Escrow.com has closed my account

Haris · Jan 1, 2019

Hey guys,

So I sold the domain Ayam/Cemani dotcom via Escrow.com for $2400. I had transferred the domain to the buyer when Escrow confirmed that they have the payment. They then asked for additional documents for verification even though I already am Tier 2 verified. They had my passport and driving license copies but they asked me to submit again with a selfie, while holding a government issued ID which has my address on file for whatever reason.

Excerpts of what Escrow.com support told me during our conversation.

Dear Seller, The Buyer has informed us that the domain has been transferred. Thank you for this. Please be assured that the Buyer indeed has made a payment on the transaction and we have secured it in our holding account with Wells Fargo. We would like to inform you that our review team is just checking information from your side to make sure that the transfer of funds is processed accordingly Kindly wait for further updates as we continue with our verification process.

The funds will just stay with escrow.com until you have your verification documents are uploaded

And after I submitted the required documents,

Thank you for letting us know the status of this transaction.

We have noted this on our end. We have notified our review team for transaction to proceed. Please allow up to 1 business day for review. You and the Buyer will be notified via email once the payment is approved.
If there's anything else, don't hesitate to contact us. Have a great day!

5 days later..

This email is to provide you with notice that Internet Escrow Services, Inc. has made the commercial decision that we will no longer be able to provide you with our escrow services. We have taken this decision after careful consideration, and in accordance with the applicable terms and conditions, which are available online. It is not a comment on your conduct, or any other aspect of your relationship with us. We hope that you will appreciate that we are not able to provide any further information about our commercial imperatives. Your account has now been closed. Regards, Escrow.com

What is with these companies that they don't think it's important to share the reason why they are closing our accounts when we have done nothing wrong. Okay assholes I don't care there are many other escrow companies I can use but what about my money? As you can see they made no comment about the transaction and my money they are holding, I can't log in to my account, the domain is with the buyer and if they return the money to the buyer then I don't think the buyer will pay me. It's their responsibility because they assured I can transfer the domain to the buyer and they will hold my money until I am verified. Now that they have all the documents and my photo they simply close my account.

I have already emailed them and messaged @Jackson Elsegood on NP but just sharing this case here so that you know what you are getting into if you are doing business with Escrow.com.

Thanks

MapleDots · Jan 6, 2019

Haris said:
Excerpt from an email from Jackson Elsegood.

I had already realized that it's a matter of being safe than sorry and I have no problem with that, but I didn't knew about any individual with my exact name being sanctioned (obviously), I am sure if you would do a Facebook search you will find hundreds of people with the exact name as me. It's a very common name in Arab countries as well as other Asian and even some European countries.

Anyways, this is not a common occurrence and probably won't happen with you, and even if it does you can raise an alarm on the forum and everything will be resolved.

When we talk to customer support we feel that there is no hope but thanks to Jackson this matter has now been resolved.

I am going to continue using my Escrow.com account for future transactions because I am sure I won't run into this problem again in future.

Thanks everyone!

Wow, and they refunded all fees.

With the explanation provided by @Haris and @Jackson Elsegood I think it is safe to say this was a once off occurrence and Escrow did meet their obligations. Such a unique situation certainly would have been a learning experience for all parties involved.

GoWebnames.com · Jan 6, 2019

Haris said:
I didn't knew about any individual with my exact name being sanctioned (obviously), I am sure if you would do a Facebook search you will find hundreds of people with the exact name as me. It's a very common name in Arab countries as well as other Asian and even some European countries.

What's your name if that is not a secret? Same as recently sanctioned terrorist Hafiz Sayeed or something similar to Bin Laden or something different?

xynames · Jan 6, 2019

GoWebnames.com said:
It appears Escrow.com is going to go out of business very soon

That’s simply not true.

alcy · Jan 6, 2019

well i guess we should now all check our names against terrorist names before we deal with escrow.com... else it'll be lost names... lost sales..lost money and closed accounts... thank god escrow.com seems the only one that has the ridiculus policy in place which assumes there can be no other people on planet with same names as terrorists... and once match is found it does exactly nothing to confirm such serious label... thats basicallly like putting some random guy in jail just cause someone else by same name is the real murderer.

it blows my mind how labeling people in this way based on their name without double triple quadruple confirming it first is even legal...

xynames · Jan 6, 2019

Haris said:
I am sure if you would do a Facebook search you will find hundreds of people with the exact name as me. It's a very common name in Arab countries as well as other Asian and even some European countries.

