Dear SnowDog, > Except, I'm not talking about currency; I'm talking > about escrow.
Right. Here's something to know: Cambist.net offers an escrow service. When I get contacted by someone who is about to be scammed by an escrow fraud, I suggest that they respond by saying, "Hey, let's not use escrow4all.net, let's use either Cambist.net or Metal-Escrow.com." I suggest this idea, not knowing if Simon "Sidd" Davis, the guy topping the list of Pecunix business plan team members, has ever offerred anything even remotely like escrow. The purpose of the suggestion is for the would-be victim to suggest an obvious out to the possibly legitimate seller: don't use a bad escrow agent, use a good one. To this point, not a single would-be victim has found an actual seller wanting to use an actual escrow service, and come back with, "Hey, Jim, how does your escrow thing actually work." So, maybe Sidd doesn't offer a Metal-Escrow escrow service, and perhaps the high regard in which he seems to be held by some members of this list isn't entirely well merited, but...if there is a way to foil fraud escrow, it seems worth doing. Here's what Cambist would do with an escrow request: we would have the buyer pay gold into one of our accounts, probably one of the GoldBarter.com accounts just so the metal doesn't get swapped for e-silver (which is now a possibility with Cambist.net). The buyer puts in a gram more than the amount the seller would get. If the seller's goods arrive, the buyer notifies us, and we release the gold to the seller, less our gram. If the seller's goods don't arrive, we release the gold to the buyer, and keep only half a gram. During this operation, the seller should be motivated to use a tracking service with his shipment, such as offered by even the rudimentary delivery service of the US post awful. That way, he can say, "Wait, the shipment is stuck in Poughkeepsie!" Or, Peoria. Or, both. That's how we do escrow, for now. The great news is that we are building escrow into version 2.0 of GoldBarter.com. That way, a seller can know that a bidder's offer is fully vested. And the seller can choose to *only* accept such bids. When the auction closes, the buyer notifies GoldBarter.com of delivery, and the seller gets the gold (less our fees for the successful sale and escrow). Now, you say, "Hey, what about a dishonest buyer?" He gets the goods, then claims non-delivery. We turn to the seller and say, "Well?" Seller now provides proof of delivery, which we corroborate. The gold is in our hands. We get to make the tough choice. But, let's face it, in the midst of a dispute, taking any action could be unwise. So, we either get both sides to agree, or we wait until all the evidence is in hand. Fortunately, much of this exciting stuff can be automated. Only the most exciting part, where the parties won't agree that delivery has transpired, that part we have to play a case at a time. Oh, and, did I mention that proxy bidding is part of GoldBarter v.1.1, soon to be released? Well, there you have it. Regards, Jim http://goldbarter.com/ --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: archive@jab.org To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Use e-gold's Secure Randomized Keyboard (SRK) when accessing your e-gold account(s) via the web and shopping cart interfaces to help thwart keystroke loggers and common viruses.
