First bad experience with Escrow.com!

Hello and Assalamo Alaikum,

As mentioned in my last post about having bad experience with Escrow.com for which I promised to share how it actually was a sour experience for me.

So far I have initiated transactions in U.S Dollars and no buyer had any objection to date. For the recent sale of Enkla.com, I did the same way but for the first time the buyer made the payment in Euros. As buyer made the payment and both of us (buyer and seller) were in regular touch with Escrow team to find out when the payment will reach to them and it took 20 (correction – 15 days) for them to inform us that we have received the payment but since it’s in Euros, the funds will be sent back.

Both buyer and seller requested them to convert the funds or at least mention somewhere clearly while during the transaction but they didn’t do this favor for us even though they took too long just to share this update and gave me the link to one of their FAQ –

https://www.escrow.com/support/payment-options

https://www.escrow.com/support/supported-currencies

Where they have stated “Escrow.com regrets that we are unable to modify the currency type once it is selected.” and “Escrow.com is unable to offer currency conversion”. If they will keep such attitude towards their clients, get ready to lose business.

Since Brandon Abbey sold and left the company, after that I have read many people complaining about their service.

Rather than creating confusion for both parties and losing time and money in such cases, better they keep it simple by having just one currency for transactions in USD. If not, they should either clearly mention during the transaction or have some flexibility by providing currency conversion service.

There will be some who will say that buyer should have read the FAQ before sending the funds but that doesn’t happen in every case and anyone while facing any difficult situation goes to read FAQ and not simply to learn A-Z of that particular website.

My regular readers must have seen that I had kept Escrow.com logo for around 3 years and I was listed as one of their partners but since the management changed, they removed my website logo from their partner’s list without any prior notification which shows how good and efficient people are working at Escrow.com. I asked and no concrete reason was provided and informed me that we shall put up your website logo again once we launch our new design. I’m sure that’s not going to happen early but I still kept their banner for some more months but couple of weeks back removed it. They have took off the logos of many other companies and surely won’t have informed them like to me.

Doesn’t mean I will stop using their service completely right now but I shall start looking out for alternatives and one of that I see is Payoneer Escrow.

Care to share your thoughts? Anyone had such incident in past or would like to share some other bad experiences with Escrow.com?

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43 Comments
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Jide
7 years ago

This just too bad IMO. Freelancer is not good at handling anything outside freelancing sites.

Trent
Trent
Reply to  AbdulBasit Makrani
7 years ago

Brandon is gone to Payoneer, to late, this often happens they want new blood.

Trent
Trent
7 years ago

Payoneer has reached out to me, I have been having issue with escrow, support is slow, time is money, we can’t wait 3 days for a response. The chat feature is useless, the person on chat has no powers.

We are looking at payoneer very closely now.

90% of our escrow transactions, the buyer has never used escrow before, so we bring them alot of new customers, and get nothing but bad service for it.

Andrea Paladini
Andrea Paladini
7 years ago

20 days just to inform you? damn, that’s a joke … disservice at its best and a great way to lose more customers … 🙂 That said, we normally agree with the buyer (or with buyer and seller if we are acting as a broker) on what is the deal’s currency, in order to avoid such issues. When we start a transaction in a currency, buyer knows he/she has to pay (wire) in that same currency, however it doesn’t make such a difference because they will always be charged in the currency their bank account is denominated (their bank makes… Read more »

Andrea Paladini
Andrea Paladini
7 years ago

P.S.
“Since Brandon Abbey sold and left the company”
Brandon was not the owner of Escrow.com, and actually, as far as I know, he was ousted, he didn’t leave voluntarily …
That said, he’s a nice guy and a great asset for the entire industry. 🙂

Trent
Trent
Reply to  Andrea Paladini
7 years ago

Brandon being with them that long, and them only being sold for $5M, I would assume he would have some shares in the company.