I was on the board of a publicly traded company for a while where the owners were Pakistani and all three last name Khan. And our CFO who raised money for us was also last name Khan. It could get confusing. Khan very common last name in Pakistan.

And then I knew this Indian girl in high school who married a guy named Patel such that she didn’t even have to change her last name because they were both Patel. Patel very common last name in India.

And in Korea for example Kim and Park cover the last names of a sizable percentage of the country.

Add a common first name to these common last names and you could have some confusion issues!

alcy · Jan 6, 2019

xynames said:
That’s simply not true.

perhaps what he meant is that with policies like these they should not be in biz... which is true

GoWebnames.com · Jan 6, 2019

xynames said:
That’s simply not true.

Look, I know you are blind in one eye and all that but there is no need to pick a line out of context and derail the thread instead of leading it to a conclusion. Here it what I said, it was a SARCASTIC joke:

It appears Escrow.com is going to go out of business very soon, so I am thinking of launching an escrow company.

How does PickPockets.com sound?

Haris isn't the only guy to have faced this, so, leaving Haris' case aside, let Escrow.com answer the more pertinent questions which are general and applicable to all:

GoWebnames.com said:
Nonetheless, the bigger concern here is regarding your arbitrary procedure of Verification / Reverification. So, please answer these 2 general questions:

1) HOW MANY TIMES you REVERIFY an ALREADY-VERIFIED Account?
2) IF any REVERIFICATION is required at all, WHY WOULDN'T YOU DO IT BEFORE INSTRUCTING THE SELLER TO TRANSFER AWAY HIS DOMAIN?

alcy · Jan 6, 2019

i think by now its clear to all why escrow.com was not very keen to share publically what happended here.. even in some very general way...or why they went over and beyond to refund all fees etc...

i hope they will use this sad incident to rework their policies so nothing like this ever hapens again. someone clearly did not do their job... and no one should be wrongly put in jail because of that.

xynames · Jan 6, 2019

GoWebnames.com said:
Like others stated above, you should share the specifics with @Haris.
1) HOW MANY TIMES you REVERIFY an ALREADY-VERIFIED Account?
2) IF any REVERIFICATION is required at all, WHY WOULDN'T YOU DO IT BEFORE INSTRUCTING THE SELLER TO TRANSFER AWAY HIS DOMAIN?

That would be fine and dandy in a perfect world but not the way things work in the real one.

Having dealt with thousands of different financial institutions I know that very often the most rigorous verifications are not done until the moment of money transfer.

Credit card companies often don’t shut a person’s account down until after a transaction is submitted for processing even though that account might’ve been open prior with prior transactions. Same happens often with credit card processors including PayPal where the funds are held and the account limited (frozen) only after funds are received, even though there were might have been prior transactions with no issues.

Bank accounts too might be open and then shut down after a certain transfer or transaction draws attention.

eBay and amazon accounts are often left open until after a certain transaction draws attention and then in the case of amazon it only then snags, holds and refuses to release for example gift card funds.

Just the way it is. It’s sometimes only after real money is involved that financial or other institutions take affirmative action.

You’ll be waiting a lonnng time for an answer or resolution to this question.

GoWebnames.com · Jan 6, 2019

xynames said:
Credit card companies often don’t shut a person’s account down until after a transaction is submitted for processing even though that account might’ve been open prior with prior transactions. Same happens often with credit card processors including PayPal where the funds are held and the account limited (frozen) only after funds are received.

Yes but we are not talking about their verification/reverification of a BUYER account that could use fradulent means to submit a payment. We are talking about a SELLER account which is instructed to TRANSFER AWAY its domain AFTER the Buyer's payment is vetted by Escrow.com. Unless the domain is stolen or something, points raised by you here are irrelevant to this thread.

xynames said:
You’ll be waiting a lonnng time for an answer or resolution to this question.

