And only looking to trade too. Surely you have something in your warehouse you can trade up, Carmine.

PJ, does this 3rd party escrow service work for trades as well as purchases?

Yes it should. It can be either an exchange of goods or money,and there's usually an agreed upon inspection period too. The way it works is escrow collects the goods from each party and ships them to each and tracks shipments as well. I believe I had a 48 hr. window to reject the bass if I wasn't happy, so the funds were held in account until I approved the bass and then they were released.

Just called the Escrow.com guys and they don't offer a service for an exchange of goods. Was there maybe someone else you were thinking of?

Hmm. My bad. I assumed they would do exchanges. But there's a simple work-around this. Both of you can agree to sell each other your basses for some low price ($100-120, which should cover shipping?) and conduct it as two transactions.

OK PJ- so the money would be held in escrow until the merchandise is received and the receiving party instructs escrow company to release payment to the other party, right?... but help me understand-- if the goal is to protect yourself from loss to the other party, wouldn't that only work if the value of the money is equal to the value of the merchandise? (Example: trader in France puts $100 in escrow... I ship bass... trader accepts bass and releases $100... and then says "bye bye"....) the only thing I'm guaranteed of getting back for my bass is the $100- I still have to trust that the other party will do the same on their end, right? Am I missing something?

Or better, try http://www.Transpact.com !

This is a UK Government registered escrow service that operates in Euro's, £,s and $'s, and at a fixed low rate (as opposed to an expensive percentage of the transaction).

Beware, many, many online escrow services are fakes and frauds, so always, always check the government registration of an escrow service to see if they are fake or not. In the UK and several other countries, Government registration is shown online, so this is a quick but very necessary step.