Hodlhodl has since disabled trading for US customers again:
you are not a citizen or tax resident of the United States of America
Thank you o_e_l_e_o I wasn't aware of that. It seems that US really wants to grab tight the hole operation of knowing who is flowing money into exchanges that trade with Crypto, I guess that has to be the main reason why hodlhodl decided to stay out of it...
If you friend doesn't like any of the offers he sees, then just post his own offer and wait for someone to take him up on it. If he is looking to buy on a regular basis, then there is a good chance he could set up a recurring deal with a single seller and therefore negotiate much better prices.
I do believe this would be a balanced approach that would both lower the trading fees (not by a much I reckon, but it's better than nothing) while at the same time providing anonymity for both parties. I don't imagine that BitcoinGirl.club would be his friends escrow - as in making the purchases trough him/she since OP is a reputable member - but I think that his/her friend should consider using one of the many bitcointalk forum reputable sellers for this. There is also another exchange - albeit it doesn't accept united states dollars - which is
Bity[1] which do not requires KYC procedures for daily amounts bellow CHF 1,000 (about 1,090 USD). But we would be talking about exchanging fiat to EURO / CHF and then use it to purchase in Bity service... I've made a simulation with 200 EUR and the resulting BTC would be 0.00375397 , which means the total fees (excluding the conversion rate from USD <-> EUR) would be 2,94 EUR.
To put things in perspective, we're talking that in your 200 EUR of purchase, 1,47 % went directly to fees (again, excluding conversion rate). There are people that would find this amount exorbitant but considering the fact that they have no information on you (regarding KYC) it seems to be a reasonable price to pay for the anonymity.
[1]
https://bity.com/