Essaybay, what do you think?

Have any of you out there had any experience of a company by the name of Essaybay.

A friend of mine ordered an essay through essaybay and paid for this through ESCROW. According to the site the buyer deposits money into the ESCROW system and the money is held there until a writer is selected. Once the work is completed the buyer releases the money to the writer.

My friend posted an essay to be written and deposited the money accordingly, he later decided to withdraw the project and write the essay himself. He asked the writer to cancel the payment but the writer could not do this as the cancel payment option did not work as it should. He as asked for his money to be returned and has been told that it is up to the writer to release the money.

Concerned that he was being ripped off I set myself up as a writer and did one project for them. Surprise surpise I cannot access the money that has been paid into the ESCROW account for me and the admin will not answer my emails with regard to rectifying this. I was told that I would have to raise a dispute for having not been paid but to do this I would have to pay admin to investigate the complaint.

It would be interesting to find out if anyone else has tried this company out and whether they too have had similar problems.

Hi Julie,

I work for Essay Bay, assisting the main programmer in developing the site. I actually deal with most of the customer support emails at the moment, to help us better understand where users are having problems and so if you email our admin address, it is myself you will get to speak to!

I hope I can help you by better explaining the escrow system. It is very like the escrow systems used by ebay, and many programming sites around the world.

Ordinarily when you use an essay company, you would pay the company up front and wait for your essay. You have no way of knowing if the essay will be good or not (or indeed, if it will arrive at all!). If the essay is rubbish, you may struggle to get your money back from the company. Similarly, the writer has no way of knowing if he or she will get paid for writing the essay - they have to trust the company they are writing through.

With the escrow system, you post your project and many writers bid on that project. You review their credentials and feedback, and if you're happy to proceed, you choose your writer, and then deposit your money into an 'escrow' account. As soon as you do this, the writer is told to start work. So there's no obligation to proceed UNTIL you put that money in escrow - at that point, your writer actually starts working on your project.

So the money is in 'escrow' - this means that only YOU can release the payment to the writer, and only the writer can cancel the payment and return it to you. The writer KNOWS they will get paid if they finish the project and you KNOW you won't lose your money if a) they don't deliver or b) they deliver work which is substantially poor. This is fair to both you and the writer.

IF the writer does not deliver or does deliver but delivers poor quality work, there is a dispute resolution service. The company reviews the work (and the whole transaction) and if they are happy that you're right, they'll return the money held in escrow to you. If on the other hand, they find that the writer has delivered the work as promised and the work is good, they'll release the escrow payment to the writer.

So the escrow system does tie up your money and stop you changing your mind after a day or two, yes - but if this were not the case it would be very unfair on the writer. They would start work and then find the customer could cancel and they would be paid nothing for their time and effort. But it also protects the customer - so the customer knows their money is safe because they only have to release the money held in escrow if they get what they asked for, and if there is any problem, the support team can review things and send their money back to them.

I hope this is helpful but if you have any questions, I would be happy to answer them for you.

Kind regards
Jennifer

The customer can still file a chargeback at any time.

The writer can still not deliver the paper on the due date--or at all.

The company also charge to raise a dispute and in the particular case I mentioned above where the essay was cancelled by the customer the writer gets charged and I can prove this as I was the writer that was selected to do the work and then the essay was cancelled and ESSAYBAY has put a minus figure on my account. And yes I have contacted you Jennifer to try to resolve the above matter. I did not expect my request to refund the customer because he cancelled would result in you charging me $35 and I still haven't been paid for the one essay I have done for this company.

I refuse to raise a dispute as Rob did as this would cost me to start the dispute. Considering the customer has so far not released the payment the chances are that I would lose another £10 trying to get the money and still end up with nothing

EssayBay sounds like a well-planned racket to me . . . . .

this can't technically be true if the company always has control in the determination of who gets what money, which is exactly what Jennifer claims will happen in the event of a dispute. the escrow account's "advantages" seem entirely bogus.

They have finally released the money for the first essay but minus the $35 for the CANCELLED order,so technically I wrote an essay for $123 instead of $158.

This was an interesting experiment and an interesting way of checking out bona fide or not bona fide essay mills.

