You are being asked to send money for material that has not been made yet. Somewhere else, a supplier is being asked to commit material to a buyer it has never traded with. Those are the same problem from two ends, and neither of you should have to solve it by taking a stranger’s word.
“I pay, and nothing turns up.”
Your money does not come to us. It goes to Escrow.com, a licensed escrow agent, and it sits there.
We cannot touch it. We place the order knowing the money is there, and it is only released once the material is on your site and you have said so.
If it never arrives, you did not pay for it.
“I ship it, and I chase the money.”
You are not extending us credit and there is no application to fill in.
The funds are deposited before you make anything. You can see they are there. You ship against money that already exists, and you are paid on delivery rather than sixty days after it.
No terms to approve. No chasing.
| Material, at the price on your quote | to the supplier |
| Escrow charge, passed through at cost | to Escrow.com |
| Our supply fee, on its own line | to us |
Three lines, never rolled into one number. The only line that is ours is the supply fee, and it is on your quote where you can see it. The escrow charge is not ours — it goes to Escrow.com for holding the money and we pass it through at cost. You are entitled to see what you are paying us and what you are paying somebody else.
Once an escrow is funded, the escrow agent’s fee is not refundable. That is Escrow.com’s charge for holding the money, not ours, and we never see it. Everything else returns to you in full.
Whoever causes the cancellation bears that fee — and we bear it whenever the cause is on our side. If a supplier fails us, if freight falls over, if we have made a mistake: we absorb it, without your having to ask.
And for the first day, nobody bears it. Cancel within twenty-four hours of funding, before we place the purchase order, and we refund the escrow fee out of our own margin.
Every quote we send carries a date, and that date is set by the shortest supplier price inside it. We do not promise you a price for longer than we were promised it.
Before your funds are taken, every line goes back to its supplier for confirmation, and the escrow cannot be opened until they have all answered. If something has moved you will see a revised quote rather than a revised invoice — a price that has run out simply cannot take your money.
What escrow does not do, because it matters that we say so.
It protects the money, not the calendar and not the market. If a supplier is a week late, escrow does not make it early — it means you have not paid for a late delivery. If the market moves after you have accepted a firm price, the price is the price, for both of us. And escrow settles whether goods arrived as described; it is not a place to argue about whether you should have ordered something else.