Escrow Services

[w8er]

Somewhere there must be something called an escrow service.

Let's say you agree to buy something on the internet. You have this escrow service hold the payment for the goods until you get the item and it's what the seller said it was. Then the buyer tells the escrow service to release payment.

As a seller, there's no way I would object to that unless I had something I wanted to hide or unless I was scamming someone. It would guarantee safe payment to me.

As a buyer, it makes me comfortable that a guy isn't going to ship me a box of bricks or worse, nothing at all!

The buyer pays a few percent of the cost for the safety. Even if it's say 3% of the price ($3 per hundred) that's nothing for making the deal safe, especially if you are talking about $500 or a couple of thousand $$$. It's insurance!

Many guys balk at paying Paypal 3% but this would be a very different service offering safety to those larger purchases. Look at it this way, you could buy an AL80B for $1300 brand new or you could save $400 or so and buy a used one. If it cost you $27 dollars to guarantee that you'd receive it and that it would be OK, wouldn't it be worth it?

Where is my thinking screwed up on this???? Why hasn't somebody done it? or have they?

- Larry W8ER

[WA5JAV]

Like most other Internet entities, there are bogus escrow sites in operation ready to take the money and run.

Personally, I would not use an on-line escrow. PayPal is almost as bad.

[N9LCD]

Back in the good old days of Ham Trader Yellow Sheets, there was a "physical" escrow service. The service collected the proceeds and, when the item was received from the seller, forwarded proceeds (less a cut) to the seller and the item to the buyer.

Guess the service didn't pan oput because of the service charge and the extra shipping.

Probably you couldn't pay anybody enough to get caught in the middle of a u*******g contest.

JERRY

N9LCD

[lhk0pd]

I may be wrong but i'm thinking yrs ago Ebay used to have a escrow service.Must not have worked out as there is no mention of it now.

[K4ICL]

Let's say I am running a trader's escrow service and the seller sends me a linear amp to be forwarded to the buyer. At a minimum, here is what has to happen:

• Receive the package(s) from the carrier.
  Log the packages, assign a case number and initiate tracking paperwork after verifying the entire shipment has been received.
  Unpack each package to be sure the boxes aren't just full of bricks.
  Inventory each package, including item descriptions and serial numbers.
  Inspect each item to be sure the carrier did not damage anything.
  Resolve cause of any discovered shipping damages.
  Provide pictures and other documentation for carrier claims as needed.
  Secure clearance from seller when carrier claims are satisfied.
  Repack each box properly using proper packing materials.
  Notify the Seller and Buyer of the status of the shipment.
  Wait for the buyer to pay the seller.
  Wait for the seller to clear the shipment for forwarding.
  Log final clearance and initiate forward shipping with carrier.
  Wait for seller's payments to clear before forwarding.
  Ship the packages(s) to the buyer.

This will take paid manpower, paid warehousing, paid insurance, costly shipping materials, a very good computerized record system, printing of forms, etc. etc.

Some imprecise ciphering reveals a need for sliding scale service fees near 10 percent, less for high dollar items, plus additional charges for needed additional packing materials and/or other services provided. (For example, if customers wanted verification of functionality, verification of calibration or such additional services, the service fees would be more.)

This is why you do not see a trader's escrow service. It is not practical.

A better approach might be to offer a Trader's Insurance policy to cover problems associated with Internet deals. Such policies would be on a deal by deal basis or dealer by dealer basis and would pay for actual damages caused by a specific set of verifiable conditions. This might be practical if the volume was high enough to cover the costs of providing protection and sustain the insurance providers.

My 2 cents worth...

AL

[w8er]

Al,

I wasn't thinking that kind of involvement. I don't think that it's necessary. Here's the scenario that I picture:

1) Buyer and seller agree on deal and to use escrow.

2) Buyer sends payment to escrow. Could be Paypal, USPS money order, bank check. Whatever the buyer and seller agree on payment to be. Escrow simply holds payment.

3) Seller sends equipment to buyer! No need to double ship. Escrow need not be involved. Escrow not qualified to interpret condition or if the equipment is working anyway. Escrow very dumb but very honest.

4) Buyer gets equipment and says good deal! Escrow forwards payment to seller.

5) Buyer get equipment but it sucks (misrepresented, doesn't work, not happy). Of course Seller is going to be more careful about saying equipment is MINT! He has shipping costs at stake! Buyer packs equipment back up and sends back to seller. Pays own freight! Escrow returns money to Buyer after Seller confirms receipt.

Anything bad happens .. Escrow is holding funds until they are released by Buyer or Seller. The equipment disposition doesn't matter much as long as funds are securely held by escrow until satisfactory disposition.

There's always a fly in the ointment because some dip automatically begins to figure out how he can screw the system .. and does. For instance the Buyer really is looking for a good 6146 for his own DX-60. So when he get the DX-100 that he agreed to purchase, he pulls out the best 6146 in the DX-100 and puts back a bad one. BUT this 6146 cost him shipping the DX-100 back and the escrow service hears from the seller about what happened and the buyer is blacklisted! Escrow only accepts deals from parties with clean records. No proof, it's not a criminal court, necessary. BUT BUT Seller not happy but he got his gear back!

It's not a perfect system but sure beats sending off $875 and getting nothing but a headache in return! THIS IS NOT PAYPAL! This is insurance.

I see that there are several that would not be willing to use such a service. Are hams so cheap that they would risk big bucks over a small fee? I call that dumb? I'd certainly pay $30 to guarantee that a transceiver or amplifier that I purchased used from some guy, that I don't know, is OK and that he is not a crook! Again I ask, what am I not seeing here?

