I'll try not to TL;DR this. So I've been dabbling for a little over a year on the deep web. I finally feel comfortable enough to place a first order. It won't be big, just a test run. I plan to use escrow rather than bitcoin for several reasons I won't get into unless you guys convince me otherwise. Like I said it's sort of a test run so I'm half expecting to not receive product unfortunately. Any tips, advice, do's and dont's are greatly appreciated.
You should ask this in /r/darknetmarketnoobs and maybe review the process a bit longer.
Escrow is a type of payment system, BTC is a currency. Example: you can put currency (BTC) into escrow instead of just sending the money directly to the vendor (FE or DD.)
Not sure what you mean by using escrow but not BTC, you may be confused with the terminology. Unless you do a Direct Deal or Finalize Early, your only option on a marketplace is going to be using a market escrow wallet or possibly multi-sig for the markets that support it. If you mean that you plan on using a currency other than BTC, your options are going to be quite limited as most markets primarily accept BTC save for a few that take Monero (XMR) and even in that case not all vendors accept it universally.
If you use an active and credible vendor, you should have no issue receiving your product. Do some digging on potential vendors by searching this sub for their name and/or by using Grams InfoDesk - the link is on the info bar on the right side --->