have their goods delivery to the escrow and verified. We will inspect the items and if requested by the buyer, conduct testing to insure the item is fully functional. We estimate that turn around time would increase one full business day from the moment we receive the item. Verification of items would not incur any additional fees, other than shipping charges from escrow to buyer, and item inspection fees would be minimal (~.25% of total sale, based on amount of hardware being tested). In the case of ASICs like Avalons or Blades, we would advise that the seller returns all hardware settings like IP addresses to default and configures the devices to utilize the buyers "workers". Following this recommendation, buyers would be advised to ensure mining pool access and workers have different passwords(they should already!).

So there it is, some of our plans for implementing a new escrow service! Further down the line we will be looking at gauging the need/desire for a dedicated website for setting up escrows. Features would include:

-User accounts with an easy to use trust system
-Ability for seller to create an escrow and assign it to an individual buyer and an entire, sharepoint-like workflow.
-Trust system that would allow you to show the item you sold, for how much, and who bought/sold it. The trust "review report" would be created by either party, verified by the other person and then populated in the system. Certain options could be left out if desired.
-After creation of an escrow and it's acceptance of the buyer, it would become locked and only editable through cancellation/agreement of both parties.

The website would be a ways off and would not take form until we have an established reputation.

Thank you all for the read and your thoughts/comments/concerns/insults and trolling, I looking forward to hearing it all!