[confirmed] SCAMMER: user Leon

[haploid23]

haploid23, all i can say is that I'm truly sorry about my snarky remark  
I recognize now who the scammer is. and i'm offering you my help in the only way i can.
Too bad that I can't solve completely your situation, but I can help you to maybe save the next person
from falling into such crap. Do good, and you will feel good.
It's impossible to save them all, because many, just like you did, jump on the bargains, only having seconds thoughts after thinking about it more clearly, but most times it's too late.

May this also be a lesson for those who like to impulse buy stuff... After all, more can happen than just you ending up buying something you don't need or like.  

Once again, i'm sorry about my comment, haploid23

no need to apologize, everything has already been said and done, it won't undo all of these scams... but thank you anyways for the apology. i believe this is the biggest scam on this forum, involving at least 8 victims to the same guy. i'll be sending you a PM in a few minutes on all his info i know to be posted on your website. but i think all that information is already on this thread.

what surprises me is that even after i posted this thread and spammed his new sale thread to NOT buy his stuff, people still bought his stuff and even the same 6990s that i had already paid for and later wanted out. i didn't even get the supposed refund for the 6990s yet, and 1 or 2 people still paid for them

[1715124916]

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[1715124916]

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[fitty]

haploid23, all i can say is that I'm truly sorry about my snarky remark  
I recognize now who the scammer is. and i'm offering you my help in the only way i can.
Too bad that I can't solve completely your situation, but I can help you to maybe save the next person
from falling into such crap. Do good, and you will feel good.
It's impossible to save them all, because many, just like you did, jump on the bargains, only having seconds thoughts after thinking about it more clearly, but most times it's too late.

May this also be a lesson for those who like to impulse buy stuff... After all, more can happen than just you ending up buying something you don't need or like.  

Once again, i'm sorry about my comment, haploid23

no need to apologize, everything has already been said and done, it won't undo all of these scams... but thank you anyways for the apology. i believe this is the biggest scam on this forum, involving at least 8 victims to the same guy. i'll be sending you a PM in a few minutes on all his info i know to be posted on your website. but i think all that information is already on this thread.

what surprises me is that even after i posted this thread and spammed his new sale thread to NOT buy his stuff, people still bought his stuff and even the same 6990s that i had already paid for and later wanted out. i didn't even get the supposed refund for the 6990s yet, and 1 or 2 people still paid for them

We need someone to organize a list of escrow services. We a list of where you can leave feedback/ratings. A guide on how to avoid getting scammed. It should be a sticky in the marketplace. The existing threads aren't very good, hard to search and don't help much to be honest.

If someone wants to get organized, get a master list together, pull together all the tips/tricks (checking his paypal email, his ebay, his bitcoin-otc.com profile). The avoid 99% of paypal scams thread has lots of good tips. I'd kick in a .5 btc bounty for whoever can pull it off. You can probably replace 3 of the sticky threads with one good one.

If someone selling items has no ebay, no bitcoin-otc, no history, use escrow. The problem now is we need people leaving feedback, ratings, on these sites so people can build up a transparent history. Posting john314 + rocks on the whitelist thread isn't going to get seen by anyone.

Food for thought. =)

[Inaba]

Do NOT use donation escrow services.  These are the stupidest idea I've ever seen implemented in an escrow service. 

Escrow is meant to protect both parties.  An escrow service that protects only one party is effectively not really an escrow service, and an "escrow" service that sends the money to a "donation" in the event of a default is just asking for all sorts of trouble.  I would never, ever, ever agree to a donation escrow as a buyer.  Donation escrows are only harmful to the process, they do not provide any benefit.  There is no risk to the scammer by using donation escrow or not using it - either way they won't get the money, but if they do use it, at the very least they can use it to fuck you so you don't get your money back in the event of a default.  On top of that, they can also be used as a harassment tool even if someone isn't a scammer in the sense of them trying to take your money.