I guess writing on here as an impact as the money was released soon after my last post. Maybe they will also refund the $35 dollars they charged ME for the CUSTOMER's CANCELLATION!!

You've got that right! The site owners watch this site and Essay Fraud like hawks, especially the crooks.

This site is run by the UKessays conglomerate includes, markmyessays, studentjam, degreeessays, lawessays, oxbridgewriters, dissertationcreation, scanmyessay etc... 7 and counting.

On the about us page it reads....

Set up by Barclay Litlewood and his team at the UK essay company Academic Answers Ltd, Essay Bay offers a dramatic improvement to the quality of the custom essay and term paper market. They boast over 40 years combined experience in the custom essay market in the world running over 25 websites in the areas - Google Barclay or ukessays.com for more. (Is that age or shoe size?)

He's even got himself a wiki profile - Looks like a rip off of kasamba website and ebay....

UPDATE

The guy who cancelled the order was charged £11 to get his money back so Essaybay got £17 off me and £11 off him for absolutely NOTHING.


Kasamba ripped me off by never paying me for legal advise. Kept my earnings beloe $50 so it remains stuck in their account

that's hilarious. i guess we know how essaybay turns a profit.

Just think how much money you could make. If all goes well and the customer gets what they pay for the company get their commission. If it all goes wrong they still get paid and the customer AND the writer have to pay the company for the work not being done.

Almost makes you wish you had thought of this yourself, but then again I couldn't do it because I have a conscience.

Hi all,

Wow, lots of comments so bear with me if I don't respond to everything - I will try!

Firstly, Julie...

i) The dispute fee works like this - if the buyer or writer raise a dispute then yes, a fee is charged to look into it (we are after all a business, not a charity, and this takes time). If the writer is in the wrong, the fee is refunded to the buyer. If the buyer is in the wrong, the fee is refunded to the writer. So the party in the right doesn't pay anything.

There haven't been many disputes since the site started trading - probably not more than 5 - so I can't say that EssayBay makes a huge profit from these!

ii) If a project is cancelled - i.e. the writer agrees to refund the money held in escrow - then of course we refund our fees. I can't imagine why it hasn't been done automatically. We have recently changed the fee structure to make it clearer for buyers. I'm almost certain fees are refunded automatically when a payment gets cancelled, but I am just checking with our programmer on this.

If you contact me with the project details and ask me to do this, via our email address that you have, I would be happy to sort it out for you.

iv) With regards to the withdrawal amount of $50, I'm not sure where you got this from. It's actually $20 minimum withdrawal.

v) Finally, with regards to writing on here having an impact to us releasing money, no - it's more due to the fact that I have a small backlog of jobs to do, and I'm working through them. Our programmer is working on the automatic release of funds but until that's in place, I have to do it manually which is quite time consuming. But please accept my apologies for the delay.

v) Jerry.. yes the company also runs several other websites. I'm not sure how to comment on this - it's true and we declare that openly on the "about us" page as you said. Why that makes us a rip off website in your eyes, I'm not sure. The company is part of a registered group, fully subject to the provisions of English law and fully accountable to its clients.

vi) Jerry.. I don't understand your comments about Kasamba as I don't know what that is. Ebay is a website that deals with goods where the Seller offers goods and the buyer bids for them. EssayBay is a website that deals with services, where the Seller (writer) fixes the price they are prepared to sell their services for, and the buyer chooses what he wants to pay. So I'd say there are some substantial fundamental differences, but it is an interest analogy - I suppose the presence of bids and feedback mean that there are similarities.

I hope that deals with everything here but I am always very happy to answer any questions you may have. First and foremost I would say that if, as a registered member, you do have a problem with EssayBay, please try contacting our admin email address first. I appreciate that on rare occasions transactions do not run as smoothly as they could do, but during the early development of the site we're very anxious to iron out any bugs and get everything functioning in a way that all users are happy with. So do try and give us the opportunity of putting things right for you in the first instance.

Jennifer

well i got 2 of my projects at masters level written by the same writer on essaybay. My tutor gave me 84% for one and the other got 78% so i have no complaints. Do your homework and choose a good company.

I eventually got paid and they refunded the charge against my account, however I had bid on another project before realising the problem getting paid. I did that one to avoid being fined for not doing so and requested my money on 30 November... and still I wait.

