A lot of people have been waiting for this feature and I’m glad Escrow.com will be offering it as of this point.
If you don’t know what the concierge service is all about, here’s a short explanation: up until this point, Escrow.com did not take possession of the domain at all. In other words, the buyer paid Escrow.com and Escrow.com then instructed the seller to transfer the domain directly to the buyer. After the seller did this and the buyer confirmed, Escrow.com paid the buyer.
Two potential problems with this approach:
1) Some buyers don’t care anymore after the domain is in their possession, so they take their sweet time confirming. This leaves the seller waiting for the funds and sometimes needing to contact Escrow.com to speed up the process. Nothing Earth-shattering by any means, a phone call should do the trick but still, a possible inconvenience
2) Some buyers with malicious intentions might lie, in other words after receiving the domain, they might take it private and claim they never got it. They’d do this hoping that Escrow.com would pay them back, leaving them with the money and the domain. Realistically speaking though, Escrow.com always has the tools it needs to reach the proper conclusion in such cases. They’ve been doing this for a looooooooooong time, so while such an approach is possible in theory, I doubt anyone could get away with it in “real life”
These two inconveniences aren’t as dangerous as they sound and again, Escrow.com has been doing this for a long time.
However, those who want to eliminate them from the equation altogether can let Escrow.com take possession of the domain(s) in exchange for a fee:
1) 6.5% ($100.00 minimum) for transactions up to $5,000
2) $325 + 0.52% of amount over $5000 for transactions in the $5,000.01 – $25,000 range
3) 1.78% for $25,000.01+ transactions
So, will I be using Escrow.com’s new feature?
Yep, I will.
For small transactions, I seriously doubt I’ll be using the feature (unless I have a transaction-specific reason to do so), so I definitely won’t be using it for a $500 or $1,000 sale.
However, for larger transactions, I most likely will end up using it for multiple reasons:
1) I won’t have to wait for buyers to confirm, something really helpful if you’re selling to fund another transaction and time is of the essence
2) for larger amounts, anything that reduces risks is welcome despite the fact that again, the “real life” risk is ridiculously low, even without the concierge service
3) no hand-holding will be required (you know how it is when the other party isn’t exactly tech-savvy, the transaction can end up turning into a royal pita)
4) for larger transactions, the concierge service is considerably cheaper as a percentage of the amount
I’m glad the Freelancer guys decided to listen to what domainers want and hope they’ll continue doing this in the future.
Some people were worried after they took over but the trend seems to be positive. They expanded office hours (a huge, huge improvement for non-US users), they became a lot more China-friendly and now this. Good job!
February 23rd, 2016 at 1:07 pm
Good job, thank you Escrow.com
Just someone can kindly confirm there will never be any hassle with the common 60 days period or so after a first transfer, during which, theoretically, you can’t do a second transfer?
Thank you
February 23rd, 2016 at 1:27 pm
@Claudio: Escrow.com has no control over the 60-day transfer restriction. Once you transfer a domain from Company A to Company B, you will have to wait 60 days until transferring from Company B to Company C.
But don’t worry about that because remember, pretty much all registrars have a push feature.
In other words, let’s assume the buyer wants to transfer the domain he’s buying via Escrow.com from Enom to GoDaddy, it would work something like this:
1) You would TRANSFER the domain to Escrow.com’s GoDaddy account
2) Escrow.com would PUSH the domain from their GoDaddy account to the buyer’s GoDaddy
The end 🙂
In other words, the 60-day window isn’t something that would cause problems because you don’t have to TRANSFER to Escrow.com’s account and then once again TRANSFER to the buyer’s account.
You can TRANSFER to Escrow.com’s account and then they can PUSH the domain to the buyer’s account or the other way around, you can PUSH to Escrow.com’s account and they can TRANSFER the domain to the buyer’s registrar.
February 23rd, 2016 at 2:14 pm
Thank you Andrei, yes I know this was never a problem, but I’d like to see also something on the Escrow.com’s website to reassures the prospect customers on this point. Escrow services have to work with domainers yes, but they must speak to the prospect customers, saying as much as possible to reassure them (and maybe in as many languages as possible…).
The 60 days rule is “quite” known even among “end users”, and well known among webmasters, so some words also about the possibility of always receive the domain immediately after the purchasing would be useful imho.