An escrow service requires an arbitration process.  Any escrow service without an arbitration process is nothing more than "Hey Bob, will you hold my wad of cash for a few days?"  And you don't know Bob.  And Bob might give your money to the Red Cross if the seller tells him to.

As far as feedback/ratings go, there's already a site, it's called HEATWARE.  I use it on here as well as other forums.  It should be the standard for here, just like it is at so many other For Sale forums around the world.

[trentzb]

An escrow service requires an arbitration process.  Any escrow service without an arbitration process is nothing more than "Hey Bob, will you hold my wad of cash for a few days?"  And you don't know Bob.  And Bob might give your money to the Red Cross if the seller tells him to.

+1

OT and likely to be controversial. I believe ADR/Arbitration should operate with no emotion whatsover, no conflict of interest (or recuse), incentive to rule based on contract and evidence alone and a disincentive to rule on fairness. I don't know that all of those areas can be covered, but close to it I think is possible.

[kokojie]

No, actually in my experience, donation escrow is perfect. With arbitration type escrow, the buyer can choose to screw the seller and claim the item is no good, and get money back. Also, for digital goods, there's no way for seller to prove he has delivered the item. Also fraudulent sellers can just ship empty box to the buyer with tracking number to fool arbitration (I have seen this fraud on ebay/paypal many times, but ebay has a reputation system to keep this low).

Basically, if there's arbitration, there will be incentive for both buyer and seller to get creative and screw over the other guy. With donation escrow, there is no such thing. Seller has zero incentive to screw over the buyer as if the buyer is unhappy, seller does not get any money. Buyer also has zero incentive to screw over the seller, as buyer not getting money back either way, and he'd be really stupid to intentionally piss off someone that knows his name and address.

Do NOT use donation escrow services.  These are the stupidest idea I've ever seen implemented in an escrow service.  

Escrow is meant to protect both parties.  An escrow service that protects only one party is effectively not really an escrow service, and an "escrow" service that sends the money to a "donation" in the event of a default is just asking for all sorts of trouble.  I would never, ever, ever agree to a donation escrow as a buyer.  Donation escrows are only harmful to the process, they do not provide any benefit.  There is no risk to the scammer by using donation escrow or not using it - either way they won't get the money, but if they do use it, at the very least they can use it to fuck you so you don't get your money back in the event of a default.  On top of that, they can also be used as a harassment tool even if someone isn't a scammer in the sense of them trying to take your money.

An escrow service requires an arbitration process.  Any escrow service without an arbitration process is nothing more than "Hey Bob, will you hold my wad of cash for a few days?"  And you don't know Bob.  And Bob might give your money to the Red Cross if the seller tells him to.

As far as feedback/ratings go, there's already a site, it's called HEATWARE.  I use it on here as well as other forums.  It should be the standard for here, just like it is at so many other For Sale forums around the world.

[kgo]

(Full disclosure, I am biased here.  I run a donation based escrow.  But I believe my arguments are sound.)

There is no risk to the scammer by using donation escrow or not using it - either way they won't get the money, but if they do use it, at the very least they can use it to fuck you so you don't get your money back in the event of a default.  On top of that, they can also be used as a harassment tool even if someone isn't a scammer in the sense of them trying to take your money.

There's no risk to a scammer without a donation escrow anyway, since pretty much by definition they have nothing to lose.  What the escrow service does is remove the incentive to scam somebody, not remove the non-existant risk to the scammer.  The scammer has no reason to invest time setting up a con because the net return is a negative.  They use a resource, their time, and if there's no possible way to profit, they've lost out.  Hence they'll move on to the next potential victim, or try to pester you into not using escrow for some BS reason, and give up when you refuse to budge.

Yes the donation system isn't perfect.  But a perfect system is expensive.

Real world analogy.  Sometimes I mail something out that's 25 or 50 bucks.  I don't spend the money on insurance because it's too much from my perspective.  If I was mailing something that cost $500, then I buy the insurance right at the post office.  If I'm mailing a Picasso painting, I need to get insurance from Lloyd's of London and hire a private courier to deliver the goods.