Why not allow Escrow.com time and space to answer instead of you trying to be their representative? Plz. @Jackson Elsegood

xynames · Jan 6, 2019

There is no difference. Money transfer outgoing is often where additional verifications are done. Especially in the post 9/11 world.

Anyway just keep waiting the answer was already posted. None of these institutions not escrow not eBay not PayPal not amazon not banks not credit card issuers or processors are going to change their policies of sometimes doing additional verifications at the moment of money transfer. If you haven’t already encountered this you haven’t done much business.

It’s unfortunate but just the way it is.

MapleDots · Jan 6, 2019

xynames said:
That would be fine and dandy in a perfect world but not the way things work in the real one.

Having dealt with thousands of different financial institutions I know that very often the most rigorous verifications are not done until the moment of money transfer.

Credit card companies often don’t shut a person’s account down until after a transaction is submitted for processing even though that account might’ve been open prior with prior transactions. Same happens often with credit card processors including PayPal where the funds are held and the account limited (frozen) only after funds are received, even though there were might have been prior transactions with no issues.

Bank accounts too might be open and then shut down after a certain transfer or transaction draws attention.

eBay and amazon accounts are often left open until after a certain transaction draws attention and then in the case of amazon it only then snags, holds and refuses to release for example gift card funds.

Just the way it is. It’s sometimes only after real money is involved that financial or other institutions take affirmative action.

You’ll be waiting a lonnng time for an answer or resolution to this question.

Merchant credit card processing accounts are similar too. I had a spike on one of my online stores because I had a large sale for a month. I usually do about 1.5 million per year which is about $125,000 per month. That one month I did over double that amount and all hell broke out. The money was clearly collected by the credit card company but I went through hell getting it deposited into my account. Imagine a credit card processing company holding on to that much of your money. Every day went by and my sales kept depositing to the merchant account but nothing was moving to my account.

I dealt with the merchant company for over 10 years and had over 15 million in deposits yet they froze everything because I did about $280,000 in one month.

So it's exactly as @xynames says, it was not until larger amounts of money were involved that someone decided to reverify an account that was over 10 years old.

A crock of shit yes but it did happen.

GoWebnames.com · Jan 6, 2019

MapleDots said:
it was not until larger amounts of money were involved that someone decided to reverify an account that was over 10 years old.
A crock of sh*t yes but it did happen.

@MapleDots these are 2 different things. In your case, the credit card processing company may have frozen your funds temporarily because you exceeded their estimates for you, over a settlement cycle. And there was no way they could know about the net total of your incoming transactions, over the settlement cycle.

But here, in case of Escrow.com, this is not the same case. They know the transaction size right at the outset. Now, we can understand a Buyer account/payment being frozen due to use of fradulent means. But the Seller account is not submitting a payment but a domain. So, once the Buyer's payment is already vetted, all that remains for Escrow.com is to reverify BEFOREHAND (if required) Seller's account, before asking him to part with his domain, so that the transaction can be ROLLED BACK if they can't complete the transaction.

Let's await Escrow.com's answer.

MapleDots · Jan 6, 2019

GoWebnames.com said:
@MapleDots these are 2 different things. In your case, the credit card processing company may have frozen your funds temporarily because you exceeded their estimates for you, over a settlement cycle. And there was no way they could know about the net total of your incoming transactions, over the settlement cycle.

But here, in case of Escrow.com, this is not the same case. They know the transaction size right at the outset. Now, we can understand a Buyer account/payment being frozen due to use of fradulent means. But the Seller account is not submitting a payment but a domain. So, once the Buyer's payment is already vetted, all that remains for Escrow.com is to reverify BEFOREHAND (if required) Seller's account, before asking him to part with his domain, so that the transaction can be ROLLED BACK if they can't complete the transaction.

Let's await Escrow.com's answer.

My post was in response to one by xynames not to the op's.

That said though the reverification process is sometimes necessary especially in a case like what just happened with the O.P.

