Even in escrow can get scammed :|

[Husires]

What are you trying to buy?
Not only you can get scammed, but you may buy a hacked, stolen or illegal voucher, and then you will bear the legal responsibility, no matter how tempting the offer is, but the mucus is greater.
If I were you, I would prefer vouchers that you can buy from the store, I can buy it physically, take a picture of the voucher or the gift card and then it will be fine, but the guarantee does not work well in such cases, the seller must be reliable, otherwise do not try to buy.

[1715361146]

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[kamvreto]

What are you trying to buy?
Not only you can get scammed, but you may buy a hacked, stolen or illegal voucher, and then you will bear the legal responsibility, no matter how tempting the offer is, but the mucus is greater.
If I were you, I would prefer vouchers that you can buy from the store, I can buy it physically, take a picture of the voucher or the gift card and then it will be fine, but the guarantee does not work well in such cases, the seller must be reliable, otherwise do not try to buy.

Seeing how the seller's performance is, of course, you can be sure that he is trusted or not. If there are no recommendations or the seller is just a new person trying to become an escrow, is it mandatory to trust. Because many are stuck with fake escrows because they see the costs are quite low compared to others. Don't be tempted by low fees and maybe give some bonuses, because that could be an indication of a scam.

[icalical]

Selling a gift card is always risky, I once sold my game voucher gift-card that I got as reward from stacking some crypto. I try to sell it because I don't need it, finally got someone who is interested in a facebook group, and I ask the group admin to be the middle-man. I am sure that I never use the code and I and the buyer are the only people knew the code. I ask the buyer to record his screen when he tried to redeem the the code, he did but the he said that the gift-card has been redeemed, then I checked and it is true that the code has been redeemed. I don't have any proof but I am pretty sure that he is the one who redeemed the code. So, I never got the money and I lost my gift-card not that much just $150 but still, I could order enough pizza for one 5 days with that money.

[Timmzzy]

Gift cards and reversible payment methods are risky. An escrow won't be of too much help.

Someone can send you PayPal, and you can escrow the bitcoins, but what guarantees that the other party won't charge back the transaction in a couple of days?

Same thing with GCs/vouchers. A chargeback is possible, and like you said one can use them and claim that they don't work, which one can probably avoid maybe with live screen sharing or something but it's probably not worth all the trouble. Either go with someone you've dealt with multiple times and trust or a reputable gift card service.

I think what he needs is a platform that is reliable and safe enough for him to do his deals, him saying

maybe a middleman with bitcoin talk is better

my dear even here wont guarantee him that 100% trust his looking for, scammers are all over the internet and they wont stop till they have what they want and even at that, they WONT STOP.

[Questat]

The middleman or escrow has a big role to have successful transactions but we can't urge the escrow to decline the deal if it was a questionable transaction. Trust is very important in doing this and if both parties don't agree on the agreement then there is no reason to blame the middleman. Because for me, if I trusted the escrow I send him the funds right away.

But if I were you OP, I'd rather use reputable exchanges than hire someone to close the deal as it was too risky.

[jrrsparkles]

I think what he needs is a platform that is reliable and safe enough for him to do his deals, him saying

maybe a middleman with bitcoin talk is better

my dear even here wont guarantee him that 100% trust his looking for, scammers are all over the internet and they wont stop till they have what they want and even at that, they WONT STOP.

Here the platform is not issue its about the mode of payment since the nature of gift card is unable to validate until it gets redeem so if OP wants to continue the trades then he needs to choose multiple modes of payments I mean accepting or selling so he can get his customers first which will built his trust also he can find who is trusted enough to trade in future even with modes that is possible to chargeback.

To mitigate the risks of scammers in bitcointalk then the user needs to choose certain criteria for who is going to trade with like

- Never deal with throwaway accounts unless they are willing to escrow (only irreversible payments)
- Don't communicate outside the platform to avoid impersonators.
- Trade with established members of higher trust level to ensure they won't scam you.

[Husires]

If there are no recommendations or the seller is just a new person trying to become an escrow, is it mandatory to trust. Because many are stuck with fake escrows because they see the costs are quite low compared to others. Don't be tempted by low fees and maybe give some bonuses, because that could be an indication of a scam.

I did not mean it to be escrow, but do not buy gift cards from individuals unless they are reliable, and gift cards escrow does not mean anything here. On P2P exchange, you are looking for the member’s feedback and whether he is reliable, but after starting to deal with him, you will find that escrow always believe the seller in most cases. Therefore, even if you use a reliable escrow in buying gift cards, you may be scammed, the only difference is that trusted members avoid scamming you because they are running a profitable business.