Is a refund for a custom-written essay justified? Refund time.

Hi
Lets say John Doe placed an order to an essay site. But he didnt feel right, so he said he wanted a refund. Things got really dodgy. When he said he will do a chargeback with the bank, they said they will ruin his career in every single possible way. They said they will report it to his college.

Can they do this? Or is it a way of scaring people?

What essay site?

John Doe should have known that he had ordered a custom essay which would be of no use to other clients. If he tries to do a chargeback, the writer has the right to make sure his/her copyrighted paper will not be used by the student without a written authorization. That's the only reasonable and working way of protecting the writer.


Does it matter?

What do you think the point of this site is? (Hint: think of the site's name)

The point of the question was - is it okay for a student to demand a refund for a custom-written essay for a frivolous reason. I don't think the name of the service or the freelance writer who has actually completed the order should matter here.

If you were a writer who delivered a 20-page paper and the student said he didn't like your writing style, would you be willing to refund him the money?

It really depends on facts that aren't clear from your question. What does "didn't feel right" mean? And what does "things got really dodgy" mean?

If you changed your mind about ordering it shortly afterwards and wanted to cancel it long before the work was produced, they're just extortionists. They're not really obligated to refund it and changing your mind isn't a valid reason to do a chargeback, but depending on the relevant dates, they should refund it just from the perspective of establishing goodwill with a customer.

The reasonableness of your change of mind depends very much on when you placed the order, when it was due, and when you decided to cancel. If it was for an order due in a month and you asked to cancel the day after ordering, they should have refunded it completely. If it was a rush order or you asked to cancel a longer-term order only a few days before the due date, then you can't demand any refund. You can ask but they're not wrong to refuse.

If you mean they actually sent you the essay, then your complaint that it "didn't feel right" isn't a valid basis for demanding a refund at all.

If you want a better answer, tell us exactly what happened.

I want to know what company (possibly) threatened to report someone to their school. And yeah, as for details, that's just the tip of the iceberg.

Translation: "I want to know some more information so I can make hollow statements about something for which I know nothing."

*about which

You might want to work on your own language skills before continuing to build these little glass houses. I do love to see a good mistranslation, though.

As for this thread, it's looking more and more like John Schmoe panicked. Are you there, John?

It's okay Mr. Doofus. I didn't expect you to catch that one.

Watch out for what you don't know, slob.

You writing skills are lacking. Enough about that, though. Has your mother released her bestiality gang-bang collection on blu-ray yet?

Related: About a refund from a term paper service - how long does it take?

just three days ago I asked for a refund from a term paper writing service, and they said they have issued it.But till now haven't seen the money on my account.How long does it take for the money to arrive?

And btw this term paper service has provided me decent service previously,and this is not a bash thread.I just want to know whether it takes this much of time for the refund to complete.

Refunds from any online company typically take up to 5 business days for all involved banks to process and post to your account.

It's just a way of scaring people. If John Doe did not receive or he refused to accept the finished paper, simply by not downloading it to his system, then he never completed the ordering process. He is well within his rights to file a chargeback. As for reporting him to his university, this is becoming a regular feature for scam writers. It appears that most students actually get scared and allow the blackmailer to succeed. The student tends to forget that the only people who can validly claim that he submitted work that was paid for are the educators from the university. If he really doesn't want to continue with the service, then he has every right to file for the refund. There is no contract binding him to have to pay for services not rendered. There is no problem with that. He can definitely file the chargeback within the allowable time frame. The threats are empty and he has nothing to worry about. The refund transaction is a legitimate course of action for the student and he hasn't broken any laws so he has nothing to fear.

Student blackmail is the reason why writing companies have been working on making their refund policies more obvious / seeable on their websites. A clear refund policy is what sets apart a scam company from a legitimate one. A legitimate company always has a refund policy indicated. This covers the acceptable reasons for refunds and the schedule by which a student is allowed to file a chargeback claim. By doing so, the company and the student have a clear agreement regarding the paper to be completed.