Unless they sort their act out and release the money sooner they are likely to lose any writers they might have working for them.

I have written to admin for what little use that is as they never reply. Wonder if I will have to keep resorting to writing on here just to get what I am entitled to!!

12 days on and i am still owed $294 - message to self- avoid this company like the plague!

Can you clarify this issue for us, julie? Is this an essaybay delay or a client delay in releasing funds?

The admin department have been in touch and said the problem was with their paypal account- they had REACHED their limit of money they could send. I have now been paid through a different paypal account.

cool. so they don't owe you anything anymore? I personally think that their website has lots of potential. As long as they don't get greedy, I think their relationship with writers can become very profitable both ways indeed. ^__^

Hey Julie, did you have to wait for 30 days before you could withdraw your first payment from these guys? Thanks.

Its hit and miss when they decide to pay you. It is supposed to be as soon as the project is completed but in reality its whenever jennifer decides to release it. You have to keep badgering them NOT very professional but they do eventually take notice (i think)

Ok. So the "withdraw" feature doesn't always work? When you first did a project for them, did you have to wait for 30 days to get the payment? I'm just asking if they stick to that policy of theirs. Thanks.

No they have their own agenda and I have refused to write for them any more as they are so lax at paying. I have had several requests from them inviting me to bid but only a fool would continue writing for a company that pays when it feels like it

I have spoken to other writers for this company who are all experiencing the same problem wih getting their money. I notice that the company takes its share of the money straightaway and now it looks like its about to keeo the writers share as well. I doubt the company will be in business much longer as it obviously does not give a damn about its writers!

I wonder if Jennifer will now read this and start making payments again or whether she would like her company taking to court for non payment?

I see. Truth be told, I tried this company out and they paid me well enough for the first assignment, but now I've got payments for two projects stuck in my account with them and I can't seem to withdraw my money. I tried to ask them about it and they did reply after more than a few emails. They said that they were having paypal problems again. I retracted all of my current bids and told them that I wouldn't make any future ones anymore unless they pay up. Based on what you're telling me, I guess there's a fat chance of that happening. >.< Like I said, the whole site concept is a good idea if they didn't get greedy..

did anyone see their verification procedures scam? apparently, the writers in their bank are either verified or not verified by essaybay. Essaybay tells the clients that if their writers aren't verified, then the information about their qualifications may not be correct, which of course means that smart clients should go for verified writers whenever possible.

on the FAQ for customers, they write:

"Which writer should I choose?

You may receive one or many bids on your project. You don't HAVE to accept any of them. Before accepting a writer you may wish to consider:

QUALIFICATIONS: What qualifications do they have? Have these been verified by our team? Writers can ask us to check their qualifications and we'll confirm if these are accurate or not. If the writer's qualifications have NOT been verified, they may not be accurate."

(essaybay/faq.php)

how does one get verified by essaybay? glad you asked. in order to become a verified writer, you send them a color i.d., a copy of your diploma and 100$ dollars. yeah, that's right, you as the writer have to pay them 100$ to check your credentials.

again, on their FAQ:
"Verified users have a mark next to their username telling prospective buyers that all their details and qualifications have been checked, and are correct. Verification costs $100, and will be processed as quickly as possible."

so... i have to ask the obvious question... has anyone paid yet to become verified?

Lavinia

if you go on the site there is an option to search for verified writers. I counted and there are 22 but only 4 of those have done any projects and one of those 22 is Jennifer who is supposedly the administrator of the site and is responsible for releasing the money. Jennifer has also inflated her own rating by submitting her own projects and then writing them herself and giving herself wonderful feedback. Check out the link below and you will see what I mean

essaybay/view_profile.php?id=84

I queried this with Jennifer when I first went on the site who stated that she was merely testing the system and that she is not a writer herself however she is listed as a verified writer.

I did not pay for verification but was offered it for free if I wanted ir through their sister company academic answers which I also declined.

Jennifer has got a nice profit of 21 x 100$ for those who have paid for verification and 18 of those who have paid haven't earned a single $ vack as they have not had any projects assigned to them. I have not paid the fee and have done 5 of which I have been paid for only 3.