Escrow has thousands of clients and even clients that are verified can commit crimes or come onto watch lists. It would be silly to think from thousands of clients that the occasional one would not have to be reverified. That will of course happen at the most inopportune time, namely when a transaction is in process but they cannot go around verifying all clients all the time. It is when a client starts a transaction or comes under scrutiny that Escrow has to do their due diligence.

I mean after all that is why we use Escrow, it is easy to cry bloody hell when they halt a transaction but let's just pretend for a second that the O.P. was truly on the watch list and Escrow did not take it seriously. They would have been under much more scrutiny and everyone would have said how could you possibly miss that watchlist.

Any way you slice it Escrow is going to take some negative feedback from either party involved.

xynames · Jan 6, 2019

The moment of money transfer is when additional verifications are sometimes done. That was when they were about to transfer funds out to Haris, or out to MapleDots. It is exactly the same thing. They stop the transfer and they do their due diligence.

GoWebnames.com · Jan 6, 2019

MapleDots said:
That said though the reverification process is sometimes necessary especially in a case like what just happened with the O.P.

Neither I nor anyone else in the entire thread said that they are against VERIFICATION or REVERIFICATION. We are talking about their TIMING of it, for a SELLER Account.

GoWebnames.com said: ↑
1) HOW MANY TIMES you REVERIFY an ALREADY-VERIFIED Account?
2) IF any REVERIFICATION is required at all, WHY WOULDN'T YOU DO IT BEFORE INSTRUCTING THE SELLER TO TRANSFER AWAY HIS DOMAIN?

MapleDots · Jan 6, 2019

GoWebnames.com said:
We are talking about their TIMING of it, for a SELLER Account.

That is always the unfortunate part but it comes right back to what @xynames said in his post and what I was originally quoting.

Accounts can sit dormant for years and Escrow will not give them a second look, it is when transactions are initiated that accounts come under scrutiny yet again. Same with credit cards, they need authorization every time even though you are already verified. With each transaction they look at the risks and either authorize or decline.

That is why I added the credit card scenario.

As far as your bolded statement above....

I cannot argue with that.

frank-germany · Jan 6, 2019

I have one the most common name in germany
now is there any danger to use escrow.com for me ???

wizard · Jan 6, 2019

How strange never had a issue with then but dont like using escrow.com anymore far to slow

GoWebnames.com · Jan 6, 2019

frank-germany said:
I have one the most common name in germany
now is there any danger to use escrow.com for me ???

No but your smile is quite dangerous, ALMOST like a terrorist. We may need to reverify if it's indeed you

frank-germany · Jan 6, 2019

GoWebnames.com said:
No but your smile is quite dangerous, ALMOST like a terrorist. We may need to reverify if it's indeed you

are you kidding? thats not me.
I usually don't smile at strangers !

alcy · Jan 6, 2019

frank-germany said:
I have one the most common name in germany
now is there any danger to use escrow.com for me ???

well..from what it looks like it could be...

perhaps now before beggining any new escrow deal we should call support to ask if our name is on their terrorist list.

i think its obvious thats such list exists. so therefore checking it should be possible.

MapleDots · Jan 6, 2019

alcy said:
well..from what it looks like it could be...

perhaps now before beggining any new escrow deal we should call support to ask if our name is on their terrorist list.

i think its obvious thats such list exists. so therefore checking it should be possible.

HeHe

I can see that going well.....

Excuse me Sir,

I have an Escrow account, could you please check to see if I am on the terrorist list?

Blueforever · Mar 22, 2019

JB Lions said:
No, it's cheaper than Undeveloped. I just had 2 close recently where I paid the fees, it was 3.25%:

https://www.escrow.com/fee-calculator?newEscrowHeader=b#USD

Is this correct? I just sold a domain using escrow for $6200 and the fees were $1180.
If fees are 3.25% then they over charged me.

forge · Mar 22, 2019

Ram corbin said:
Is this correct? I just sold a domain using escrow for $6200 and the fees were $1180.
If fees are 3.25% then they over charged me.

I'm willing to bet this was a GoDaddy Auctions sale. This was Godaddy's commission. $5000 × 20% (1000) + $1200 × 15% (180) = $1180.

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