Similarly, I buy a .25 BTC bumper sticker, I'll just take the chance on a loss.  If I spend 5-10 BTC for something, I want some lightweight protection, but don't want to pay a lot, because it adds up, so I use a donation escrow.  If I spend 100 BTC on a new laptop, then maybe I'll look into a full-service escrow.

An escrow service requires an arbitration process.  Any escrow service without an arbitration process is nothing more than "Hey Bob, will you hold my wad of cash for a few days?"  And you don't know Bob.  And Bob might give your money to the Red Cross if the seller tells him to.

No.  The person who gives the cash to Bob determines if it goes to the Red Cross.  The more comparable scenario is giving money to Bob, and saying, "If you don't here from me in a few days, burn that money, flush it down the toilet, but whatever you do, don't give it to that jackass."  The seller can not force a charity release and somehow steal my money.  If buyer is an actual scammer, they won't put the money into escrow in the first place, because they can't get it back.  Once again, the incentive to scam is removed, because it becomes impossible to profit.  Yes, conceivably a person could just not release the money after you've sent them, but what incentive to they have to do so?  The number of people who would just do that to be an a-hole are far less than the number of scammers out there.

Also, if the deal falls apart for legitimate reasons, and both people are on the same side, you can recover your bitcoins safely.  This is covered in my FAQ.

As far as feedback/ratings go, there's already a site, it's called HEATWARE.  I use it on here as well as other forums.  It should be the standard for here, just like it is at so many other For Sale forums around the world.

I don't understand how a donation based escrow could be used as a harassment tool.  The only thing I could think is that someone can keep on bugging you to release the coins.  But they could do the same thing without the escrow service, by bugging you to send coins.  Could you elaborate?

[kokojie]

Thanks, you said it better than me. Basically almost everything that happens in this world has a "motive" or "incentive" behind it. For a scammer to spend the time to write up the sale, risk being caught, and also might have to spend some time develop a seemingly reputable account, and then after all that get ZERO profit, the scammer has to be a extremely stupid scammer that likes to waste time.

(Full disclosure, I am biased here.  I run a donation based escrow.  But I believe my arguments are sound.)

There is no risk to the scammer by using donation escrow or not using it - either way they won't get the money, but if they do use it, at the very least they can use it to fuck you so you don't get your money back in the event of a default.  On top of that, they can also be used as a harassment tool even if someone isn't a scammer in the sense of them trying to take your money.

There's no risk to a scammer without a donation escrow anyway, since pretty much by definition they have nothing to lose.  What the escrow service does is remove the incentive to scam somebody, not remove the non-existant risk to the scammer.  The scammer has no reason to invest time setting up a con because the net return is a negative.  They use a resource, their time, and if there's no possible way to profit, they've lost out.  Hence they'll move on to the next potential victim, or try to pester you into not using escrow for some BS reason, and give up when you refuse to budge.

Yes the donation system isn't perfect.  But a perfect system is expensive.

Real world analogy.  Sometimes I mail something out that's 25 or 50 bucks.  I don't spend the money on insurance because it's too much from my perspective.  If I was mailing something that cost $500, then I buy the insurance right at the post office.  If I'm mailing a Picasso painting, I need to get insurance from Lloyd's of London and hire a private courier to deliver the goods.

Similarly, I buy a .25 BTC bumper sticker, I'll just take the chance on a loss.  If I spend 5-10 BTC for something, I want some lightweight protection, but don't want to pay a lot, because it adds up, so I use a donation escrow.  If I spend 100 BTC on a new laptop, then maybe I'll look into a full-service escrow.

An escrow service requires an arbitration process.  Any escrow service without an arbitration process is nothing more than "Hey Bob, will you hold my wad of cash for a few days?"  And you don't know Bob.  And Bob might give your money to the Red Cross if the seller tells him to.