Andrea Paladini
Andrea Paladini
Reply to  AbdulBasit Makrani
7 years ago

AbdulBasit,
I completely agree Brandon is a great guy, I’ve used the term “ousted” to underline the fact he was forced to leave by the Freelancer guys.
That was a big mistake, Brandon knows better how to properly manage an escrow business. 🙂

Konstantinos Zournas
7 years ago

Their support has become very slow. I am waiting since Friday for a transaction to be cancelled and have not heard back. Anything over 1 day is unacceptable for an escrow company. 20 days is simply ridiculous. But what you asked can’t be done with Escrow.com. I think that dn.com does this but they have different regulations. Even if they did make the conversion the funds would end up less that the domain price. So the buyer would need to send another wire transfer anyway. This was a buyer mistake or most probably his/her bank’s mistake. BTW Brandon Abbey was… Read more »

Konstantinos Zournas
Reply to  AbdulBasit Makrani
7 years ago

I am not sure about transaction time limit either.
But this is a transaction that the buyer said that he doesn’t have the money to pay yet he selected to pay by wire transfer. I don’t know how they treat this.

I don’t know if any US escrow service will be able to make currency conversions.

Konstantinos Zournas
Reply to  AbdulBasit Makrani
7 years ago

I meant that doing currency conversions between escrow accounts is probably prohibited by US regulations. Not sure though.

ajay
ajay
7 years ago

Their service is becoming worse day by day.I am using Escrow.com only when DomainNameSales broker’s a sale.I hope DNS adds other escrow services or start one on their own:)

paul
paul
7 years ago

Company is on the downturn….in my opinion.

They were tops at one time.

Now….very very slow support. Why does it take days to respond to emails?

Usually, companies wish to put best foot forward, not backwards.

Thank God for competition.

Trent
Trent
7 years ago

Funny story, I had an issue with my transaction, and by the time support responded, the inspection period had lapsed, and the closing statements had already been processed. Some help, we can’t wait 3-4 days for a response, and the response did not even address the issue, comical at best.

Ram
Ram
7 years ago

It’s time to move DN.com

Richard
Richard
7 years ago

The support has slowed down in response time, also I had a buyer not want to use them because of reviews? I ended up selling that domain through godaddy

Logan
7 years ago

Of course, in the past, if there was a blog post like this one about Escrow.com, Brandon Abbey would have already made a comment in this section and kept us up-to-date on what is going on inside Escrow.com and when Escrow.com would resolve any issues. Where is the current leader of Escrow.com and why isn’t he commenting here?

Lifa Nati
7 years ago

So Freelancer now owns the Warrior forum and Escrow? Two very big platforms that have been serving their committed clientele very well. The warrior forum is now home to scam artists, junk and spammers showing that the content is no longer properly moderated. It has lost it’s authority in the internet marketing industry. I don’t know what kind of deals these were but clearly the vision has been lost somewhere with the transitions proving a mess to say the least. One wonders if this an act of greed or it’s just business growth?

Josh
Josh
7 years ago

The decline of Escrow.com has made it a challenge to get deals done. I’m hoping Payoneer steps in to fill the void soon.

How did you end up accepting payment in this case? I have two transactions pending where the buyers want to pay with currencies other than USD. One with Euros and the other with GBP.

Brandon Abbey
7 years ago

Hello AbdulBasit, I remember a similar situation when I was running escrow.com. When acting as a neutral third party it is important to have specific instructions from your clients. What we did was request authorization from the buyer to convert the Euros to US Dollars with their agreement that they were responsible to make up the difference before the transaction was approved. It took a few extra days, a few extra steps on our end and the buyer had to make two deposits, but it worked out fine. Anyone interested in taking a look at PayoneerEscrow.com please send me a… Read more »

Brandon Abbey
Reply to  AbdulBasit Makrani
7 years ago

Hi AbdulBasit,

The currency conversion was done by the Bank of America, we made the request per the buyers directive. All the best,

Brandon

Dimas Uno
7 years ago

Interesting for what @Ajay said above. I hope DNS will starting their own escrow service too, that will make a lot easier for buyer like in Sedo Marketplace but the fee should be more cheaper than Sedo BIN/Make offer 😀

Konstantinos Zournas
Reply to  AbdulBasit Makrani
7 years ago

Thanks for the update!

lovekittehs
lovekittehs
7 years ago

Noticed a big SECURITY breach on old Escrow.com transactions.
I always select to be seen by my company name. [I.E. My company name is shown,not my personalname]
I work in a sensitive line of work and my day job would not be happy about my side business.
Now I see that ALL my finished transactions are showing my full name.
I confirmed this via other sellers I know who use Escrow.com
Heads up to anyone who cares about their privacy online.

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