Escrow.com a good service with really BAD customer support ?

[dotnom]

I never used escrow.com before but i thought it will be a good deal to investigate this possibility
I contact them on March 2006 to ask them how i can use their service trying to sell a developed site with content plus the name
They replied that :
"Escrow.com is able to support this transaction, in fact we specialize in domain name transfers. We suggest that you create a separate 'general merchandise' transaction for the content alone. Thank you"

When i asked them again to give details about the domain name transfer, i didn't receive anything back so i skipped them
Fortunately the buyer was good and accepted to wire the payment

However i thought it will be good to clarify this and possibly use them from now on

I tried to contact them before some days with :

* Please let me ask you about the procedure
For Domain Name Escrow you say :
"Escrow.com does this by checking the WHOIS database of the appropriate Registrar* to make certain it properly reflects the new Buyer's name as the domain name Registrant. Once this has been verified, Escrow.com releases payment to the Seller"
- How you can do it just by looking in the whois info. The buyer can keep our whois information, he can say it's not transferred, get back his money and then modify the whois and the nameservers

They reply :
* Once our tracking department verifies the WHOIS information, we are then able to begin the inspection period. After the inspection period has
expired we proceed to send out a 48 hour courtesy notice. If he/she does not respond, then we are able to release funds. If you require
further assistance please feel free to contact me. Thank you

I reply :
* OK please bear me for some minutes so that i can clear out the procedure
So far we used Sedo and the procedure that sedo has for names is this :
- When both buyer and seller agree for the price, they wait for the buyer to deposit the funds
- Then ask from the seller to PUSH (not transfer it) the domain to Sedo's account at the same registrar the domain is hosted
- Then release it to the buyer
Please give me the details especially for the Domain Escrow so that i can understand the process and start using escrow.com
How the investigation of WHOIS information can be used to verify the transfer ?
Let's follow the same route :
- Both buyer and seller agree for a price
- Then ?

They reply (!!!) :
* Escrow.com works to protect both the buyer and the seller from potential fraud. Once both parties have agreed to the terms we proceed to
prompt the buyer to send payment directly to us. Once we receive and confirm payment we prompt the seller to ship merchandise. The buyer will have a
determined inspection period to inspect merchandise, and then log on and mark merchandise as accepted or rejected. I hope to have answered all
your questions. If you require further assistance please feel free to contact me. Thank you.

I reply :
* Dear Nancy
i'm sure your replies would have covered a relative question about physical merchandize but if you read my previous message i was asking about
domain names escrow. So there is nothing the buyer can inspect
I've gone over your FAQs (as much i found related with this) and i didn't find the details i needed
Can you please give me the full step by step procedure of "Domain Escrow" so that i can be informed and also inform the members of (i write some forum urls) when they ask about escrow.com domain escrow procedure ?
So far your replies were fast but not so informative. Can you forward this question to the appropriate person so that i can have a relative reply ASAP ?


They reply (the same person) :
* We have a minimum inspection period of one day, no matter what the merchandise is. The procedures are the same except that once our tracking department verifies the WHOIS information we are able to begin the inspection period. Thank you.


From their FAQ i tried to extract that the buyer needs to set the seller details and transfer a username - password to access the domain
However even there i still believe there are no clear guides
---------------------------------

Ending i want to say that when you must ask others, when their customer dept. can not give you straight replies, when they reply with canned responses this is not what i call a BAD service

………
and a funny note : Notice in her last reply she doesn’t say “If you require further assistance please feel free to contact me”

 

[Damion]

Isn't the WHOIS being updated automaticly?

 

[dotnom]

Maybe a Poll should solve your question as many others taken from escrow.com faqs

Look here ( escrow.com/support/faq/index.asp?sid=9&qid=114 ) :
"- What do I do if my name shows up on WHOIS but the Seller hasn't sent me the user name and password?
Once funds are secured in escrow and the Whois information shows the Buyer as the registrant, the inspection period can be started. The buyer should use the inspection period time to confirm that they have received any needed user name or password. The buyer will need to reject the domain on the escrow.com site if they do not have control by the end of the inspection period. If there are any issues after that point, the Buyer must contact the Registrar to resolve any issues over the ownership of the domain -- the Registrar should recognize the escrow transaction as a legally binding agreement"


For example you can assume (as i did) that you need to create a new account from the question of this faq entry. Now see the blur :

1. You create a new account to the same registrar or the one the seller request (if he can).

2. You act as the buyer by creating a new account to the new registrar and request a transfer there?

3. Do you pay the transfer fee and store the info of your own cc if any of the previous cases are true?

4. If it's the same registrar it's a push, not transfer. So you create an account with the details of the buyer and push the domain to him ?

