They refused to use escrow so they are untrustworthy. There is no two ways about it, why should we trust them and let them have the opportunity to not pay? What on earth gives them immediate credibility here?
Nothing at all wrong with us requesting they use escrow, more importantly why are they not willing to use escrow?
Fine - thats your opinion - no need to get personal though when someone disagrees, dont you think? Why should they pay someone when they have in-house staff to be in charge of it? Just one possible explanation why they would not use an "external" manager and/or escrow. Oh and if it was my business - and if I was big - I would also be laughing about people asking to send money to some random external "escrow"... Not willing to use escrow is by no means untrustworthy.
Regarding "let them have opportunity not to pay": Thats about the only part I am kind of "splitted" because I am personally always pissed when thinking about the thousands of scam shitcoin projects posting their bounties here and all those victims promoting them - on the other side, most of them are spammers anyway but ok.... I really just cant compare this case with those though.