A legitimate company does not have a problem with having a chargeback policy because they are confident of their writers work and they know that they will never or very rarely need to enforce this policy with a client. Any company that does not have a clear chargeback policy or has a murky refund policy should be deemed illegtimate and a client should not deal with them.

Blackmail and refund policies have absolutely nothing to do with one another. More importantly, if any entity actually misuses customer information for blackmail purposes, what makes you think that their refund "policy" actually means anything or will turn out to be true?


Legitimate companies don't usually offer refunds for any reason other than missed deadlines, plagiarism by their writers, and outright failure to follow project specs; and except for missed deadlines, they usually reserve the right to fix the project, first. In fact, one of the most obvious signs that you're dealing with a scam company or writer is that the refund policy is too good to be true. No company issues refunds just because customers says they're "not satisfied." Legit companies don't promise that in their refund policies in the first place; it's the scam companies that usually do.


You don't seem to understand that one of the tools that illegitimate companies (and writers) use to perpetrate their scams is, precisely, by posting very generous-sounding refund policies that promise refunds anytime a customer isn't satisfied with the work "for any reason." Of course, customers who try to invoke any of those generous-sounding refund policies find out very quickly that the refund policy itself was just part of the scam. That's also precisely when they find out that all of those customer service reps who were super-polite and super-helpful before they got hold of their customers' money suddenly become unreachable or start threatening to use customers' personal information against them if they try to force a refund, even for missed deadlines, outright copy/paste plagiarism, and projects whose content and/or writing is completely worthless.

If you've worked with enough students, at one point you must have experienced one that wanted a refund because he/she was not satisfied. The paper was good, you followed instructions, met all deadlines. What was your answer to them? Next, what would you do if they still wanted a refund (threatening you with a chargeback)?

I'll be more than happy to answer your question, and in some detail, as soon as you explain exactly how your company deals with that same situation.

You've actually answered the question - you (at least in public) do nothing not to get abused by fraudulent shoppers, will apologize for their disappointments (always providing excellent customer service), never even store the buyer's personal information not to use it if needed, and will promptly issue a refund. Students (and fraudulent African writers) are free to order from you since you will gladly issue a refund once they claim not to be satisfied. Good deal to them :)

.. unless whatever you've written above about was just fantasizing, again :

That's not necessarily true. I've had plenty of these scammers pretending to be customers approach me and I've even posted about it on this forum.

As far as customer service goes, I provide what I consider to be very reasonable customer service that satisfies all of my long-term clients. However, I don't have the time or patience to write the kinds of super-polite emails addressing every inquiring potential client by name and I definitely don't have the patience to deal with people who waste my time with questions that are fully answered in my FAQs or (especially) for anybody who asks me to do business differently than what's explained in my FAQs about how I do (and don't) do business. I've also explained that in previous posts even in my paid advertisements. That doesn't mean I don't have patience with first-time clients who need some reassurance to trust me on our first transaction, because I do; but that's not the same thing as asking me questions that are already answered in my FAQs after I've specifically asked someone to please read my FAQs before asking questions.

Whenever I'm a customer of some other types of service providers, I know not to waste their time that way and I wouldn't expect them to appreciate it or to be very patient with me if I did. I just expect my clients to conduct their end of our business the same way I conduct myself when I'm in the role of customer. I believe the example that I once used to explain this was the guy on Long Island who re-palms hockey gloves: He explains exactly how to ship them, how to include a return chipping label, and he explains the only options available for choice of materials; and I follow his instructions to the letter and don't waste his time with questions already answered in his FAQs.