5. Let's say you send the buyer the username-password. The buyer takes them and while he "investigates" the same minute change the password. Escrow.com goes to verify and can't login. Will they blame the buyer?

6. What will change with the push at the whois data. A malicious buyer don't change the whois or change the whois back to your data, together with the point 5. i mentioned above. How the seller can prove he's not an elephant ?


What disturbs most is that the escrow is a service that they sell their "trust" services
Why they make FAQs like this and why they don't have time to reply with simple step by step procedures

You, me and all the members of specialized forums, like namepros, are experienced with names and we can't find a way out
Imagine the confusion of a total fresh newbie that was lucky to found a buyer

 

[SpareDomains]

Escrow.com has worked great for me, had a few questions about implementing them into a future project and received a phone call from their managing director explaining what I needed to know and information that I didn't need to know but was useful information, every domain name that I buy or sell for some of my high end personal clients goes through escrow and not 1 problem to date, I use paypal as well but only for personal friends that are trusted buyers.

 

[zhisede]

Escrow.com use the same or similar process as afternic.com...

 

[dotnom]

OK. Nice to hear. However it's a fact that they don't do well with their support
If you followup their replies you will see that

- Both buyer and seller agree for a price
- ............

Can you complete the rest (maybe their can copy & paste to their FAQ too) ?

 

[SpareDomains]

you would need to sign up at http://www.escrow.com/
pretty simple system, you basically just generate an invoice to send to the buyers email address, you can give them an inspection period from 1 day or maybe more depending on your preference and this works for domain names as well, the reason an inspection period could be needed is if you are claiming that domain has traffic on it you could give them a few days to inspect before payment, I would recommend proving any stats issues before hand to buyer so that you can just set it at 1 or 2 days and have a completed transaction within a few days, escrow will inform that funds are secured and then you would transfer the domain name, buyer then confirms from his account that they received item or domain and your payment is sent by check, there are other payment options available including a wire to your bank and overnight payment as well but those options add a little extra to your fees, you can also choose if seller or buyer pays escrow fees or if this should be a 50/50 split on both parties, If you do not know the buyer using an escrow service is really the only way to go, if a trusted buyer that you know personally then paypal is fine, after you have your escrow account established you could then create an account at https://ecart.escrow.com/ if looking to create your own buttons etc... to use with your website, there is a standard program and express cart program depending on your preferences, never had a problem with them yet and as previously stated received a phone call on my cell phone from their managing director for about 30-45 minutes answering any questions I had and supplying some interesting extra info on their dime for a future project I have in the works, I did have one transaction that was off to a slow payment from the buyer and I emailed them and they got it paid in a day or so, so the support I have seen during an actual transaction has been good, as far as pre-transaction or general support like you are mentioning probably lower end support and canned responses are generally found at most places on the lower level, you can always use sedo or afternic as alternatives or whatever escrow company you feel the best using.

 

[Ronald Regging]

I think the main thing he seems to be trying to get at, and the question that I've had as well, though I've never researched it further, is what safeguards do they have in place to prevent the buyer from assuming control of the domain name, yet making it appear as if he has not, filing for a refund of his money, and completely screwing the seller over? The fact is that as an escrow service, trust is their biggest asset, so they should have no problem giving him a step-by-step analysis of the transaction and taking the time to go over those safeguards if they do in fact exist. No one wants to get involved in a "secure" transaction that has holes... And them judging their basis of whether or not the domain has been transfered on easily manipulated Whois information doesn't seem so "secure" to me. I think in this fashion, Sedo seems to be handling things appropriately by physically assuming control of the domain name, which is what a true escrow service should do.

I'm not sure what the fees are for Escrow.com, but I'm fairly certain that Sedo will handle escrow services for you at 10% regardless of whether the sale originated on their site or not. It's a hefty price to pay for security, but it's better safe than sorry

 

[vokkerzen]

I have only used once and it was positive. I normally use sedo but the party requested escrow

 

[dotnom]

Jay i found that the pre-transaction support/general support is as important as the transaction support. I can't ask for domains and reply for normal merchandise. If the preliminary support don't give you clear steps you don't take the road so the next level of support is useless

slipxaway express EXACTLY what i want to say
1. Why there is so big mystery or incapacity from their staff to tell me the exact steps i would need to take
2. If the buyer is an experienced user, as i read from their faqs and the replies here, their system is transparent to fraud for the domain seller

Escrow is cheaper than sedo but i see now why
Sedo looks much more professionals than Escrow.com
They take the money from the buyer, they take the domain from you, give the domain to the buyer and the money to you
What can be more fair and more secure than this

Create accounts to registrar for the buyer, email them, wait seller to investigate, email to escrow that it's ok/or not, email to seller to send the username-pass if he didn't within 10 days, pray that the buyer is not a malicious user to exploit the whois and much more ... ?

