Hmmm... that service needs a human being as an escrow holder though. Wondering if there is a secure automated service somewhere.

I use the Android Wallet by Andreas Schildbach, it's open source, and I think it's pretty easy to use, and quite secure.

Not sure if I fully understand what you are looking for, or if you are promoting the escrow.com service.

I'm interested in off-exchange trading as well (all current exchanges are flawed one way or another), and am happy to use an escrow service. But the 3%-ish charged by escrow.com doesn't make too much sense for bitcoin trades though.

I sure wish there is a way that we don't have to rely on such "trust/good faith" in the era of Bitcoins.

Are you sure there is no escrow service out there that does not require a guy trusting the escrow provider? I think such a service would be really useful. If there's nothing out there, maybe I should look into building something and offer to everyone? Will be great to hear if anybody here thinks there's value in doing that.

Another peculiarity of the BTC-e ticketing system, if they don't respond to you in 72 hours, and that you don't ask for help again. An automated robot will send you an email saying:

• "We have not heard back from you in 72 hours and would like to know if you consider this issue to be resolved."
  

Here's the kicker, it goes on to say:

• "Please note that the ticket will automatically be closed within 1 hours if we don't hear back."
  

What this mean is, essentially, as if BTC-e not responding to your tickets is not bad enough, the customers needs to be on stand-by, and whenever they get this email, they need to respond immediately within an hour! This sure is some set up. On the other hand, you can still go in and re-open a ticket later on, but in general there is no response any way, so perhaps there's no difference one way or another.

Well, I thought the whole idea is that you DON'T HAVE TO trust the escrow providers.

In the CoinGuard case, it seems that each party will hold some secret to themselves and the escrow provider (E) is only needed if the buyer and seller have a dispute. And the escrow provider cannot take the BTC funds, except to give it to either the buyer or the seller. That's how I understand it works, not sure if the CoinGuard web site explained this clearly.

With regard to the GGDice service, I think it's theoretically possible that the private key is stored on the server, that would be a critical flaw in the scheme, to me anyway.

Are there information about larger amount being processed faster? the withdrawal process is so opaque with MtGox, and there seem to be tons of horror stories in these forums. Until that clears up, I for one really don't feel comfortable doing business with them again. However I'd love to reconsider if funds can start to flow freely into and out of MtGox again.

Just FYI, the amount I withdrew is about 40k USD, don't know if it is considered large or small, or somewhere in-between.

That's a great idea, but I have a feeling that it will indeed be just a mailing address. The company, if I read it correctly, is based in Bulgaria.

Another 24 hours have passed, and there no response for my ticket (as expected actually). I was wondering if writing them in Russian was really such a good idea, perhaps in stead of making things easier, I might have offended the folks where.

Right now I'm just counting my blessings, things could have be much worse if I had tens of thousands stuck...

I was able to pay a 5% hair cut and then wait for 3 weeks to get my money out of MtGox.

Don't know about you guys, but I'm voting with my feet, and staying away for the time being.

Not a huge amount, slightly more than $400. But still this is just ridiculous.

Now I did write them back (in Russian, no less!) yesterday that I want them to return the money and unblock my account. We'll see what happens. If history is any indication, I should be able to report back here in 5-7 days. :-(

Just wanted to add my 2 cents with about my experience with BTC-e.

One fine morning about a month and half ago I tried to log into BTC-e and was told that my account was banned. Since then I have been doing the back-and-forth with them with a support ticket. It takes on average about 7 days for them to respond to anything I raise. So it's like this.

me: why was I banned?
them (7 days later): money trouble with you account.

me: what money trouble?!
them (another 7 days later): our bank says a wire to your account seems fishy, please provide ID, until bill, etc.

me: here they are, what next?
them (5 days later): oh we don't accept electronic copies, do you have scanned copies?

me: here's the scanned copy
(email from them: 72 hours no activity, we are about to close the ticket!)

me: hello?
me: hello hello?
them: no response so far...

Yesterday I finally took some advice from the websphere and added another comment in Russian, crossing my fingers to get a good response soon.