I also do lose clients sometimes, even if they're happy with my work; that's because, unlike the vast majority of my clients, some of them just don't seem to be able to follow fairly simple instructions about things such as how to ask me about different delivery dates, how to send me new project inquiries, and how to send me materials for their projects. Once we're beyond the first assignment or two, I expect my clients to communicate their subsequent inquiries in just one or two clear emails and to provide the information that I need to give them a price. It's really not very complicated, but I have certain procedures designed to make things easier for me and to save my time. If they just can't get the hang of that and continue sending me a half a dozen (or a dozen) unnecessary emails for every new project or if they waste my time in other ways, I'm not concerned enough about losing their business to respond in what you'd consider the tone of "excellent customer service." Just last week, I had a repeat customer with whom my exchanges went something like this:

Me: What do these two very long articles have to do with your Chapter 1 assignment?
Him: They are both for the Ch. 1 assignment.
Me: I understand that. I'm asking you what they have to do with the assignment question because the topics don't seem to relate to the assignment question at all.

Him: You can forget about those articles and just do the assignment without them.
Me: Why are you wasting my time downloading and reviewing these long articles that I don't even need for the assignment?
Him: Please give me a refund and deduct for whatever time of yours I wasted.

I then immediately refunded the hundreds of dollars he'd paid in advance for the whole series of projects minus slightly less than the price of 1 page for the time he'd wasted of mine reading and responding to half-dozen or more confusing emails and reviewing two long articles. (If he hadn't offered to allow me to keep anything from his payment, I'd have just refunded the entire thing; but since he offered, I took him up on it.) Plenty of other writers or company reps have the patience to deal with that; I don't and it's not worth the aggravation.


I don't offer refunds just because a client says he isn't "satisfied." If I make an outright objective mistake, such as answering the wrong assignment question, leaving out something that was in the original specs, accidentally using the wrong citation style or the wrong book, I'll fix that at no charge and very quickly, and more often than not, the same day that they notify me that there was a problem. However, if the complaint is that the client says he "would have" devoted more pages to X and fewer pages to Y or that he "would have" focused more on one thing and less on another thing, I simply explain that this is precisely what "editorial criticism" means and that the contract that we execute explicitly says that there are no free rewrites for that kind of thing; but I can do whatever they want along those lines if they want to pay for the extra work. They almost always understand and then either pay for the requested changes or know to include any such requests in their specs for future projects.


Frankly, I really don't understand your hostility toward me (in general) or why you always respond to my posts so angrily and sarcastically. Here, you seem to be trying your best to steer fraudulent customers to me. In many of your other responses, you accuse me of attacking (all) essay companies anytime I respond about something that one essay company has done, even when I've never even identified what essay company was involved. I understand that we're competitors, but I've never said a word about your essay company and I also pay your company good money to advertise here. In fact, I've never said a negative word about any essay company in the decade that I've been a member of this forum, other than pointing out the atrocious "English" on the web pages of the ones who flagrantly violate the rules of your forum by recommending their own companies and post their websites in their posts. The only specific websites I've ever discussed here were those for which I've written, and that was to defend them against accusations that I knew couldn't possibly be true.

You treat me as though I'm here taking every opportunity to bash all essay companies, which simply isn't even remotely the case. Even back when I used to defend certain companies here, I was already competing directly against them for new customers. I've also defended other independent writers whose work I knew was good, even when someone posted a thread whose title said that the other writer was horrible and that customers should trust me instead of him. It would have been much easier for me to keep my mouth shut and simply let him absorb as much damage to his reputation as possible. Instead, I posted what I knew to be the truth about him and his good work. I've been similarly fair in discussing the relative potential benefits and risks of using companies vs. freelance writers. I've certainly never created any threads obviously designed to steer customers away from all essay companies and toward freelance writers the way you did here:

"Why no 'Terms of Service' when ordering from professional freelance writers?"
https://essayscam.org/forum/wc/terms-service-ordering-professional-freelance-4608/

I've previously mentioned that you and the other essay-company reps here would have been livid if I'd ever dared to create a similar thread intended to steer customers away from all essay companies the way you created that thread to try to do exactly that to us freelance writers, titling it something like "What if some essay-company writers are good but others are horrible, even at the same company?" and then opened that thread with a first post that said something like "When you order from an essay company, you have no control over which writer takes your project because they allow any writer to take your project if your requested writer doesn't want it...or do they?"