Methinks the site is on the verge of collapse as Jennifer is now ignoring all emails so I guess I can kiss goodbye to $470.

Darn.. :( Well, I didn't get myself verified but I've so far got an average rating of 98% after 3 clients. I'd say that building good rep beats verification. I've seen a couple of verified writers though. Sigh... I've still got one client I'm communicating with. I wonder if I should tell him about the situation already...

I notified one of the customers that I have written for that i wont be doing the amendments she wants until they pay me i dont like doing that but i figured that they might take notice if customers are complaining as well and besides which i am not prepared to work if i am not being paid

Yeah, I'll probably do that also with the one I have left at the moment. Thanks.

Hey there y'all. Methinks I might also be a victim of that there website, essaybay. I still got one pending order but so far, they haven't approved my request to withdraw mah money via paypal. They pro'ly owe me much less than they owe the couple of ya but ya can't pick up $134 off the neighborhood streets, that's for sure. I already told mah client to bug em about it and I hope that works.

I had an email from Jennifer yesterday see below

Julie

We have an issue with Paypal at the moment which goes unresolved. We cannot physically do anything about it and we cannot release the funds until they sort it out.

We are actively chasing this, please be assured.

Regards

Jennifer

And this was my reply

This is the SECOND time you have used this excuse. Until I get paid I do not intend bidding on any work or doing any amendments etc

Regards

Julie

Jennifer ought to realise that without writers she does not have a site. She cannot keep hidng behind excuses.

Johnny my advice to you would be to scrap the one thats pending then she will take notice as the customer is going to get p*ssed off if they dont get what they have paid for. I do not have any pending otherwise I would be holding her to ransom myself.

I've talked it out with him (my client) and he says he'll bug jennifer about it too. I recieved the 'xact same email that you did, julie. I told jennifer that if it was a problem with paypal limits, they can always drum up a couple of dummy accounts to pay us through. Heck, they can register a whole bunch of 'em for free if only for a temporary solution to get us writers back on track. Her excuse is not that believable at all. I really hope she hasn't lost our money doing forex or something...

Update

My account has been suspended because I am stirring trouble apparently. I guess I should have sat quiet and not complained about not getting paid or not getting a response to emails but sitting quiet was never one of my strong points.

I was told that my messages are libellous I have re read them and there is no libellous comment only speculation as to whether we will get paid or not. Yes i advised others to consider whether they should continue to write as the payments were not being made but at the end of the day that is up to the individual to decide.

Now if I had said that the admin staff had done a bunk with our money to the bahamas that would be libellous but I would hardly make an assertion I could not back up.

To date I have stated that there has been no communication - well there has now in fact quite a few emails one sent to all of you stating that I have been suspended following libellous comments. As anyone who has followed the postings on here will know none of what I have said has been a lie and other writers can also vouch for the lack of communication and money.

Jennifer has stated that if she finds anything libellous in my posts she will take action- unfortunately there are no such comments so I am not concerned in the slightest. Also as has been pointed out before by WB bringing a defamation case against a forum user is nigh on impossible as it is not possible to identify an individual through a user name.

Anyway I have been told I will get my money once paypal is sorted so I will keep you all posted on the progress of this

*Sigh* This site has suddenly become a complete let-down. It truly had immense possibilities. :(

Hi all,

Just some replies to the issues raised here.

PAYMENTS/PAYPAL
Firstly, both our writers and customers will know that we've experienced delays because of Paypal's restrictions which are entirely beyond our control. We mailed everyone to explain this several times and we've responded to individual emails asking about the delay. There's not a lot we can do. We made all payments up to the 12th December (using a temporary account) but we've not been able to do anything since then. We have actually offered to make payments via bank transfer for all UK writers.

AUTOMATED WITHDRAWALS
We've got an automated withdrawal system programmed and ready to put in place as soon as Paypal lift their restrictions. So there won't be any future delays because the system will make the payments. The contributors here who have said that the delay is as a result of us being 'greedy' are a little short sighted because there is actually no benefit at all to us having funds sitting in our Paypal account. If anything, it is causing a detriment to our business and clearly we want to resolve the problem as soon as is possible.

