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> Giving your project to a stranger on the internet is risky, so we used escrow.com to make the transfer. I sold a website on Flippa once. The buyer put the mo
by admissionsguy 5y ago
> Giving your project to a stranger on the internet is risky, so we used escrow.com to make the transfer.
I sold a website on Flippa once. The buyer put the money on Escrow.com, I transferred everything over, and they went AWOL. What I found out is that there is no straightforward way to obtain the funds when it happens. Apparently there is no way at all except via the court system. Which would mean the only real protection Escrow gives is against the buyer going bankrupt (or using false identity, I suppose).
Fortunately, they came back several weeks later with some nonsensical excuse and closed the transaction, but I will never use Escrow.com again.
- artificial 5y agoCan you post a password protected zip then?
- admissionsguy 5y agoMight as well have them pay in advance, no? It's not a way to transfer a whole operational web application, in any case.
- randymonday 5y agoFor relatively "small" amount of money, I totally agree. However, from my experience selling a tiny project [1], buyers were reluctant to transfer in advance even sums that are below $10K. Therefore we also used Escrow.com.. [1] I wrote more about my experience in my ebook - https://gum.co/side-project https://gum.co/side-project
- gnopgnip 5y agoThat is how escrow works in other contexts, like real estate. Either both parties agree, or the escrow service holds it until it is resolved through the courts.
- ianhawes 5y agoThats how it's supposed to work. I was in a similar situation to the parent commenter. The buyer had deposited the funds into Escrow.com and received their assets. I notified Escrow.com that the business assets had been handed over and they awaited the response from the buyer - which never came. Escrow.com sends notices after 3, 7, and 10 days of inactivity. After 15 days the buyer requested a cancellation and Escrow.com notified me via email that I had 48 hours to provide proof that "the domain" had been transferred or the transaction would be cancelled and the buyer would received their funds back. My issue was that there was no domain transfer associated with this purchase. The buyer was receiving software that they intended to use under a new brand and thus had no use for the domain. I raised hell with Escrow.com. Calls, emails, assurances that someone would get back to me. The cancellation came on a Friday and no one contacted me until Tuesday. They called to ask if I had spoke to the buyer and then politely explained that they couldn't do anything because there was no domain attached to the sale.
- CGamesPlay 5y ago> Which would mean the only real protection Escrow gives is against the buyer going bankrupt (or using false identity, I suppose). Well, the buyer is out of the money in any case, which is a pretty big protection.
- rrishi 5y agohave to agree here
- sly010 5y agoNo. The buyer got his assets. You are out of money.
- bena 5y agoThe buyer as well. But the buyer technically has "paid" so they may not be as concerned with closing out the transaction. If only the assets could be held in escrow as well, then when both elements are held by the escrow group, they can release to the appropriate parties.
- runako 5y agoDomain names can be held in escrow by escrow.com. So theoretically it's possible to at least get that part back if the transaction goes south.
- bena 5y agoI should have been more clear. It's not a matter of whether it's possible but whether the seller had the foresight to use the service in such a capacity. Because at the end of the day, an escrow is a trusted third party used to facilitate a trade. We typically think of them in terms of money because that's typically what they hold, but there's no good reason they can't be trusted with any good.
- Quarrel 5y agoescrow.com is a licensed escrow operator. This is how it works, they don't get to just decide the outcome or they'll get shutdown during their audits. This is a good thing in transacting on the internet.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- admissionsguy 5y agoShould release by default when there is no dispute.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoprobably the 'licensed' in licensed escrow operator disallows this.
- ambicapter 5y agoDoes escrow licensing not allow for a "transaction closed in 3 months or assets released to original owner" contracts?
- Quarrel 5y agoI'm pretty sure it does, actually. They just need a clear flow chart and then for people to not want to change it after the fact.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JacKTrocinskI 5y agoWould a smart contract help avoid this kind of situation?
