How Would you Handle online Payment/Service Agreement without Escrow

[joniboini]

Making this more specific would help I think. If we're dealing with physical items where I need to buy or receive them, and the price of such items are expensive, I'd opt out of a deal like this without some sort of guarantee at all. Just like you mentioned, there are several ways to minimize risks that depends on who and what we're dealing with. If it's related to P2P swap, then we have many alternatives now.

The closest deal I can think of where I agree to do a job or sell my service was years back, where someone request a translation of a website to me. It happens after some deals were finished and they paid on time. Which means there's some sort of trust before the escrowless deal actually happens. It probably helps that I'm active on this forum too so they knew I also had something to lose for if I cheap out on the deal and deliver gibberish.

[DubemIfedigbo001]

How would you handle online payment/service contract if escrow is unavailable or if you don't want your trade partner to feel untrustworthy or embarrassed by asking that fund be escrowed

Business is done without emotions, for you to succeed, there should be laid down rules that must be strictly followed . If following normal transaction protocols becomes a problem for him and he resorts to emotional blackmail, then he's up to something fishy. This is about saving yourself and your business, you've to take it seriously

* Personally, I will trade without escrow with someone I understand really well and I'm sure is unlikely to cheat

Everyone on this planet is likely to cheat, maybe they're still clinging on to their integrity and discipline. A day might come when they change.

* May trade with partner I can easily visit physically incase of issues
Etc

Many people have lost their lives or got injured chasing a refund. Be sure that you've a signed agreement of refund policies with that person so you can take the legal route if they refuse to conform with agreements

Can you trade without escrow, or how/why would you trade without escrow?

The only way I'm dealing without an escrow is that I've a signed agreement with you or at least evidence of communication and refund agreement, and secondly I know your home address, business address to mention but a few, so that if things don't go as planned, I'll take the legal route.

[lodocus]

In some cases, using escrow for digital transactions is a requirement. No one can conduct a transaction based entirely on trust with someone they’ve never had contact with or don’t know. And they shouldn't too. Trust is the most important thing in business.

To date, countless people have been victimized after trusting the other party and entering into an agreement, and this will continue to happen. This risk can be minimized with certain systems, such as the trust system on this forum. However, even this cannot completely prevent fraud. I don’t think I’ll ever make an online purchase from anyone without an intermediary.

[Comeacross]

* Personally, I will trade without escrow with someone I understand really well and I'm sure is unlikely to cheat

I don't know which criteria you're using to know who's likely to cheat and who's likely not to cheat but I do know that you're gambling with your funds in this case.

* Will trade without escrow with partner with little to zero legitimate negative review on payments or product/service delivery

People receive negative review on a platform after they already scammed. You're likely to become first victim to write the negative review using this criteria

* Will only trade without escrow when dealing with funds, goods or services I can afford to risk

You should always have this in your mind because some escrow service providers are also scammers.

* May trade with partner I can easily visit physically incase of issues
Etc

I won't necessarily need escrow dealing with people like this.

Generally, it depends on the platform I'm trading. How long I've been in the platform to know more about people I'm dealing with.

[Mrbluntzy]

If I have not done a single trade with this person before, I have the right to be self conscious so that I don't get scammed by the person, it doesn't matter whether the person feels embarrassed about me not trusting them or not but they should be able to understand that the reason of my precautions is because of how bad scammers are all over the place. To have a successful deal with this person without an escrow, I will definitely ask them for evidence of previous successful deals. I believe that the evidence of previous successful deals should not be something I have to ask him or her for, it's something that should be posted openly to customer's reach for the sake of transparency. If there's no escrow, there should be evidence of successful old deals, else, I am not going to even have a deal with the person.

[lovesmayfamilis]

There are a lot of options, and there will always be a risk of deception. We may trust a person for years, but one day they might deceive us, or someone completely new who has just appeared online and is starting their business, eager to gain trust, is ready to do anything and, even more, to appear reliable. We always need to take into account the place where we decide to trade. And that's the internet. Here, people are far away, and you always have to trust them at your own peril and risk. I trade with those who have more trust in their reviews, but I always understand that these reviews might be fabricated. So yes, you do so at your own risk.