A few months ago I started providing escrow services, and did so free of charge. Of course many clients sent me tips but I want to be clear; I wasn't doing it for the money. My original motivation was to prevent naive newbies from getting scammed.
Over the months I gathered that most of my clients were trading Amazon SES accounts. Before I started this project I knew nothing about these accounts, but I've since learned that most of the buyers are most likely email spammers, and the sellers are often creating these accounts by violating the TOS of Amazon. Say what you will about scamming a large, wealthy organization, but I feel a scam is a scam regardless of the victim's ability to absorb the loss.
I realize that nothing I mentioned above is illegal, but it's not something I care to support or condone. I also noticed a pattern occurring; a couple of my clients started advertising in their threads that I was willing to provide escrow services for their sales of these accounts. After providing escrow for a few successful transactions, some of these guys started convincing their buyers that they can be trusted to deal direct, without escrow. You guessed it, here comes the SCAMM!
So, after giving it some thought I realized that I was actually providing legitimacy to these scammers by giving them the opportunity to build some reputation. Quite the opposite of my original intention. As a result I have decided to close my escrow service for the time being.
I'm not going to go into too much detail about how troublesome these transactions can be, but suffice it to say some have been by far the most aggravating and time consuming. To make things worse, I suspect that one particular member has been stalking me on Telegram with the intention of wasting my time. This member has been on a crusade against anyone and everyone who is buying and selling SES accounts. He's using multiple accounts (on Telegram) to pretend that he has a trade, then after a significant amount of back and forth, he'll back out and request a refund. This has happened several times in the last couple of weeks.
Couple all of this with the fact that I've been really busy IRL lately, and you can see why I've gotten so frustrated. Which is a sad thing. I want to be able to provide my service to the community, but I really don't appreciate being abused for it.
Which brings me to my question to the community, and specifically to those who also provide escrow services: Do you guys avoid transactions that include these accounts? How does the community feel about these account sales? I realize that the administration of the forum is unlikely to change their policies regarding the sale of these accounts, and I wouldn't expect or want them to.
Please discuss.
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