Quote from: jurdermunkie on June 27, 2012, 04:01 amQuote from: geedogg on June 26, 2012, 11:36 amyes FE is a risky thing to do but if you are new, you have no choice really....unless you find a brand new vendor and they have to sell in escrow, but they can refuse to sell to you, so its one of those catch 22 things. I was buzzing to get my first escrow order but it was only a 25% refund if anything happened anyway as was international, so was not that great a safety belt anyway....I would be wary of anyone who requires FE off everybody though.Oh and a lot of vendors are asking it in cases of under 10 transactions now.Keep in mind you are comparing the purchase of a legal product to something that, if a vendor gets caught selling, lands you in a cage for many, many years. I have no idea how many or my orders have been shipped straight to the hands of LE, but I have to assume that every one could be doing just that. If I'm running a legit, on-the-books online retailer, I can offer tracking, because I don't have to care about going into a post office and filling out paperwork on camera, and we both don't have to worry about any arbitrarily designated, violently-imposed "consequences" if our item doesn't make it...Most buyer accounts that scam are new. The stats get too mangled after a while. My scam rate has gone from maybe 10% down to 1-2% since I implemented my "5 or less" FE policy. It works. My regulars get full escrow protection, and newbs have to take their punches. Try being on here a year ago without BTC hedging and 10% daily fluctuations. It was literally a currency war between buyers and sellers and a lot of people got wiped out just by the swings. Today is a cakewalk compared to then. So by those guidelines we can come to the conclusion that new buyers until you have 5/10 or whatever transactions don't get to excited cause you might get fucked. That blows and is a horrible system. Running a "business" means sometimes you take a hit to calm the situation and move on. Buyers aren't pulling in cash they lose once or twice and they are busted and SR loses clients period. If a new buyer tries to pull the wool over a established vendor then you can let it be known. If i order some fucking kindle from best buy and it doesn't show up what happens? I have a route of recourse to find out if not then refund or ship my product. SIMPLE "business" practices. I say instead of making new buyer FE just limit them to sample sizes until they show they are serious customer not wanting to dick you around. Everybody says NEVER FE but as you just stated new buyers don't have much choice almost forced to and sellers KNOW IT! They also know that the product is drugs and drug users will do just about anything to get what they need. So of course they gonna be some bitch if they make escrow the only form of purchase(thought it was intention to begin with). Some folks can't afford to order everyday and 5 transactions may take awhile. I'm not buying digital goods just so i can buy other shit. Why not have a pay scale where new buyers pay a certain % more on first 2 orders but get that back after 5 or so. Or something similar. Its flawed but hey thats just my .2btc