VERIFICATION
I can tell you now that ALL of the writers that are verified on Essay Bay are verified as a result of them taking us up on our offer to verify them for free if they already work for Academic Knowledge or Deveraux and Deloitte. The reason we are able to do this for free is because it takes us considerably less time to process. For other writers, we have fixed the fee at $100 (approximately £50). This represents the time taken to check through their documents and add them to the database, record their qualifications etc. It is not a simple process. But, as yet, nobody has used this service. So the comments on profit making etc are unjustified. Furthermore, it is clear that we are running a business, not a charity. Please remember that, as for any business, a great deal of the administration work, programming and marketing (which gets our writers work) that we do is done without charge.

GENERAL
Our writers and customers have been assured that we do care very much about them and that we are doing everything we possibly can to resolve the situation. We can only apologise for these circumstances which, as mentioned, are entirely beyond our control.

Responses to specific posters:

johnny_outsmart - it is an interesting proposition to open new accounts just to be able to send payments Johnny but if you understand how Paypal works, we have to add some means of funding to each account that we 'drum up' and given that there are currently 1,033 writers on this site, you can see that this is just impossible.

julie24963 - as explained to Julie personally, there is no possible legal claim for a 3 week delay in making payment down to reasons that are well beyond our control. As also explained to Julie, her comments to our clients and our writers on the site ARE libellous and she has taken action with a view to damaging our business. This is why we have parted company with her.

There is of course no issue with customers or writers complaining to us and I fully appreciate that this is extremely frustrating - we would not remove a customer or writer for simply complaining. But this member has gone far beyond that and for that reason, we do not feel we can sustain a business relationship with her.

I can assure you that EssayBay is not a scam company. EssayBay is part of the Academic Answers Group, a well established limited company registered at Companies House which has been trading for 4+ years (it does not belong to me, as some posters have suggested - I work on developing and programming the site, and I am dealing with administrative enquiries for now so that I can fully appreciate where customers and writers have difficulties in using it). The suggestion that a delay in payment to writers of three weeks due to circumstances beyond our control makes us a scam company is simply without substance. All other writers and customers on the site have managed to grasp this -- but to those who have been contacted by julie24963 and led to believe otherwise, we can only apologise for the concern this must have caused to you. We are confident that service will return to normal very soon.

Well, thanks all for your time and if you do have any enquiries or questions, please do let me know. I am always happy to help. I'm sorry the mails have been rather slow over the Christmas and New Year period, and with nearly 2,000 members on the site now, we're considering how we can better handle queries - however, I'll be spending the rest of today going through any outstanding issues.

Kind regards

Jennifer

What baffles me is how this PayPal business can get you stuck for this long. I mean, if you are a legitimate company then shouldn't you have taken care of this problem by now? I'm no PayPal expert but I think I'm smart enough to know that as long as you have money to fund PayPal payments using a premium PayPal account, you shouldn't be experiencing any of these problems.

The thing is, a lot of people here (myself included) thought that your website was truly a great idea. As soon as you actually fix this PayPal problem, perhaps I'll start thinking the that same way again. Until then, I'll stay sour about the money you owe me that I can't get from my account since I'm not in the UK.

Hi again Johnny, and everyone,

Apologies if my previous email came across as a little stern. I am of course not angry at any of our customers or writers for feeling the way that they do which is 100% understandable - I am so angry at Paypal for causing this situation and feel really frustrated that I cannot physically do anything further to change it.

Paypal's requirements baffled us as well because we added a payment card to the account for the purpose of confirming our address which was fine - and then they said they had to send us a letter to confirm our address (which we'd already confirmed). They took a month to get this to us. As if that wasn't sufficient, they then asked for a whole load of documents all of which we have provided straight away. Yet regardless, as you can see, we're actually listed as 'Verified'.

I can appreciate your frustration - I really can. I am equally as frustrated, particularly as telephoning Paypal every time means an hour on hold, and they don't answer emails for weeks either. I have actually sent them a link to this discussion so they can see what the delay is doing to our business reputation.

