0.03 bitcoin for a few minutes work is too expensive. That is why people are not interested in your service.
Attitudes like yours are why some of the best and most trustworthy escrow providers are either quitting offering escrow services, raising their minimum amount escrowed, or setting higher fees.
If people took the time to think about how valuable the service is that well run and trustworthy escrow provides, and then compensated the escrow provider appropriately for the value provided then people like Blazed and myself wouldn't have stopped.
Unfortunately when everything goes smoothly, like it does 99% of the time, nobody even thinks about how much the security and peace of mind were really worth. They tip nothing at all or less than $2 worth of bitcoins.
When I held escrows, all escrow-ed funds were held on single use paper wallets that were generated on a permanently offline computer and that were stored in a secure location. I wrote up custom escrow agreements that laid out exactly how the transaction was expected to progress as well as laying out exactly what would happen in a variety of common situations. I acted as mediator for disagreements between transaction participants and made a significant effort to remain fair and impartial. If I was going to be unavailable for release at any time, all parties involved were informed ahead of time. I made sure that all parties were provided with multiple ways to contact me if bitcointalk became unavailable (phone number, email address, and frequently a U.S.P.S. mailing address). All of this time and effort for between 0 BTC and 0.01 BTC most of the time. I could earn more running a lemonade stand on a cold day in the middle of nowhere.
In the beginning I did it because I wanted to make it easier for users of the forum that didn't have any way of trusting each other to be able to engage in transactions. I was motivated largely because there weren't many merchants or exchanges available, and if bitcoin was going to be useful, then this forum was going to be where that usefulness was proven. Since then there are several well trusted exchanges and many large public merchants that accept bitcoin as payment. Additionally there were several new escrow providers that I found to be sloppy and uncommunicative, yet users were flocking to them for some reason. At that point it just didn't make sense anymore to spend time and effort for a service that clearly wasn't desired.
Exactly...
I do not know about you, but it took me years to build up a reputation and become trusted. Look at Master-P for instance...he was never really all that trusted if you read his feedback. The real trusted people here have been trusted with 10x what he ever was and that trust is rare and valuable. I agree rates should somewhat depend on the value and ease of the transaction (maybe set up a fee structure of sorts). Accounts are the worst as it requires so many steps -> create an email, change email + password + delete security question + check post history + verify sellers description etc.. The end result is as Danny has mentioned you guys are left with very few reliable escrows. The funny part is all the trusted guys are not really affected since we never seem to need escrows ourselves. Anyways none of this really affects me as I no longer offer the service, but feel the people who still do should be paid better for their time. I have never used and escrow and not tipped or paid the fee they ask for.
Edit: I also started to escrow for the same reasons: help the community. I never charged a fee because I felt almost bad asking for one (was trying to do my part). After all the thankless efforts I then realized it was all for not.
Be safe out there!
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