I was surprised to see an established escrow provider say to ship items directly to the buyer after payment:
The escrow address is from the massage that escrow-man sent to me on August 28. Here is the massage:
Once funds have been sent and confirmed, please use "reply to all" to let us know the txid of the payment.
After this, items can be shipped to the buyer.
When buyer receives items in good standing and reports back, I can release funds to the seller.
Is this "normal" when escrowing Collectibles? I would expect the escrow to receive and verify the goods personally before reshipping it to the buyer. Now the escrow can't possibly verify it if the buyer says he received something else, and the seller still has no evidence. What's the point in paying someone $500 to escrow only the payment but not the goods?
The follow-up was even worse. The buyer's account got hacked, and the hackjer changed the deal after the buyer paid:
Aug 28 2021 045333PM: eseayan paid escrow
Aug 28 2021 082807PM: eseayan confirm that coins will be delivered in person
Aug 29 2021 113837AM: minerjones confirms payment
Aug 29 2021 120243PM: eseayan send PM saying the coins were received
Aug 29 2021 012253PM: Rajubhusal confirms, saying to release to given address previously (see above)
This resulted in a $50,000 scam.
Shouldn't it be the escrow's responsibility to make absolutely sure the trade can't go wrong in any possible way? The escrow provider is the experienced trader, who should
assume one of the other parties could be a total n00b and the other one an experienced scammer.
I'd also say the deal should be completely clear before any payment is made, and once payment addresses have been exchanged, the deal should not be changed anymore. I think this scam could have been prevented by stricter escrow rules.