This guy needs a hand!

[ChrisS]

I recently lost an auction but was contacted soon after the end by someone (very good feedback) who offered to sell me a like item for about a 10-15% discount from the winning bid. He proposed using an escrow service, www.escrowalliance.com. Has anyone heard of or used this specific company? I can't seem to find much on them and they're not listed with ebay.

[budnate]

Chris, an escrow Co. in general is a good thing, call the Better business bureau and the Attorney general in the state they are in and ask if there any complaints and how long they have been around, they may be fine but a little Columbo work never hurts either.

If you are talking about hunk of money where you need a escrow co??, you should make sure what you are buying is the real thing, Contact a local member to look it over or Fly in make the purchase and Buzz home after the deal. Good luck.

Bud.

[bbdon]

I hate to disagree with another member, but that escrow thing sounds like a scam that I have been hearing about a lot. I won't use escrow sites. Here's a link to a story about this:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/775457.asp

[JoeG]

Escrow Alliance--claims to do escrow work for yahoo auctions---Go to--GOOGLE---Type in---YAHOO AUCTIONS ESCROW----Look under---YAHOO HELP,general help.----Yahoo explains the pros and pitfalls of what to watch for and who to contact with relation to ecrow companies.------JoeG--

[budnate]

No problem, Like I said do your homework on the Co..

Thnx for the heads up on the scam alert, I had not heard that yet.

Bud.

[ChrisS]

Thanks for all of the input. I became a little suspicious when I couldn't find any "real" contact info (address or telephone) on their site. The item was a high-end digital camera, probably not worth the chance to save a few bucks unless someone can tell me that they have conducted business with them.

[ChrisS]

The article in the link bbdon posted included a site www.SOS4auctions.com to check on escrow services. Turns out that EscrowAlliance has only been around for a couple of days and their evaluation is that it is fraudulent [img]/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/no.gif[/img]. Thanks again guys.

[bbdon]

Chris,
You should fill out a fraud alert with eBay, right away. Go Here:
http://crs.ebay.com/aw-cgi/ebayisapi.dll?crsstartpage
You may be able to stop them from scamming someone else.
And by the way, if you have your email address as your user name on ebay, that's a magnet for this kind of scammer.

[ChrisS]

I've already contacted the FBI's Internet Fraud Division but I'll do the e-bay form as well.
No, I don't use my e-mail ad, but I'm sure these people have ways of getting it anyway.