[e-gold-list] Escrow Services
I was wondering if anyone on the list could share their experiences using universal-escrow.com. If you have used the service, did the transaction go smoothly? Was the payment released in a timely manner? I was also wondering if anyone had any other escrow services to recommend. I am thinking of starting to accept e-gold escrow payments for my online sales so that my customers can have a little bit more assurance that they will receive the product they ordered -- I think a reliable escrow service especially would help me increase sales to Western Europe, since there is little legal recourse for individuals when transactions go awry across international lines (I sell out of California.) I also have some concerns with the protocol Universal Escrow uses that I would like to share. I think the protocol is sound at solving problems with the vast majority of contingencies, and probably a better way of dealing with things than the way Tradenable and others do things The fact that both paries need the other one to agree for either of them to withdraw money from the escrow account is a great incentive for them to come to some sort of equitable agreement with each other. (A seller will give up nearly the full value of the gold in escrow to get it out, so he has a strong incentive to give the buyer either the goods or a repund. Conversely the buyer will give up nearly the full value of the gold in escrow to get it refunded, and thus he has a strong incentive to accept either the product or an equitable refund.) This works well most of the time, but I think the fact that both parties have to agree before either can withdraw the gold is actually a problem in certain situations and can be used in a certain form of attack either by a buyer or seller. Suppose you have a competitor who wants to put you out of business, or a disgrunted ex-employee or ex-customer, just basically anyone who has some sort of spite against you or some reason to want to see you go out of business, without necessarily wanting to rip you off for any other reason. For the sake of argument, let's say you are the main competitor with a business in a small market with room for only a couple firms of your size and that sales in that market are international. You reside in a different legal juristiction from your competitor, and it is difficult to to any legal action across international borders. And let's also say that demand for the goods you are selling is relatively inelastic. Your competitor accepts payments by Universal Escrow, but you don't -- you rely mostly on reputation instead. You want to put your competitor out of business so that you can monopolize the market, restrain supply, and reap the montary benefits. Here's how you can do it: First you discretely hire buyers to serve you in a confidential capacity. You have the buyers buy from the competitor using Universal Escrow. You pay the buyers -- except you instruct them not to release the money from escrow when the transaction completes. You then take the goods and add them to your own inventory, having acquired them at a reasonable rate. You repackage them as necessary and sell them to customers yourself. You lose little money in overhead costs doing this, but your competitor has just sold goods at the full production cost, which will never be reimbursed. The money will sit in the escrow for however many years it takes for the storage fees to spend it down to zero, but you don't care. You have just created a cost for your competitor far larger than what you paid to create it. At a certain point, they may get wise and stop accepting escrow payments, but not before the damage is done. You can do this on the opposite end too. Instead of hiring people to secretly act as buyers, you have them secretly act as suppliers. You post advertisements for whatever supplies your competitor needs to do business at reasonable, but attractively low rates. You ignore any inquiries or orders by anyone other than your target. As soon as the business you want to damage places an order, you accept payment for it by escrow -- except you never ship the goods. In fact the goods never even existed. You let the money sit in escrow forever and never agree to release it. You don't care how long it sits there, as long is it helps put your competitor out of business. You have done this at very little cost to youself, but made your competitor lose a large amount of money, probably before he even realizes what is happening. That was a very specific example, but a disgrunted ex-employee, or anyone else who has a grudge against you can pull the same tactics. They may have a monetary incentive to release the money from escrow, but the money may not be all they care about -- the side-effects of leaving your money stuck in escrow are themselves enough incentive for them to leave it there. It seems that these types of
[e-gold-list] Re: Fairy Wings Auctions Accepting E-gold -- Great Holiday Gift