I hope that this incident will not prevent people from understanding what we have tried to do with EssayBay. The essay business is rife with fraud as this forum proves, and our aim was to create a transparent service where, if a writer was dishonest or rubbish, customers would quickly see this from their feedback. On the other hand, if the writer was excellent, customers would see this too - and great writers would be rewarded with more work and more money. I'm sure nobody disputes that this is a great idea. We just need to iron out these problems - the delay in releasing funds to writers and the rather slow support time which I must personally apologise for. You see, when you mail me with a problem, I don't simply answer your mail - I'll instead be looking at why that problem arose and how we can program the site to work better. There's a lot of changes in the pipeline for improving EssayBay and I hope you can bear with us through this difficult situation.

Once again, if we can do a bank transfer for anyone, we'll gladly do this -- unfortunately Barclays do charge $40 for international transfers, but the UK transfers are free.

Hey, thank you very much indeed to all those people who have sent me supportive emails about the site. I cannot tell you how much this means. May I take this opportunity to wish everyone a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Regards

Jennifer

Very true. The sooner you fix the first one, the sooner I get back to making bids and taking orders. I'm a good writer and I'm sure you can see that my feedback proves it. I can be a great asset to you as soon as you make me see that it's worth it. Thank you for addressing our concerns. We will be waiting for results.

what a ridiculous attitude. you claim to run a business but you can't even pay your workers on time. the paypal excuse is pathetic. do paper checks not exist in the UK? if you cared about your writers, you'd do whatever is needed to pay them on time. postage isn't that expensive. if you are really part of a 4 year + company, then you should have figured out by now how to pay people on time without experiencing "paypal difficulties." somehow, i doubt that you had to wait to get paid yourself.

firing julie is just a demonstration that you're working as hard as possible to hide the problems with your business. any writer who pays you 100$ for verificiation is a fool.

reading all these posts about writers not getting paid is just depressing. there are companies who manage to pay on time every week. if you really want to write, work for them and stop supporting these losers.

Would you be so kind as to make some suggestions for me to try out? My email is daniel.creste@yahoo.

Lavinia

Thanks for your support. I note that Jenifer keeps harping on anout my libellous comments even though I pointed out to her that libel means falsehood and as the comments I made consisted of

I haven't been paid and I have had no communication from them these are not falsehoods. I did suggest that we probably would not get paid however the use of the word probably implies that this is a supposition. Now if i had said we were not going to get paid that would be something I could not back up with a fact and therefore could be a falsehood.

I also warned other writers that the money was a tad difficult to get what they decide to do is up to them but I guess many have decided to stop writing until they get paid judging by the number of topics there are on the site not being assigned.

As you said Lavinia there are other ways that payments could have been arranged rather than relying on paypal as that obviously isn't working.

Anyway I am not going to lose any sleep over being fired from a company that takes so long to sort out its administration system that people stop working for them. I will keep you all posted if the money ever does get released as I am told that she still intends paying me (isn't that big of her considering its money I am owed)

Hi Lavinia

Thank you for your feedback, which is always appreciated.

My comment regarding running a business rather than a charity was clearly in respect of the fact that we do have to make some profit to cover our expenses, and to make the whole exercise worthwhile. I explained clearly that whilst we do charge a fee for verification (and this doesn't apply where the writer works for one of the other companies in the group because the time taken to verify them is a lot less), we don't charge for a great deal of other services. I'm sure that any person who runs their own business will understand and appreciate the very basics of how a business works, anyway.

Also Lavinia, you suggested that the Paypal scenario is an excuse and we should find some other way of paying our writers -- but if you had read my earlier posts, you would know that we already offered do a bank transfer for any UK writer that required it. This service has in fact been available on the site for months.

I did carefully explain why we had parted company with Julie. I'm sure you sympathise with her position but with all due respect, you do not know the correspondence that has passed between us, or between her and our customers/other writers. What Julie says on this site, and what actually happened, are two different things. And, as a Fellow of the Institute of Legal Executives, I fully understand what a libel is, and would never dream of suggesting that anyone had made libellous statements unless I had sufficient evidence to support my claim.

As for working for other companies, this is always an option and our writers, being freelance, are perfectly entitled to explore this option. EssayBay belongs to a group of companies that has traded successfully for around 4 years - chances are most of our writers do already work for another of the companies within the group!

Once again, I appreciate that this situation is frustrating for our writers but they do have the option of a bank transfer (and have always had this option, which we have made clear from the start) if they do not want to wait.

Regards

Jennifer