Germany's biggest Craigslist-like service recently added a service like this for purchases that are shipped. I sold my previous MacBook using the system and found it really stressful to wait for the buyer to confirm the item. In my case, it was just someone who was a little bit slow and just forgot, but I can imagine abuse in the system. Same thing happens with PayPal buyer's protection.
I can't think of a better system though, to be honest.
Yeah, other than having someone manually inspecting the transfer, that's kind of the best way.
I've noticed that most sites end up implementing "automatic confirmation", but after a while they shorten the confirmation deadline because lots of buyers just "forget" to approve.
I've also seen others (MercadoLibre) who have a "reputation" for sellers where they can get the money even before confirmation.
A better system would have some agreed upon holding period. Two weeks perhaps? Enough time at least that the buyer has received the goods. As much as I hate Paypal, that's essentially what they do. They hold the funds until they've confirmed the item was delivered.
No, a better system would give the buyer incentive to release funds in a timely fashion while still offering the escrow company incentive to implement. Maybe you pay escrow 110% of the cost, you get 10% back when you release funds, 5% if you take more than 10 days, 1% after that.
Not the parent, but I think they do actually mean eBay Kleinanzeigen. A few months ago they added a service like this but afaik it’s still in beta and also not available for all categories yet.
I can't think of a better system though, to be honest.