-- Larry W8ER

[K4ICL]

I am sure there are may approaches.

The one you suggest is designed to keep the seller honest but does nothing to keep the buyer honest. It is a "buyer's" arrangement. As you point out, the buyer can easily screw the seller because there is no means to verify what was sent, what condition it was in, etc. So the buyer can strip all the goodies off a unit and claim he was being cheated and send back the remains, yet get his money back.

For my money the system MUST protect both sellers and buyers.

Add an additional step to my suggested approach:

...Take pictures of the contents of the packages.

AL

[w8er]

The one you suggest is designed to keep the seller honest but does nothing to keep the buyer honest.

I think in my post I answered that concern directly.

a) The Buyer strips all but the cabinet and sends it back.

b) Who still has the money? Escrow does! When the Buyer notifies Escrow that it wasn't satisfactory, the OK for the release of the funds back to the buyer has to come from the Seller. Only when the Seller has his gear back does Escrow release the funds back to the buyer.

Isn't this crazy? Here we are, a bunch of hams, and we're trying to figure out how to protect ourselves from each other. What happened to our word being our badge?

We have a guy out in California that has screwed three of us, openly and coldly. He fixed one of the problems but still there are two guys that are out some significant money. I got my money back but after all of the trouble and the GIANT lies, I'm trying to figure out a safe way to buy and sell ham gear on QTH.COM. Why?

I heard a guy on 75 meters the other day talking about how bad his NRD-545 was. It needed repair and it was hard to get repaired and how it really had never worked right. His efforts to sell it never mentioned the problems that he talked about on the air at all. Then it was a great receiver! My my, what has this all come to? (_o_) 's

-- Larry W8ER

[K4ICL]

Actually there are dozens of ways the cheat any escrow system, that probably is why they don't make it as a business. There is no need to thrash them here.
...

It is crazy! One thing I am fairly certain of, almost ALL hams are honest and care about their reputations. The few that aren't and don't will not steal enough to make me what to create more stupid laws or rules that costs everyone just to deal with the very small percentage of the thieves, frauds, and scammers.

What to do?

Research your seller and see if there have been problems. Pay attention to the waving red flags, past or present. Ask the right questions and get the right answers. Don't be shy about getting things cleared up PRIOR to commitment. Back out of the deal the instant you smell a rat. Put everything if writing if it is an Internet deal, even if you made the deal over the phone.

In other words, prevent the problem by doing you homework.

It gets less crazy afterwards.

AL

[w8jn]

most deals turn into a free for all when people assume results. those who are afraid to ask questions are the ones who end up in a shouting match when things go wrong.
1. check qth feedback,
2. ask for home phone
3. check white pages online and see if the phone matches.
4. google the person
5. call hams in his town for reference if its a big $$$ deal.
6. how will you pack, please detail your packing proceedure.
7. how will you handle shipping damage
8. if shipping gorillas destroy the item, will you send my money back and you deal with the shipper
9. if claim is denied will you send my money back and you deal with the headache.
ARE YOU AFRAID TO ASK?? YOU WILL THEN PROBABLY BE HOSED AND WE WILL BE READING YOUR POST HERE ON QTH.

[w8er]

Al K4ICL said:

One thing I am fairly certain of, almost ALL hams are honest

I think I can disagree with this one Al. You see evidence of this all the time but the dishonesty has levels. For instance, I purchased an AL-1500 from a QTH ad. I was very specific about it being from a non smoking shack because I had encountered a smoker before. I was assured it was. I drove about 250 miles to pick it up and as I entered the guys shack .. no ashtrays, no smoke. It was all boxed up and I brought it home with me. When I took it out of the box .. whew! "Well I used to be a smoker but I'm not now!"

An ad on Ebay. "brand spanking new SDR-3000. Taken out of the box and used only a few hours" starting price within $$$ of a new one from Flex. When I inquired, I was told well almost new and admonished for asking for clarification.

Sold a 75S3, new military tubes and alignment and because the buyer used buy it now, I included shipping and a new in the box AM filter. The guy got the receiver and said it didn't work. Offered him his money back and he said no, he was going to have it fixed and I was going to pay the bill. Over $300 it turned out! When the story was out, the guy took the receiver to a well known repair guy and he socked him $300 to install an AM filter (had to make custom mounting brackets). That very same guy had ads on QTH.COM this last week!

One guy talking about how bad his NRD-545 receiver was on the air and how it never worked right. Yet sold it on QTH claiming that it was mint, with no mention of the problems.

I could go on for a while but I think that you can get the picture. Lie a little here and there and get what you can. If I say it's new or a non-smoker, I can get a little more. It don't work .. put it on the internet. Let somebody else figure it out.

Yes there are some good ones, really good ones. After the debacle with NE6V on the purchase of an AL-80B for $875, I saw another and the guy described it perfectly, called me the next day to describe a potential problem that he discovered and offered to take care of it totally if I still wanted it. Turned out to be nothing. The guy shipped it, packed it well, kept in constant touch until I got it and installed it here and told him that I was very happy with the deal. It was an outstanding transaction and the amp is perfect in every way! I haven't run across a lot of these kinds lately!

and Paul W8JN, I don't care how careful you are, how many calls you make and checks that you do .. if you deal on the internet, you will be on the wrong end of a deal sometime. I guarantee it!

[w8jn]

larry,
you are correct. if someone is out to cheat you its difficult to stop it. you can minimize your risk, but it cant be eliminated.
happy hoss trading paul w8jn