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So, Flippa is enforcing the use of Escrow.com for escrow transactions.
https://blog.flippa.com/escrow-com-partnership/
Another nail in the coffin for my relationship with Flippa. I hate Escrow.com (previous experience), along with their exorbitant fees, and will do whatever I can to avoid them. I've done $25k over at Flippa (almost all purchases). For me their in-house Escrow (PromisePay) system worked perfectly (particularly since I am in Australia and could bank transfer direct to their account without having to pay international wire transfer fees).
They tested this new requirement on me a week ago (without me knowing it was going to happen). A domain purchase for about $15. Straight away I receive an email from Escrow.com saying I must complete the transaction there. No choice was given. However I headed to the sale completion area and paid with PayPal instead, then notified Flippa Support I didn't want to complete by Escrow.com. I let my feelings be known since no Escrow.com transaction should be started without the buyer and seller first agreeing to it. Hopefully they have changed this part by now, but who knows.
For me, transacting with Flippa is becoming quite distasteful. Escrow.com has some of the most expensive fees around, but on top of this (for sales) there is a disbursement fee for payout via international wire transfer and then in many cases there is another fee to receive that transfer with my local bank. Escrow.com does not pay out to PayPal accounts or to accounts provided by non-bank remittance services such as Payoneer, TransferWise, etc. These factors mean that using Escrow.com is pointless for all but the highest value transactions. The other option for payment is PayPal (which has terrible exchange rates). Thus another negative move for international users.
In any case, now that they have officially announced what's going on, I emailed some more feedback to them (basically what I've stated here and the fact that it would make me a lot less likely to transact with them). I do happen to have a contact over there who is in a position of importance. Usually he takes a few days or a week to acknowledge my feedback, and while it's nice that he eventually acknowledges my suggestions, almost never is anything done about them. Interesting that today I had a response from him within minutes! His response:
"Realize this is problematic. Working very hard to find a solution quickly here."
And I noticed the CEO was CC'd. So they are taking that rather seriously.
Good that they acknowledge the issue. But one has to wonder why they've rolled out the change without a decent solution in place. I do very little purchasing (in terms of $ value) over there these days anyway as most changes have been in favour of high-value website transactions, with very little on offer for domainers. But it will be interesting to see what they come up with (if anything) to address this...
Does anyone else use Flippa much these days?
https://blog.flippa.com/escrow-com-partnership/
Another nail in the coffin for my relationship with Flippa. I hate Escrow.com (previous experience), along with their exorbitant fees, and will do whatever I can to avoid them. I've done $25k over at Flippa (almost all purchases). For me their in-house Escrow (PromisePay) system worked perfectly (particularly since I am in Australia and could bank transfer direct to their account without having to pay international wire transfer fees).
They tested this new requirement on me a week ago (without me knowing it was going to happen). A domain purchase for about $15. Straight away I receive an email from Escrow.com saying I must complete the transaction there. No choice was given. However I headed to the sale completion area and paid with PayPal instead, then notified Flippa Support I didn't want to complete by Escrow.com. I let my feelings be known since no Escrow.com transaction should be started without the buyer and seller first agreeing to it. Hopefully they have changed this part by now, but who knows.
For me, transacting with Flippa is becoming quite distasteful. Escrow.com has some of the most expensive fees around, but on top of this (for sales) there is a disbursement fee for payout via international wire transfer and then in many cases there is another fee to receive that transfer with my local bank. Escrow.com does not pay out to PayPal accounts or to accounts provided by non-bank remittance services such as Payoneer, TransferWise, etc. These factors mean that using Escrow.com is pointless for all but the highest value transactions. The other option for payment is PayPal (which has terrible exchange rates). Thus another negative move for international users.
In any case, now that they have officially announced what's going on, I emailed some more feedback to them (basically what I've stated here and the fact that it would make me a lot less likely to transact with them). I do happen to have a contact over there who is in a position of importance. Usually he takes a few days or a week to acknowledge my feedback, and while it's nice that he eventually acknowledges my suggestions, almost never is anything done about them. Interesting that today I had a response from him within minutes! His response:
"Realize this is problematic. Working very hard to find a solution quickly here."
And I noticed the CEO was CC'd. So they are taking that rather seriously.
Good that they acknowledge the issue. But one has to wonder why they've rolled out the change without a decent solution in place. I do very little purchasing (in terms of $ value) over there these days anyway as most changes have been in favour of high-value website transactions, with very little on offer for domainers. But it will be interesting to see what they come up with (if anything) to address this...
Does anyone else use Flippa much these days?
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Escrow.com neither.
