If you sell something via parcel, is there any protection if the buyer does not send the money? I have used the parcel system without any problems but have mainly bought and sold low dollar/level stuff.
You mean you sent the item and trust them to send the money? That is at your own risk. No real reason not to get in the same zone and open a trade window if you do not know each other. Bazaar sold stuff sent via parcel is a transaction handled by the game, both happen or neither happen.
Perhaps they could build an escrow system of some kind into the parcel window though something like that would likely be near the bottom of the list for devs to spend time on.
I have never been able to sell anything using eqs system in all these years aside from /barter, because it reqs me to stay logged in as a store. This dose not stop me from thinking the system is cool though. If I could leave a character like that, and play I would have done so. I have some good stuff, a few things of which I have no foreseeable use for. Things for clerics and bards which I will never play. I continue to find such things. I could make a free account for that reason, but I am bit unclear on that in any case.
No there is no protection, other than reputation and if they are using a level 1 mule... But I've used parcel to buy / sell things several times and so far *knock on wood* I have not had any problems. Usually the person with the $ sends first then the person with the item sends. But I would not use parcel on items over 2k and I would meet them in person for a trade. With Punts / Ports / Origin it isn't too hard to meet someone for a quick trade.
Do you not have the "offline" option at the bottom right of your trader screen? It allows you to go into buyer or seller mode and log out of EQ. Maybe go to bazaar and try it? You would have to be standing on the yellow platforms in the red or blue hall. Free accounts cannot set up as buyer or sellers in the bazaar. They can sell to buyers thru barter. They can buy from traders while in any zone and have it sent to parcel.
No I am a paid account I did not know there was a offline mode, I will check it out when I am done playing for the day.
For what it's worth, neither the in-game Help file nor the POK Bazaar tutorial mention anything at all about the offline mode. Found that out recently when I was thinking about possibly setting up a trader sometime in the future. I'd heard offline mode mentioned in the forums, so I Googled it and found the information I wanted.
