No escrow?

Thanks for the response.

I have paypal which is fine for small transactions of maybe a few hundred dollars. For larger sums though, using paypal seems dangerously gullible. I've been burned myself so know from experience, paypal will do close to nothing if a transaction goes bad. What happens if nothing is delivered? The seller perhaps gets a slap on the wrist from audiogon and has his account suspended. What do I get?

There are some great deals here and I'd love to be able to use this site. I can understand that escrow might be too slow for some sellers, but the reasons I've been given so far by sellers is that they don't trust it, but then, as a buyer, I am expected to either send a money order or use paypal and thus take on a huge risk. I did see some comment here on another thread to always use a credit card with paypal, so maybe that offers some level of protection for the buyer, via the credit card company?

Thanks for all the feedback. Seems that most folks here have found ways to give them some reasonable level of assurance, though it appears it's either the buyer or the seller who's without a real safety net. Still puzzled as to why an escrow process isn't more established that has guarantees for both. Works for real estate.