I assume they want to offer a great service but they must first try to solve these issues before come close to what secure escrow means

To me looks like a secure paypal, meaning that you will not loose your money from fake credit card but you can loose them from 1000 other methods

I hope escrow.com can read this thread so that they can improve their services soon because they just need few modifications and few people to verify the transfer(push)

.... and a few giving the proper replies

 

[SpareDomains]

every transaction I have done from sedo involved me pushing domain name to the buyer and was not handled from sedo, I will forward this thread to the managing director of escrow and see if he wishes to comment or help you further, no guarantees but he was very helpful to me.

 

[AdoptableDomains]

I've used escrow.com and never had a problem. Each step is confirmed before they take the next step. They confirm they have payment before you transfer to the buyer. The buyer has to verify receipt of the domain by entering escrow.com and confirming receipt. They still check the whois, before releasing though. I once had payment held because the buyer confirmed, but the whois had not been changed. I had to ask the buyer to change it (actually, I had to log into their account and do it for them). Escrow.com was making sure the buyer really had control. I also once had a buyer immediately put whois privacy on a domain. I don't know what would have happened, but I asked them to remove it until escrow.com confirmed ownership.

What if the buyer had control but said they didn't have the domain? - I have assume that escrow.com would not return their money until they confirmed it was back i the hands of the seller.

One note - ALWAYS log into any escrow service to verify the latest statusand instructions. Never just rely on an email that could be forged.

 

[www.AmCy.org]

I've only used escrow once as well, and my experience was positive. I messed up by entering 2 different email addresses. I called them and their support guy fixed my issue in a matter of seconds. After that, the transaction proceeded flawlessly.

AmCy

 

[dotnom]

Jay i didn't use the escrow of sedo but their normal selling procedure
(not external escrow use but sale from within sedo, the 10% service)

When you agree to sell the domain they ask who's the registrar of the name
When the buyer pays they send you an email to push the domain to them, to the account they keep at the registrar you already stated
So the name goes directly to them

What if the buyer had control but said they didn't have the domain? - I have assume that escrow.com would not return their money until they confirmed it was back i the hands of the seller

Mark (AdoptableDomains) see what i mean?

Even you or others that already used Escrow.com for your domain escrows have not a clear picture of the procedure
You assume they check if the seller has the control of the domain

So let's say a scenario where either :
1. The buyer takes the user-pass change them, don't change the whois too and says that he didn't get anything or got wrong data
OR
2. The seller change his own user-pass and says to escrow that the buyer did it when they try to investigate if he has control or not


I want to make a note here :
As many of you said already (and i knew so far, that's why i wanted to investigate it) their service is good

The issue here is not how good these people are if everything work like a clock but how bulletproof is their escrow procedure
As we found so far their escrow procedure requires many steps, direct contact with the buyer and few inspection rounds

Definitely the bad spot nobody can question is that, nowhere in their site can be found a clear description of the procedure (at least until now, if they create a page and put it now after all these, it will be an improvement)

Another bad spot at least according to my personal experience as i mention it with details at the start is that :
even i mention to their support that i'm a member of dedicated domain name forums (mentioned the exact urls including namepros) and i will discuss it there, she doesn't care to give a proper reply

 

[AdoptableDomains]

Mark (AdoptableDomains) see what i mean?

Even you or others that already used Escrow.com for your domain escrows have not a clear picture of the procedure
You assume they check if the seller has the control of the domain

So let's say a scenario where either :
1. The buyer takes the user-pass change them, don't change the whois too and says that he didn't get anything or got wrong data
OR
2. The seller change his own user-pass and says to escrow that the buyer did it when they try to investigate if he has control or not

There is a visual confirmation of the whois. however, they wait until either the buyer or seller log in to verify transfer and receipt. If this doesn't happen, then the default inspection period kicks in. If there is a dispute as to the confirmation, they hold the funds until sorted out by the parties or a "court of competent jurisdiction" (see the TOS). Realistically, the registrar could determine who actually has contol or change the control based on the facts of the situation.