As I mentioned in your thread in 2014 (in Post #45), I believe this business is big enough for all legitimate freelance writers and all legitimate essay companies to co-exist amicably and without attacking or denigrating one another. The real enemies of all customers and of all legitimate essay providers (whether they're companies or freelance writers) are the scam companies and scam "writers" who rip off their clients and publish defamatory lies about their legitimate competitors. There is no reason that you and I have to treat one another as enemies. I compete fairly and honorably against all of my legitimate freelance competitors and against legitimate essay companies; I've mentioned before that I still occasionally refer projects to the essay company for which I did the most work when I did a lot of company writing. I have no quarrel with you or with your company and even if we have intellectual arguments about things like your apparent hatred of Obama, your belief in the afterlife, or your sincere belief that the Earth is flat and that NASA never actually landed on the Moon, I don't treat you like you're my enemy and I never instigate arguments with you about whether freelance writers or essay companies are better, in general.


I'll answer this, even though you haven't answered how your company handles this: This actually happened to me just this week. I wrote a difficult project more than a year ago for a UK grad student at the University of the West of England whose lecturer was extremely (and unreasonably) difficult to satisfy. At the time, the customer expressed gratitude for my good work, both on receipt and even after the lecturer tore it apart, and he indicated that he understood, completely, that the changes demanded by the lecturer weren't my fault and that some others were actually his fault for not expressing to me what he needed more clearly. I believe there might have been one element of the changes requested that could fairly have been considered my fault, and I made those changes free of charge. He paid for the rest of the revisions demanded by the lecturer and thanked me several more times for my hard work and he repeated several times that he understood that none of it was my fault. This week, a full 13 months later, he demanded a full refund for everything besides the paid edits and said that it was my fault that he failed his EXAMS. Obviously, I'm not giving him a refund.

If you're asking what I'd do if he began threatening me or tried to harm my reputation, the answer is simply that I'd have no choice but to post the essay in its entirety, as well as his change requests and the subsequent changes that I made to the project; and I'd allow readers to draw their own conclusions about whether or not I provided a quality project and whose fault it was that he failed his exams 13 months later.

Now that I've answered your question, why don't you do the same and just tell us what your essay company would do in the exact same situation?

This recent UK customer - it's obvious he used your work and claimed it was useless to him; your publishing the paper after 13 months may not bother him at all though. But your behavior in this case is what I'd also suggest.

Even though at some point, if you're dealing with a real credit card fraudster, it's not only about reputation, but about getting your money back. In that case, IF YOU KNEW you're dealing with a fraudster, publishing his "personal information" to warn other freelance writers or services might be the second best option.

Agreed. If I had to do that, it would be much more just so that the same audience of any complaint of his could see for themselves that I provided him with a quality project than it would be to bother or harm him, necessarily.


Understood. There are some precautions that I take to prevent (or, at least, to substantially reduce) ever finding myself in that position, but I don't want to discuss them publicly for obvious reasons.

A full refund is not justified if the writer already completed the paper and submitted it to the client. If he was just not satisfied with the paper, but the requirements were met, then the refund should reflect the hard work of the writer. If he chose not to use the paper and wishes to file a refund, I would fight the client every step of the way. Yes, I would make his life a living hell. While he may be successful with his chargeback claim, I will ruin the student in the writing circles. Making sure no company or independent writer would work with him now and in the future.

I was never one to quickly refund a client after I had already delivered the paper. It was not because I did not want to do the refund, it was because I always investigated the reason for the refund request. I was always confident that I had delivered as the client had requested for his paper so I needed a more valid reason for a refund. Change of mind or "I did not like the writing style" were not reasons that I accepted for a paper refund. If he could prove that more than 40% of the paper was plagiarized, then I might consider it. Then again I always ran a plagiarism checked before submitting the paper so that was a difficult thing for them to prove as well. I had a survey form they needed to fill out if they wanted a refund. Those were the only reasons I would consider for the deal to be cancelled.