No.  The person who gives the cash to Bob determines if it goes to the Red Cross.  The more comparable scenario is giving money to Bob, and saying, "If you don't here from me in a few days, burn that money, flush it down the toilet, but whatever you do, don't give it to that jackass."  The seller can not force a charity release and somehow steal my money.  If buyer is an actual scammer, they won't put the money into escrow in the first place, because they can't get it back.  Once again, the incentive to scam is removed, because it becomes impossible to profit.  Yes, conceivably a person could just not release the money after you've sent them, but what incentive to they have to do so?  The number of people who would just do that to be an a-hole are far less than the number of scammers out there.

Also, if the deal falls apart for legitimate reasons, and both people are on the same side, you can recover your bitcoins safely.  This is covered in my FAQ.

As far as feedback/ratings go, there's already a site, it's called HEATWARE.  I use it on here as well as other forums.  It should be the standard for here, just like it is at so many other For Sale forums around the world.

I don't understand how a donation based escrow could be used as a harassment tool.  The only thing I could think is that someone can keep on bugging you to release the coins.  But they could do the same thing without the escrow service, by bugging you to send coins.  Could you elaborate?

[pekv2]

If I were to use an donation escrow with selling something I have, the escrow receives the bitcoins from the buyer, I legitimately send off the product perfectly packaged, with photos, the buyer could receive shipment, report it bad or did not receive the shipment, then I would be without my product I sent off and the BTC's would go to a donation Bitcoin Faucet?

[myrkul]

If I were to use an donation escrow with selling something I have, the escrow receives the bitcoins from the buyer, I legitimately send off the product perfectly packaged, with photos, the buyer could receive shipment, report it bad or did not receive the shipment, then I would be without my product I sent off and the BTC's would go to a donation Bitcoin Faucet?

Yes, but at least that's better than them getting the coins back...

This is why escrows who actually receive the product, verify it, and then send the coins/product are an important next step.

[kgo]

If I were to use an donation escrow with selling something I have, the escrow receives the bitcoins from the buyer, I legitimately send off the product perfectly packaged, with photos, the buyer could receive shipment, report it bad or did not receive the shipment, then I would be without my product I sent off and the BTC's would go to a donation Bitcoin Faucet?

Yes, it's possible, but why would they do that?

Suppose I buy something with bitcoins.  I pay first.  The packaged is shipped to my house.  The seller could show up with a machete or a chainsaw and kill me.  They know where I live.  It's possible, but it's highly unlikely.  It's not a very big consideration when I'm trying to decide if I should close a deal.

Less far-fetched, maybe someone would refuse to release payment even after receiving goods just for the lulz.  But the sort of person who would do that is much rarer than the scammers in the world.

[pekv2]

If I were to use an donation escrow with selling something I have, the escrow receives the bitcoins from the buyer, I legitimately send off the product perfectly packaged, with photos, the buyer could receive shipment, report it bad or did not receive the shipment, then I would be without my product I sent off and the BTC's would go to a donation Bitcoin Faucet?

Yes, but at least that's better than them getting the coins back...

This is why escrows who actually receive the product, verify it, and then send the coins/product are an important next step.

I'm astonished. Wow. I didn't expect that. The way that is, I'd definitely use an escrow, because I was still a bit leery about sending my shipment out when the time comes.

[pekv2]

If I were to use an donation escrow with selling something I have, the escrow receives the bitcoins from the buyer, I legitimately send off the product perfectly packaged, with photos, the buyer could receive shipment, report it bad or did not receive the shipment, then I would be without my product I sent off and the BTC's would go to a donation Bitcoin Faucet?

Yes, it's possible, but why would they do that?

Suppose I buy something with bitcoins.  I pay first.  The packaged is shipped to my house.  The seller could show up with a machete or a chainsaw and kill me.  They know where I live.  It's possible, but it's highly unlikely.  It's not a very big consideration when I'm trying to decide if I should close a deal.

Less far-fetched, maybe someone would refuse to release payment even after receiving goods just for the lulz.  But the sort of person who would do that is much rarer than the scammers in the world.

Some people use P.O box.

