Daily Poll: Do You Always Use an Escrow Service to Transact?

I think it is important to use an escrow service when buying or selling a domain name. It might take a little more time to transact with a third party escrow service and it might cost a bit more money, but I think the safeguards are worth it. (Sidenote: as you can see from the developing PDD.com situation, buyers need to do due diligence before buying, and that is not something an escrow service does.)

As much as the benefits seem obvious to me, I know there are plenty of people who still don’t use an escrow service to transact (not including deals involving very familiar trading partners). Today’s poll question is: Do You Always Use an Escrow Service to Transact? You are invited to vote in the poll below and are welcome to share additional thoughts in the comment section.


Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

14 COMMENTS

  1. Depends on amount and research on buyer .On an above mid Xxx figure transaction I told buyer to put in payment note,domain name without content .He also thanked me and included my name .For others from low four figure, always no matter who buyer is.Another on not too low Xxx ,I used escrow even if he linked his PayPal for payment .It all varies but to prevent loss.Yes escrow if they won’t delay like payoneer.

  2. I use to use paypal when I sold a domain on DNF or NP, if I knew the person.
    But, I was selling it at a low price. Just to generate some revenue.

    I stopped selling on the forums (6 – 8 yrs ago).

    If I was selling to an enduser I always used escrow which was a selling point to make the buyer feel safe.

    Today, ALL of my transactions are thru an escrow service.

    Presently, Sedo and escrow,domains are the easiest to deal with.
    escrow,com have made it very difficult to do business with, when the buyer is an enduser or novice. They make the new customer for them (escrow,com) jump through too many hoops.

  3. Elliot, This EXACT same thing just happened to me. I just lost CQD.com ($25,000). GONE. Bought it using Escrow.com for $25k. Had it in my Network Solutions account. Released the funds. 2 weeks later I log in and the name is gone. I call Network Solutions and they tell me the owner contacted their legal team so they released the name back to the owner. Well the owner was in fact the seller! So the seller got $25,000 and the name back. I am now left with NOTHING. Any advice?

  4. If I’m the buyer, I start getting progressively uncomfortable without escrow as the dollar amount rises, but I prefer to avoid escrow as much as possible. Too much can happen to cause a deal to fall through during all the time involved, and sometimes you could be buying a domain you are confident is worth six or sometimes even seven figures for next to nothing compared to that, like low $x,xxx or even in the $xxx zone.

    If I’m the seller, it’s easy for anyone to see that I’m the “real deal,” that I and my co. have been around for many years now, that I would have to be simply crazy to not do the right thing with a buyer. Ergo, anyone with any clarity of mind can see that there is simply no reason to not be 100% confident in me and every reason to be. And you should simply point that out in discussion if the same (truly) applies to you. For example, just the other day Elliot posted about how it would be a joke if Lilac.com appeared on a site appraised at a certain extremely low amount. Well the same logic even more clearly applies to him personally and his company as a seller of any domain: he would have to have simply lost total sanity or worse to not do the right thing in any deal.

    So the above is how a nice $xx,xxx deal was completed in only about 90 minutes for me not long ago for Bitcoin. The guy had total confidence in me and forked over more than $20k in Bitcoin for two excellent and lucratively long THREE WORD .coms, I transferred the two domains to him, and we were all done in about 90 minutes. No escrow. It was great. In fact, we would have been done sooner but he even delayed in taking possession despite having paid me.

    • And p.p.s., btw, this guy was also obviously quite successful as an online marketing guy, smart, probably sitting on a nice little fortune in Bitcoin, and otherwise incredibly and extremely cautious and private. He made me even look positively carefree.

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