Marketplace and money

Was thinking about the market place and ways of making the transactions a little more 'secure'. From what I understand - and it's only based on the experience of buying 2 bits of kit from 2 separate sellers, is that unless one in the transaction is prepared to pay the additional percentage to have the transaction covered, then everything else is done on a goodwill basis. And whilst on the whole, our community is full of like minded, good people, there do seem to be experiences of things not going so well.

Here in the UK, there's a new scheme that's being used by the government, in an attempt to stem bad practices as far as builders is concerned. Its voluntary at present, but seems to work well - and it's based on there bing a holing account for the money. I wondered whether something like this might work well for MG. Yes, ebay is an alright place to buy modules, but it would be cool to not have to use them and keep it within the community.

The way I guess it would work would be that there is a holding account - so there's an advert, an agreement between the seller and buyer, the money is put into that account that only MG have the ability to release and when the module has arrived, and the buyer is happy, then the money released.

I understand that it might be a good idea but needs to be administered...but maybe there's a small fee for using it or something.
Just thought I'd put it out there, as I think it could really work incredibly well!

I believe this is called "escrow." A third party handles the exchange of merchandise and money... verifying that both parties have satisfied the transaction before releasing monies and merchandise to the recipients. This system of trade does work. But it's much more labor intensive than eBay, etc. The bottom line is that escrow will add more to the cost than eBay.

To make that secure from both sides the escrow must handle both the money and the modules which means double shipping costs. MG is in Germany, so that would not work in the US. We don't have a stockroom and I think people would not pay for the additional fees. They are to high in relation to the cost of most used modules.
May be there is a third party service users can use?