It is difficult for new buyers to avoid the need to FE and i suspect it is getting harder as more people find their way to SR and the number of 'newbies' increases as vendors experience the highest number of issues with newbies, not necessarily scamming I hasten to add, more having to support and educate people about how to go about using this place safely which is hugely time consuming. The best advise I can give for those just getting started is do as much research as you possibly can on all aspects of how this place works e.g. PGP, safe drop arrangements, obtaining bitcoin, how escrow works etc all of which can easily be found in the SR wiki. Then once you have identified a few vendors you consider potentially good to buy from send them a PM to introduce yourself and sound them out to build some rapport. If a vendor can see that despite you being new you know what you are doing and probably won't be a pain in the ass to deal with they may very well let you stay in escrow. Vendors at the end of the day want smooth transactions the same as the buyers, they do not want to be burning valuable time in the resolution center or responding to messages that need not have even been sent if the sender had taken the time to read the information on the vendors page. Before you know it you will have enough transactions under your belt and the entire FE issue not longer applies. ssbd