But would you spend that $20 fee on a hundred dollars worth of bullets?  Or for a $40 1 oz silver round?  Or a $20 World-of-warcraft card?

Donation style escrow is more like paying 80 cents for insurance at the post office than a full service escrow.

In some high-BTC circumstances I would consider it totally absurd.  In other smaller deals I wouldn't.  I don't see why someone would rule it out for small-to-medium sized online deals with anonymous internet people.  Or why someone would pay for full escrow on deals under 100 dollars.

It just seems like an oversimplification to me.  "Because donation-escrow doesn't offer 100% security, instead I'll just use nothing, where I have absolutely no protection from scammers."

Maybe we just need to come up with a different name, since indeed it isn't real escrow.