Can escrow service on bitcointalk be trusted?

[TCW003]

Hi,

Can anyone share your experience of using the escrow service of bitcointalk here?

Can it be trusted or scams still exists? And how exactly does the escrow work?

Thanks a lot!

[B1tUnl0ck3r]

I never did a trade nor witness one, but I would say that philma is a good guy .

[Csmiami]

Can it be trusted or scams still exists? And how exactly does the escrow work?

There is always a chance of getting scammed, that's why you have to do your due research to reduce that riks. Even the most trusted members can go rogue, but it's highly unlikely.

You can check this thread or this other one with a couple of lists, or you can browse the Services board and see who is offering (myself included altough not in the trusted lists).

Each escrow works in a different way, and depending on what you are buying/selling, procedures will vary. Most of the time tough, the escrow will receive the buyers funds, then the seller will deliver the product and upon confirmation of everything being OK, payment is released to the seller. Again, this may vary depending on the escrow and/or product.

To finish, a couple escrows, I'd recommend:

-minerjones
-bL4nkcode

[Darker45]

There is no official escrow service on bitcointalk. There are individual escrows which have their own separate reputations and track records, though. They have their own escrow rules and escrow mechanisms as well.

Many of them are definitely trustworthy. They have been involved in so many transactions over the past years, thousands of Bitcoins have been entrusted to them in the process.

If I am not mistaken, some of them such as OgNasty and minerjones are still part of the multisig contract which holds the forum's hundreds of BTC.

[numanoid]

Just pm/contact minerjones (above) if you are looking for trusted and reliable escrow. He is the guy who having highest trust rating now, no need worry you getting scammed if you use his service.

[crwth]

Personally, I have never dealt with escrows officially, but I have transactions with them because of the charity. The escrow is bL4nkcode for the Bitcointalk Charity. So he is holding a lot of money now for the charity, and he is in control of it. So for the amount of money needed for my activity, I gave the necessary things for the budget and let it be approved. That's how we conducted it. So in a way, I did deal with escrows.

When I haven't had any idea about escrows, this was the early stage of my forum activity. You could see that I have transacted with this profile.

Druckao - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=916600

And then, without any idea, I didn't look at the feedbacks that he has back then, and I didn't have any backup plan in case he didn't pay. So I just "trusted" him with it and used the code that was supposed to be sold. It sucks to be scammed. So after that lesson, I learned more about trust and understood what things should be done to get scammed.

So yes, there are still scams that could happen to you when you don't know anything about it, and it's better to be aware and safe to use a "reputable" escrow for your transactions. Csmiami pretty much went on point about how the escrow here works, so you are more knowledgeable now, OP. Use it to your advantage and not get scammed.

[TheUltraElite]

It's very informative. Thanks a lot!

I hope you have got your answer from the previous posts. Just one thing I would like to add here, many users think they would contact the escrow on other social media because this forum's PM system is old-school according to them. But trust me, its better to keep the conversation in forum PMs. Telegram and other social media are full of impersonating scammers and you should never start a deal there. The scammers use simple tricks to modify usernames and pose as known escrow agents to scam others. This is one thing you should be careful of.

Verify them before trusting them with money.  

[Taskford]

Hi,

Can anyone share your experience of using the escrow service of bitcointalk here?

Can it be trusted or scams still exists? And how exactly does the escrow work?

Thanks a lot!

Depend on which escrow service do you use since there are new escrow service created and those people are building up a reputation to do such kind of service. And there are Old time users which has a reputation here and can be trusted so select a proper research and do your own research feedbacks from the community is good since it can point you to the correct guys which deliver a good service.

 I don't want to name any of those to avoid any conflict of interest but you can check the suggestion of the other users here.

[hilariousetc]

Hi,

Can anyone share your experience of using the escrow service of bitcointalk here?

Can it be trusted or scams still exists? And how exactly does the escrow work?

Thanks a lot!

Anyone can scam you at any point. You could be the most trustworthy member/escrow on the forum and that person could run off with your money at any time. In fact, there has been at least once case that I recall where a fairly trusted escrow did run off with people's money. Using a trusted escrow is certainly more safe that just trusting a random person on the internet with your money but I would do your research on them and weigh up the odds of them scamming you. If a user has held thousands of dollars of other people's money then they're unlikely to scam you and ruin their account for $100 or $1000, but at the same time you don't know what sorts of financial trouble they're in or if their account has been compromised but there are ways to verify this. Maybe someone's sole intention was to become trustworthy here to pull off a long con further down the line and that's something you can never know until it happens. At the end of the day you are responsible for your own money and I would do your own research to find out who you can judge or not but there will likely never be a 100% guarantee of safety.

[mersal]

If you ask escrow on bitcointalk can scam you? Then yes because they are also human so possibility of scamming is there when we trust people.

But there are reasons why they are not going to scam you like they are doing escrowing funds as common practice and for that they are charging certain amount from the total escrowed amount so this is kind of earnings for them and also their reputation will increase here with such kind of services done based on only trust.

[stomachgrowls]

Hi,

Can anyone share your experience of using the escrow service of bitcointalk here?

Can it be trusted or scams still exists? And how exactly does the escrow work?

Thanks a lot!

When it comes to escrows then i do able to deal with minerjones but there are several people whom can be trusted when it comes to escrow service and you can find the list on here.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2439910.0

In regards to experience then everything went smooth and the fees arent really that high and once you do have experience on using up their service then thats the time
that do form up with some trust.

Scam do definitely exist thats why be careful into random people whom do offer escrow service.Always stick into those persons that had been trusted by this community by ages.
How does escrow actually work then it do acts as a middle man between you and other person whom you are transacting.

[Joel_Jantsen]

Hi,

Can anyone share your experience of using the escrow service of bitcointalk here?

Have used multiple escrows on bitcointalk over time and yes, they can be trusted provided you know what you're doing. Definitely do your due diligence before randomly picking up an escrow from the list some random person recommended.

Can it be trusted or scams still exists? And how exactly does the escrow work?
Thanks a lot!

Don't recollect any major escrow scams by the trusted escrows. The way they work depends on your trade. I'd say always go for a multi-sig escrow between all the parties involved in a trade so one doesn't have direct access to all the funds.

[sheenshane]

Any trusted members that come from on the list of forum escrow given above might consider as a good escrow, active, reputable, and have the credibility to hold a huge fund.  That's how will you pick a good escrow.  Handled many projects at this moment will probably good to deal with.

But still, you can do your own research, is what I can suggest for there are lots of individuals or companies who offer escrow service yet can't be trusted and they will make sure to keep their identity secret so they can easily lure someone and get scammed.  However, there are suggestions that have been given on this post and you might consider checking their background before availing of their service but of course, the reality remains that entrusting your money to a third party is always a risk that you will take

[LTU_btc]

Nobody can be trusted 100%, no matter how good their reputation is. After all, you're dealing with stranger. You only his username in general, you never saw him face to face, you don't know his real name and other information. Most of escrow service providers here have great reputation, but despite this, some risks remains. For example, their account may be hacked and you'll give money to someone who controls their account. Also, there is some cases when users with great reputation scammed people for not so much money.

[TCW003]

Thanks for all the valued information. I learned the basic process and will try it carefully.