Can you use Escrow.com for buying/selling social media accounts? Let's take a closer look [Update: Escrow.com Replied!]

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21

Reviving this topic to go over a failed case study attempt. @Jason and I initiated a transaction for an account via Escrow.com on November 19th. The invoice was paid right away and I was left with a “Payment processing please wait” on my end (I was the seller). A day passes, then two, then three, then days turned into weeks. Finally, after the third week, I’ve emailed Escrow and asked them what is taking so long (we paid via PayPal). They’ve told me Jason (the buyer) needs to verify his identity because of some small snag (I am not even sure what that was till this day). He paid with a company PayPal account, from an Escrow account tied to his company, and the account had a few transactions in his history. But that wasn’t enough I guess. After a few emails back and forth with Escrow, we’ve decided to quit (mainly because Jason didn’t have time to deal with this).

So, we’re almost a month in and we don’t have a case study. But here is I concluded from my first time as using Escrow.com.

What I didn’t like:
I didn’t like being left stranded, without any updates/notifications. After the buyer (Jason) sent the payment, my end said: “Please wait we’re verifying the payment.” That’s fine, I have no problem with that. What I do have a problem is being left in the dark, for weeks. No updates/notifications, not a single “hey, it’s not you, it’s the buyer stalling things.” Albeit, this was all caused by one missing email Jason didn’t get. Not sure if he deleted it by accident or it never arrived, but you would imagine they would send a follow up and not make you wait one month.

What I did like.
The support is rather quick, helpful, and friendly. Usually, you get a reply within 12 hours. For a big company like Escrow, that’s pretty impressive. I was also surprised to see that Escrow did, in fact, have a “Social Media” section for sellers.

In conclusion.
I want to give this case study another attempt, but I really wish that @JacksonElsegood (our member and a confirmed Escrow agent) just answered one question for us:

Does Escrow.com physically secure the accounts themselves? For example, if we’re talking about a Fanpage transfer, will an Escrow agent:

  1. share his social profile
  2. send an invite to the seller
  3. accept the admin rights
  4. remove any recovery methods and remove the seller?

You’ve kind of omitted this question before, @JacksonElsegood. Would love a solid answer other than “We partner with marketplaces to do this.” What marketplaces do you use? Do they work for you? I just don’t get it. Having a clear answer here would solve all my questions and save me time from attempting transaction #2.

2 Likes
22

Hey, thought I’d add my case study, as initially reading the above made me slightly cautious to trying the service, especially as it was my first time.

In all the process took 4 business days to complete and went as follows:
(5 figure transaction, sale of Instagram account)

1 - Me and buyer agree price
2 - After research, low fees (around 1%) and further discussions with buyer we agree to use Escrow.com
3 - Registered and verified using driving license
4 - (FEB 6TH) Created transaction under category ’Milestone Transactions’ adding agreements like: username/password sent to buyer to secure account etc.
5 - Buyer wired payment to Escrow.com to secure
6 - Ones payment was secured credentials emailed to buyer
7 - Buyer accepted goods and secured account
8 - (FEB 8TH) Buyer accepted all received as discussed and milestone completed
weekend
9 - (FEB 10TH) Funds disbursed and closing statement received by Escrow.com
10 - (FEB 11TH) Full payment received in bank, I received this in 1 business day

Some steps to note:

  • All correspondence with buyer through personal email
  • The Escrow.com milestone must include a 24 hour minimum inspection period
  • Escrow.com have a chat option that were very helpful
  • Escrow.com don’t secure social media account
  • Buyer and seller can share fee cost
  • Transaction was International, advised payment takes 3-5 working days to receive once released

Overall a great experience, achieving what I wanted, to sell an account safely with ease.

23

Hey! Thank you for this. Sounds like you had a successful transaction. What I like to know is:

  1. What happens if the buyer is malicious, takes over the accounts and says “passwords didn’t work.”
  2. What happens if the seller is rouge and never even owns the property, just sends some non-working credentials.

This is why I originally started this topic. I know people do have successful sales there, but what happens when things go south? I seriously doubt Escrow verifies logins, checks for things like OG email and recovery methods, etc. That was the whole point of my failed attempt of making a controlled transaction there, I want to see what happens when things go bad. But I got discouraged after my first attempt where we waiting nearly a month to have the basic things settled, just because Escrow failed to send reminder emails.

24

I believe if a seller was to send over rogue credentials the buyer would not accept the agreement which would result in the funds being returned to the buyer.

Escrow.com themselves openly stated if there was any issues with the credentials they would NOT step in for social media accounts and so I did a huge amount of research on my buyer before going ahead, making me rather confident to use this option as a first time.

However there was a lot of negative reviews such as withholding peoples payments for weeks, regarding Escrows part of the process, which left me pretty surprised when it went so smoothly and quicker than I could have imagined.

Just my experience, but still a risky option with disputes.

25

So that goes against what @JacksonElsegood said in this topic, that they “partner with marketplaces” to verify logins. It was kind of obvious that Escrow wouldn’t do that, I just wanted to be sure. So, it seems buyers are protected no matter what? What about the sellers? What if the buyer takes over the account and says “sorry, nope… the passwords didn’t work”. I guess that’s the weak point of doing transactions there. But overall, still surprised your transaction went so smooth.

Thanks again for posting about this. Solved all my questions :smiley:

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26

It was a slightly nervy experience for that exact reason…very happy now though. :slight_smile:

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27

It’s not safe for social media sales true but I have encountered some successful sales and it’s a fact that social media properties are three times worth the price buyers are bidding for them on swapd.
I’ve seen a 1m followers account sold for 20k successfully

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28

Thanks for bumping this :smiley: I’ve spoke to someone a few weeks back who said “as long as the seller/buyer are honest, Escrow is OK for social media”, but “if something goes wrong, you’re on your own.”

Kind of defeats the purpose of an escrow. Didn’t Escrow.com have the same problem with domains years back? They relied on the honesty of buyers and sellers to get domains moved. But it eventually became a big enough problem (scams) where they had to open a dedicated domain department that actually tracks and helps with domain transfers.

29

I would also like to wag my finger at @JacksonElsegood, the Escrow’s rep, for dodging the difficult questions, and not really being truthful in his statements.

30

Also … (just reviving this topic for a moment) … Mr Elgood’s reply to your first question was: just write the name of what you are buying/selling or select General Merchandise. So I guess that enables you to put “buying an IG Account” for instance.

But then when you do that, on the next screen it still forces you to select a category from a limited drop down list that only includes Domain Name and General Merchandise as most applicable options.

So this still doesn’t convince me that social accounts are a category they accept or recognize. And I suspect they do that on purpose to avoid being liable when anything goes wrong…

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31

personally heard just bad things about escrow

32

Really? I’ve done a lot of transactions through them and never had a problem, in fact, their chat support is ultra-fast. ( Talking about websites and domains though )

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33

never used, i was always scared, read so so many negative stuff about them and fameswap too

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34

I think websites & domains are pretty trackable for transactions (correct me if I’m wrong?). For IG accounts it’s almost impossible to check if the account is actually transferred.

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35

Bumping this as some users were asking me about Escrow.com.

36

@spacexplore, You should review this one.

37

Continue Swapd :slight_smile: . Even if they invite to Escrow, I will invite them to Swapd.

3 Likes
38

In your face, @JacksonElsegood!

39

Swapd is lobe

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40

Last logged in 2021 :sweat_smile: Must have been doing some competitor research lol.

1 Like