- tzekid 5y agoYup. Just need to specify the conditions of what "done" or "delivered" looks like. After that it's basically: if (delivered) pay();
- calpaterson 5y agoHow do you encode that a website and assets have been delivered? It doesn't seem so obvious.
- hobo_mark 5y agowooosh
- calpaterson 5y agoHa, I see it now. Too dry and too early (in the morning)
- sashimi-houdini 5y agoThe funny thing is that a couple of comments up 2 sibling comments basically gave the exact same answer, but one in jest and one seriously. The cryptosphere really is beyond parody
- avinassh 5y agoHa ha. This reminds me of an old project / library [0] I built based on a Quora answer. I wrote libraries for Android and iOS, also wrote a simple server component which could be installed on Heroku with a single click. At the start of the app, it would contact the server for payment status. If server indicated that payment has been made, it would function like normal. If not, it would just crash. I never used it in any of my projects nor I know anyone using it. I just had an itch of learning Clojure and building libraries for android, and iOS, so I made them. [0] - https://github.com/avinassh/little-finger https://github.com/avinassh/little-finger
- stefandesu 5y agoGermany's biggest Craigslist-like service recently added a service like this for purchases that are shipped. I sold my previous MacBook using the system and found it really stressful to wait for the buyer to confirm the item. In my case, it was just someone who was a little bit slow and just forgot, but I can imagine abuse in the system. Same thing happens with PayPal buyer's protection. I can't think of a better system though, to be honest.
- ivanche 5y agoWhat's the name of the service? I suppose you're not thinking of ebay kleinanzeigen, or?
- CallMeMarc 5y agoNot the parent, but I think they do actually mean eBay Kleinanzeigen. A few months ago they added a service like this but afaik it’s still in beta and also not available for all categories yet.
- stefandesu 5y agoSorry for the extremely late reply! I do actually mean Ebay Kleinanzeigen. I don't know when they added it, but it's called "Sicher bezahlen".
- bdcravens 5y agoMercari and Poshmark work the same way (they do release funds after a default amount of time if there's no response)
- ratww 5y agoYeah, other than having someone manually inspecting the transfer, that's kind of the best way. I've noticed that most sites end up implementing "automatic confirmation", but after a while they shorten the confirmation deadline because lots of buyers just "forget" to approve. I've also seen others (MercadoLibre) who have a "reputation" for sellers where they can get the money even before confirmation.
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- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- shaicoleman 5y agoAccording to their FAQ, funds are automatically released after the inspection period. The inspection period can last for up to 30 days, and is agreed upon by all parties at the beginning of the transaction. https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/what-if-the-buyer-forgets-to-accept-or-decline-the-items-online-at-escrowcom https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/what-if-the-buyer-forget... https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/what-is-an-inspection-period%2C-when-does-it-start%2C-and-how-long-does-it-last https://www.escrow.com/support/faqs/what-is-an-inspection-pe...
- admissionsguy 5y agoThe buyer has to mark the items as received for the inspection period to start.
- edwinyzh 5y agoSo this issue implies that there is a startup idea? I think there is a technical approach to solve the issue, by providing a system to let the escrow service provider to inspect and confirm the transferring of the source code, something like using a remote desktop (something like a temporary VPS) to where both the seller and the buyer have access, and during the delivering of the source code, the seller upload the code, compile it and run the result, and all the process is recorded. That way, if the buyer don't mark as 'received' in a given period, the platform staff can check and confirm the delivery and close the transaction.
- adventured 5y ago> So this issue implies that there is a startup idea? It's definitely a do things that don't scale idea. You need humans in the transaction confirming what's actually occurring. That tends to be expensive, because you also need them to know what they're doing, understand the broad details of the exchange and be trustworthy. That cost and difficulty of scaling is exactly why Escrow.com doesn't try to do it for every transaction across their system.
- bluedevil2k 5y agohttps://codekeeper.co/ https://codekeeper.co/
- bendtb 5y agoThe way you deal with this in international trade is by putting up a irrevocable letter of credit, which against documentary proof (I.e. proof of quality and shipment) will release the sums. This have worked for millennia.