Jim Davidson wrote: Tell anyone else you know who would be interested in buying these items with e-gold. I'm not doing this entirely for my own financial gain. I must say that the GoldBarter.com auction site exists entirely for financial gain. It is not only okay, but preferred that people place items for auction there for the purpose of financial gain. Well I didn't say it wasn't in part for financial gain, or even primarily so I'm just giving people small break. View it as a selfish act of cooperation if you like. If we all work together to make it easier to use alternatives to fiat currency, we all have something to gain. I certainly would not be disappointed if one of my buyers remembered and gave me a discount off the normal dollar rate for something they were selling in the future. giving these kinds of discounts, but I'm doing this to encourage alternatives to government-issued currency. I would probably save money by not accepting e-gold or E-gold offers a pretty compelling argument, on their web site, that e-gold is better for merchants than credit cards. Jim Ray? What's that link again? Also, I think e-gold is much better than the typical eBay alternative, PayPal which sucks so badly people make web sites about how badly it sucks. I seem to recall http://www.paypalwarning.com/ among others. PayPal has been very bad for several merchants I know. If you already have e-gold, it's a very fast of paying, and it's probably the fastest way regardless internationally. The only problem is that if you haven't already bought some, it costs a premium to get it fast by credit card, and my buyers could already pay me as convieniently by money order, perhaps more convieniently, than they could by buying e-gold by money order at low rates and then making a transfer to me And they could already do that even before I started accepting Paypal. The only reason I still accept Paypal after all their abominable changes to the User Agreement is because the manufacturer agreed to take the payments in her account, bearing all the risk. I don't think it's wise for her, but if she's willing to do that, it's fine with me. I still get paid my comissions for selling stuff. Fairy wing sales are on what I would say is the extreme low-risk end of chargebacks (that is, people with stolen credit cards tend not to buy them, and the buyers tend to be fairly honest), but I still won't take Paypal myself. If Paypal allowed surcharges, I might consider implementing one to compensate for the risk. I tried giving a discount for every other payment method for a while and raising my prices instead, but that increased the eBay fees I ended up paying. I'm still not sure that was really worth it -- Most buyers would still pay by money order if they didn't have the choice of Paypal, and I don't offer guaranteed shipping times anyway, so they're willing to wait. I think the main obstacle to getting people to buy things with e-gold directly on more of an impulse-type basis is the difficulty in funding an account rapidly. They just seem to have too short of an attention span, even when I offer discounts twice what I did in those eBay auctions Being able to walk into a bank, deposit cash, and get e-gold the same day, as is increasingly possible is good, but what people really need to be able to do is buy it online by something like ATM -- something a little bit more secure and less fraud-prone than credit cards, so that the rates aren't so high. --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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.
[e-gold-list] Fairy Wings Auctions Accepting E-gold -- Great Holiday Gift
Have some e-metal in your e-gold account? Looking for somewhere to spend it? Need a great holiday gift? I am now pleased to be able to offer several different sets of fairy wings by Imagination Creations in exchange for e-gold (all e-metals accepted). All the wings are unique and hand-made. They strap on to your back with elastic bands that can be adjusted to any person's size. I am auctioning off six pairs on eBay, including one which will be custom-made to your specifications after you win the auction. As an incentive to kick the habit of using the government's money, I am offering a 5% discount on these wings to anyone who pays by e-gold, out of my own commission. I also have two auctions on GoldBarter.com, which are only available to people paying by e-gold. Check them out at the following links: eBay: Fire Fairy Wings http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=19255item=2968651892 Custom Wings http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=19255item=2968654038 Black Fairy Wings http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=19255item=2968655043 Root Fairy Wings http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=19255item=2968656023 Queen of the Dryads Fairy Wings Crown http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=19255item=2968657141 White Fairy Wings http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemcategory=19255item=2969421677 GoldBarter: Fire Fairy Wings http://www.goldbarter.com/viewauction.jsp?id=315 Custom Wings http://www.goldbarter.com/viewauction.jsp?id=316 Tell anyone else you know who would be interested in buying these items with e-gold. I'm not doing this entirely for my own financial gain. I would probably save money by not accepting e-gold or giving these kinds of discounts, but I'm doing this to encourage alternatives to government-issued currency. --- You are currently subscribed to e-gold-list as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 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.
