Always use escrow. Never rely on anyones worthless word alone.
Escrow is the one and only safe way to deal or trade with complete strangers.
These people have no references, no extensive historical presence, no track record, no feedback from independent entities or persons with verifiable and believable reviews. Given the risks, transactions should always involve a trusted middle man. Test transactions should never be entered into. The same goes with incremental payments of any kind and amount. Such test trades almost always will require users here (and never ever these gold traders) to go or pay first. The goal is to extract any amount upfront. Any amount is, after all, better than nothing.
Use escrow.
Edit...
Red flags: virtual address. No phone number.
I thank for your comments, even critical or wary. Rightly.
We are a new startup and because our service regarding a physical asset it is based on trust between the parties.
An escrow service would be perfect in case of direct exchange bitcoin-gold.
But it makes no sense for managing a gold account with a third depository.
This is why we have created and we want to implement the proof of gold.
But we are very interested to hear your comments or advices to solve the trust problems or how to reduce the risks for users.