[kgo]

If I were to use an donation escrow with selling something I have, the escrow receives the bitcoins from the buyer, I legitimately send off the product perfectly packaged, with photos, the buyer could receive shipment, report it bad or did not receive the shipment, then I would be without my product I sent off and the BTC's would go to a donation Bitcoin Faucet?

Yes, it's possible, but why would they do that?

Suppose I buy something with bitcoins.  I pay first.  The packaged is shipped to my house.  The seller could show up with a machete or a chainsaw and kill me.  They know where I live.  It's possible, but it's highly unlikely.  It's not a very big consideration when I'm trying to decide if I should close a deal.

Less far-fetched, maybe someone would refuse to release payment even after receiving goods just for the lulz.  But the sort of person who would do that is much rarer than the scammers in the world.

Some people use P.O box.

Yes, of course.

Let me put it this way: Yes it's possible that someone would rip you off in the original scenario you posted.  But is it likely?  In my opinion, it's not at all likely.  Most people don't have an incentive to screw you over in this situation.  Yes, there might be a crazy person or a sicko who gets some thrill by doing so, or some wacko who convinces himself somehow you cheated him and wants to get revenge, but the likelihood of dealing with one of these people is much, much lower than the likelihood of dealing with a scammer.  At least in my opinion.

[Smalleyster]

I too feel donation escrow is absurd and would never consider the idea.

Proper excrow needs an intermediate party to receive the goods, buyer goes to escrow agent's office and opens the goods in the presence of escrow agent with the video cam running.

The hard part is setting up the network of escrow agents.

I did this with buying a high dollar gun many years ago.

Once I signed the gun was mine and the money was his with the escrow agent and the company splitting the escrow fee.

I am currently in opening discussions with lawyers and finance agents about setting up with btc for this very issue.

[kgo]

I too feel donation escrow is absurd and would never consider the idea.

Proper excrow needs an intermediate party to receive the goods, buyer goes to escrow agent's office and opens the goods in the presence of escrow agent with the video cam running.

The hard part is setting up the network of escrow agents.

I did this with buying a high dollar gun many years ago.

Once I signed the gun was mine and the money was his with the escrow agent and the company splitting the escrow fee.

I am currently in opening discussions with lawyers and finance agents about setting up with btc for this very issue.

Yes if I was buying a high end gun I'd want a real escrow like that.  As I said a bit further up, I don't think donation escrow is appropriate for this particular deal, given the high dollar value.

But how much would full escrow cost for goods worth 5 Bitcoins?

The escrow service might have to require that the seller ships with delivery confirmation to ensure the service's reputation.  So now the price of the item goes up.

The escrow service needs a physical human to open the package.  This human need the skills to appraise the condition of the device.  Someone who can appraise a 6990 video card might not have the skills to appraise a gun.  And you're saying they need someone else to videotape it.

After that, the escrow service needs to send the package to the recipient with delivery confirmation, insurance, signatures, and all that, so the escrow service can't be cheated by the buyer.

Even conservatively, that's 1 BTC.  It could even be 2 BTC.  (Possibly more.  Does an expert appraiser care about making 3 dollars for a single deal?  How much does the guy with the video camera charge?)   For a 5 Bitcoin deal.  Is it worth it?  Many people would say no.  What about a deal worth 3 bitcoins?  Or 2?  These deals would probably have the same fixed expenses (and higher percentage) than the 5 BTC deal.

So why wouldn't you consider a service that offers more protection than nothing, but less protection than full escrow, which could easily be an additional 20-40% on a 5 BTC deal?

[Smalleyster]

I picked it up at a gun shop who was the agent of the escrow service.

I decided if the gun was what I wanted, not the gun store guy.

When *I* decided it was the right item and in good condition. I signed for it and it was mine.

If I had rejected it the item would have been shipped back and I would have been out one side of the shipping and the escrow fee.

We both had something on the line to lose.

No one was videotaping, it was a cheap webcam recording the transaction.

If I remember correctly it was about $10-20 for the escrow service. Not a lot but it got me in the store where I bought lots of guns and ammo in years to come. So that $10 "waste of time" bought him good marketing over the next few years.

