Quote from: phubaiblues on April 28, 2012, 11:18 pmQuote from: flipside on April 28, 2012, 05:36 pmIndeed. Except for "Good vendors gone bad"., all you really need to concern yourself with is NOT "finalizing early" with any new/untrusted vendors. EVER. Unless of course you are a new buyer with little (or questionable) transaction history.The escrow system is indeed the "built-in" protection SR provides both vendors and buyer alike.If you follow these rules, then it's mostly just the rouge vendors discussed here that are the primary concernPeaceThe Flipside CrewActually, the real worry isn't the new vendors. The real worries began with scammers like Italian PIlot, who sell good product, then start selective scamming, but one way or another, regardless of how long they've been here, they always find a way to get us to Finalize Early. So just because somebody seems all wonderful, and you got good dope from them, is no reason to believe you'll get it tomorrow. The new trend for established sellers to require everybody to FE is no longer going to wash. We are just tired of getting ripped.Most of us know about new vendors. Only an idiot would FE with somebody new. I did, with agentmulder...why? I'm an idiot. I"m going back to the way SR was designed: Escrow all the way, and I encourage others to do the same. No more making this an oasis for wannabe bigtime scammers.I have been here for almost 11 months, a seller from day one, and I have never, EVER not sent a package out when someone sent me money. Before mandatory OOE was banned, my business model was at about 80% of my sales were just people sending me bitcoins to my username and buying a 0.01 listing to leave feedback.Now I would say about 50% of my business is FE and 50% is ecrow. With me adding lucy to the mix probably more like 30%/70% breakdown now as all of my lucy is within escrow (except 3+ sheets, which requires two custom listings splitting the price down the middle, one FE and one in escrow, so me and my buyer are equally sharing the risk).Not all sellers who require FE are scammers. I would say that 98-99% of my FE packages get through while, funny enough, my refund rate on in-escrow packages is more like 5%-6%. Reverse scamming is at least as common as seller selective scamming, and you guys just end up paying higher prices because we have to bake it into our operating costs.