 

[dotnom]

Mark you are right, the registrar can solve things out easily when there is a dispute like this but if you make an overall of all the issues must be done to secure the transaction you understand that it doesn't worth so much time

I'm surprised why they don't follow the example of sedo
Opening an account to XXX registrars to accept the push from the buyer will take one week or less and solve all these issues once and for all

I still insist that you and other members in this thread gave your time to "analyze" the escrow.com phenomenon with good and up to the point replies, something that their support didn't try at all

If there is only one verified person there (their managing director) according to Jay that care maybe they should raise 10x his salary and serve everyone (i'm also sure that he agrees if he will read these lines)

If the people in escrow.com are clever they will take this thread opportunity to make their service better and serve all of us with the best possible way

 

[SpareDomains]

dotnom, brandon did get back to me and says he will join the forum and respond to this thread, so we should now have escrow.com representation on board at namepros.

 

[dotnom]

Jay that's good. At least something positive came from this thread

Thanks for your time and your efforts to contact the proper people to come here and deposit their own opinions

To have someone from escrow.com would be great for the forum and everyone of us

 

[wot]

Sold more than 600 domains using escrow.com , never once had a problem.

 

[Brandon Abbey]

Hello and thank you for the invitation to join the forum. My name is Brandon Abbey and I am the president of escrow.com. I believe every Internet company needs to be fanatical about customer service. There is nothing more frustrating than trying to find a live body at some companies. Escrow.com is growing and we have just added some new customer support representatives. Looks like this thread got started after emails came from one of our new hires. Sorry for any confusion. You can always get in touch with me, direct 949-790-5880 or [email protected] We have recently made some changes in the messaging for domain names. It was more general merchandise specific and didn't make sense for the domain name transactions. We are always looking to improve the site, so suggestions are appreciated.

 

[Damion]

Welcome to the forum Brandon!
I'm glad Escrow.com takes their customerservice very serious. Your presence is very much appreciated by all of the board members of Namepros.
And that's a lot :hehe:

 

[dotnom]

Brandon first of all welcome to this forum
It's really good to have direct communication with the head of the company that will be able to decide and drive things to the best possible way

I started this thread because i saw the descriptions of the escrow's site a little misty concerning the domain name escrow
However what really bothered me was the reply from the lady at the support.
When i understood after some emails that she wasn't aware of the procedure i asked her to forward the ticket to someone else but instead she continued to reply messing things more. I understand how hard can it be for the manager to run to fix things up when new people mess it up.

If you follow up all my posts you will see that my suggestion is pretty easy and it requires only 1-2 people to check and verify the transactions
I believe sedo's method is the best for the customer and the seller so if you copy that together with the reliability of your service this will lead to the best and most secure results you can give

Thank you for your participation and even i had this "confusing" experience i must state as all the members before me said that your service is really trustworthy

 

[SpareDomains]

Thanks for joining Brandon and not making me a liar :hehe: Even if your workload does not allow you to be the most active user here it will still be nice to know for users that Escrow.com representation is available not only at your site but also a direct contact through private message at this popular forum or the other contact methods you posted, welcome to the forum and good luck with your future business, For people reading this that have never used Escrow.com I can vouch that not only is Escrow.com solid but Brandon is a class act as well, if your dealing with more money than you care to lose on a buyer you are unsure of route it to Escrow.com and be safe.

 

[Brandon Abbey]

I did set a reminder so I will be checking in. Our primary function is to secure, guarantee and disburse funds for your domain name sale per the agreed upon instructions between the buyer and seller. Escrow.com 'tracks' domain transactions daily, and each domain is inidividually checked against the whois record by Escrow.com. Should the Buyer not update the status of the transaction and the registrant information reflects the Buyer's customer profile with Escrow.com, Escrow.com notifies the Buyer by email with a copy of the registrant information, advises the Buyer that they should have all username and password information for complete control of the domain, offers the option to set the status of the transaction back should the transfer not be complete, and then starts the agreed upon 'inspection period. Domain transactions usually require only a one-day inspection period, but the length of the inspection period is agreed upon by both Buyer and Seller upon entering the transaction. It is during the inspection period that the Buyer should determine the validity of the password information and their complete control of the domain. Funds are disbursed when the terms of the escrow agreement have been met.

 

[Andee Hill]

Hello and thank you for the feedback regarding your experiences with escrow.com. My name is Andee Hill and I am the Customer Service Manager at escrow.com. Escrow.com strives to provide prompt and excellent service, but we encourage comments and suggestions for change. Please feel free to contact me directly at [email protected] or 1.949.790.5899. I have addressed the earlier thread with our CS team.