Everybody won.

[kgo]

But would you spend that $20 fee on a hundred dollars worth of bullets?  Or for a $40 1 oz silver round?  Or a $20 World-of-warcraft card?

Donation style escrow is more like paying 80 cents for insurance at the post office than a full service escrow.

In some high-BTC circumstances I would consider it totally absurd.  In other smaller deals I wouldn't.  I don't see why someone would rule it out for small-to-medium sized online deals with anonymous internet people.  Or why someone would pay for full escrow on deals under 100 dollars.

It just seems like an oversimplification to me.  "Because donation-escrow doesn't offer 100% security, instead I'll just use nothing, where I have absolutely no protection from scammers."

Maybe we just need to come up with a different name, since indeed it isn't real escrow.

[Smalleyster]

I agree the word escrow does not belong in a $1 transaction.

That's a different beast that should be reputation based like ebay.

[pekv2]

For best transaction, for which I did not know, is to use escrow. Thanks to the ones that provided the information to keep away from scammers. I just started mining a few days ago, once I get at least two BTC mined, I will come back to give a donation to the ones that provided great information on how to stay safe.

[Inaba]

Donation style escrow is more like paying 80 cents for insurance at the post office than a full service escrow.

It's nothing like 80 cents for insurance at the post office.  It's not even kind of like it.  It's not even vaguely related to it.  See the rest of my post below:

kokojie & kgo:

I am finding it really difficult to believe you two are so deluded or naive to think that people won't do stuff to fuck with other people just for the hell of it (or for the lulz as the case may be).  Just because you've annoyed me in this post, I am going to create a fake account and sell you something through a donation escrow when you least expect it.

No, actually in my experience, donation escrow is perfect. With arbitration type escrow, the buyer can choose to screw the seller and claim the item is no good, and get money back. Also, for digital goods, there's no way for seller to prove he has delivered the item. Also fraudulent sellers can just ship empty box to the buyer with tracking number to fool arbitration (I have seen this fraud on ebay/paypal many times, but ebay has a reputation system to keep this low).

Your experience must be exceptionally limited then.  There is nothing good about a donation escrow.  It's a bastardization of the escrow process that screws all parties.  I also have serious questions as to whether or not a given escrow service would even send the money to the donation service listed, but that's another discussion entirely.  There is nothing a donation escrow service offers that is of value to anyone except the escrow operator.  In a defaulted situation, if the money doesn't go back to the seller, the whole transaction is pointless;  The seller is out their goods and the buyer is out their money.  Yes, the buyer might get the dubious "satisfaction" of knowing that the seller does not get any money, but this fallacy comes at the cost of allowing literally anyone to screw with any seller at any time with no reprecussions at all.  Again, if you are of the belief that people won't do that just for the hell of it and especially to exact some sort of revenge on someone, you are deluding yourselves.

Basically, if there's arbitration, there will be incentive for both buyer and seller to get creative and screw over the other guy. With donation escrow, there is no such thing. Seller has zero incentive to screw over the buyer as if the buyer is unhappy, seller does not get any money. Buyer also has zero incentive to screw over the seller, as buyer not getting money back either way, and he'd be really stupid to intentionally piss off someone that knows his name and address.

And this braindead donation escrow eliminates this how?  It doesn't, it just provides yet MORE opportunity to get creative to screw over someone with zero reprecussions.  Not only does it not solve a problem, it creates another one in the process.  The buyer could have every reason to screw over the seller - there is not "zero" reason.

There's no risk to a scammer without a donation escrow anyway, since pretty much by definition they have nothing to lose.  What the escrow service does is remove the incentive to scam somebody, not remove the non-existant risk to the scammer.  The scammer has no reason to invest time setting up a con because the net return is a negative.  They use a resource, their time, and if there's no possible way to profit, they've lost out.  Hence they'll move on to the next potential victim, or try to pester you into not using escrow for some BS reason, and give up when you refuse to budge.

I agree, there is no risk to the scammer without an escrow service.  There is also no risk to the scammer WITH a donation escrow service.  The donation escrow service adds NOTHING to the process and adds one additional avenue of harassment.  That was my original point - it doesn't add anything except more problems.  A monetary return is not always the incentive or goal of a scammer/harassment/forthelulz person.

No.  The person who gives the cash to Bob determines if it goes to the Red Cross.  The more comparable scenario is giving money to Bob, and saying, "If you don't here from me in a few days, burn that money, flush it down the toilet, but whatever you do, don't give it to that jackass."  The seller can not force a charity release and somehow steal my money.

Now you are contradicting yourself.  Either a donation escrow service enforces the "if in default, it goes to charity" or it does not.  If it does not, it doesn't fulfill it's design parameters.  If it does, then the buyer can easily force it by reporting it in default.  Your scenario is nothing like an escrow donation service.  Escrow donation is literally "Hey Bob, hold my money.  If you hear ANYTHING but 'Give him this money', throw it away and burn it."  So then Jim can say "Hey Bob, fuck off." and poof there goes your money.  That's the fallacy and ridiculousness of escrow donation.  Donation can be forced (by either party, but more importantly by the person buying) putting the control of the transaction in the buyer's hands when it should be in neither hands - that is the point of escrow.

The number of people who would just do that to be an a-hole are far less than the number of scammers out there.

Also, if the deal falls apart for legitimate reasons, and both people are on the same side, you can recover your bitcoins safely.  This is covered in my FAQ.

Far more than you are apparently aware of.  

As far as your second sentence in that quote, then you are arbitrating at that point and your arguments for a donation escrow fall completely apart (which they were already in shreds to begin with).  If the deal can be reversed due to certain conditions, then that is a form of arbitration.  Crude and rudimentary, but none the less that's what it is.

I don't understand how a donation based escrow could be used as a harassment tool.  The only thing I could think is that someone can keep on bugging you to release the coins.  But they could do the same thing without the escrow service, by bugging you to send coins.  Could you elaborate?

Really?  You can't imagine this scenario off the top of your head:

You've annoyed me somehow or I just pick you at random to fuck with.  I setup a fake account and offer to sell something I know you'll be interested in at an attractive price.  I deny all other offers privately and offer to sell to you for 25 BTC but I demand that you use an escrow service... but to show I'm magnanimous I offer to let you use the donation based escrow.  I tell you "Hey, to prove I'm not a scammer you can set it to donation so I won't get anything if I screw you." You think "Hey, that's cool, here  Mr. Donation Escrow, is my hard earned 25 BTC."

Now you're out 25 BTC and I dislike you because you've annoyed me.  I have to do nothing further.  I just cost you 25 BTC and have to do nothing but create a fake account and offer a product at an attractive price.

Now expand this scenario with someone how wants to fuck with a group of people... instead of taking just your offer, I can take several offers and screw 3 or 4 or more people out of their money, thereby undermining confidence in BTC.  All because there's a donation based escrow.

For a scammer to spend the time to write up the sale, risk being caught, and also might have to spend some time develop a seemingly reputable account, and then after all that get ZERO profit, the scammer has to be a extremely stupid scammer that likes to waste time.

In my opinion, it's not at all likely.  Most people don't have an incentive to screw you over in this situation.  Yes, there might be a crazy person or a sicko who gets some thrill by doing so, or some wacko who convinces himself somehow you cheated him and wants to get revenge, but the likelihood of dealing with one of these people is much, much lower than the likelihood of dealing with a scammer.  At least in my opinion.

I have two words for you:  4chan - /b/

And that's just one example.

I was, of course, lying at the top of the post about creating a fake account to sell you something.  Or was I?  You will never know and now you'll question every transaction you make through a donation escrow because it MIGHT be me just fucking with you because you've annoyed me.  You'll eventually be lulled into a false sense of security when nothing happens in the next month or two, but then BAM.  Or maybe it'll happen on your next transaction.  Am I serious?