Essay Research Scams - what to do and how to avoid them?

Hi Guys,

I think is time for us to start thinking about what to do and how to action scams issues.

Can we start sharing ideas and helping each other with any information that can be useful, I think that is one the ways we can avoid these fraudulent people that turns student to the source of their income.

Thanks

Great idea! I only wish that someone had thought of that long ago. We could have made such progress by now.

What can a person say? :) :)

how to avoid them?

---> may be start writing essays on your own?

what to do?

---> get scammed, cry and post it on Essay Scams?

I will say this I don't think there's a way to avoid paper scams online when trying to order a custom paper. Fed up about a year ago I started my own and had a team of people I personally knew. I'd still be in business if the two writers didn't have personal commitments of their own. At any rate this post is not an advertisement but more of a complaint. I personally have ordered for almost any site you can think up and have been scammed on them all. In fact all these sits claim they are legit with non-plagiarized papers and a good majority of ones I've ordered have been either word for word copy and paste jobs from wikipedia or damn near close to 100% copied. I'd love for one person to provide a legit site because I currently have a 15 page paper that is due and am too lazy to do it. I'm not shelling out another dime on bogus sites.

What's even funnier is this I ordered a paper last April from ...okay I don't have their name but they operate many of the websites out there...here is the email title

Writing Services Company <nonplagiarized@thewritersland.com

The paper wasn't ordered from thewritersland though. After I was scammed I emailed the company and got no response. I sent an email to them as well as on their contact site everyday for 5 months. I didn't miss a day. No response. It wasn't until I started my own site and blasted them in my intro that they retaliated. They went as far to pretend to be a customer stating they paid me on paypal and never received a paper. It got better they created a fake receipt and everything. My father who works in the computer industry traced the IP which matched an IP signature from the owner of the website. When I decided to close down my site they kept emailing me asking "where did your site go you didn't do well did you", which isn't the case. I provided a legit service.

Okay I realize I rambled on through this post but I'm fed up with the sites online. There is no way to find a legit site and frankly from the amount of sites I've personally ordered from I think it's a fact there's not a legit one out there. I realize as well that contradicts me saying I had a legit site, but most of my traffic came from word of mouth through various Universitys in the United States. Oh well I guess I should do my own paper.

If you're going to be ordering essays, the smartest thing to do is order a few small papers as far in advance of your deadline as possible. Don't wait until you have a major project to start experimenting and keep your costs down while trying out companies by ordering as early as possible.

Once you find a writer you like, stick with that company and always request that writer. If a company treats you unfairly, don't use them again and let everyone know to avoid them; if you're just not thrilled with the writer's work don't blame the company unless it's so bad that there's no excuse for their using that writer at all.

It's not much different from finding a good car mechanic: you either go by word-of-mouth referral from satisfied customers or you take your car in for minor stuff and gradually build trust in a shop and/or a specific mechanic who does good work and doesn't rip you off.

hmm where's freelancewriter these days

Just way busier than I've ever been before...between the essay-writing sites and private clients, I'm basically writing all night 7 nights a week, sleeping from about 7 AM - 2 PM, and just trying to get a couple of workouts in a week...

There are few good men online. I hope we can work together and not to be scammed by selfish and robbers sites on the world wide web. We should not only complain and warn our brothers but we must act together to prevent writers from getting scammed by these sites who used our talents and resources to earn for themselves alone and really don't have plans to share the profits to us writers who did all the effort and the hardwork. Not only that we also used our resources for conducting researches and writing our works.

This is not an advertisement, I just wanted to end this endless complaints about scammer site who did not pay their writers. The best option we have is to work together as a team.

The problem is, a lot of writers who don't really have an adequate grasp of the language (like yourself) are still trying to work in this business. Your ESL is very good, but it is not of professional academic quality.

if you paid through paypal - report them!

[Moved from]:

You should know better before you get yourself scammed, scolded and scorned!

For the short time I have been here, I have noticed a certain uncouth trend in how allegations are made and discussed. Most users in this site are basically ignorant of facts. Some are addicted to lies. Yet still, others are good at concocting crude propaganda and cheap gossips. Most of them are long-fired and disgruntled writers. They only come here to shake off their misfortunes and shed tears of failures!

I believe the problem is often not the systems (the companies), but the mindset with which we operate in the system.

There is always a problem with the mindset people carry along with them. This is what you have demonstrated - you have a mindset that's failed you see you're making no sense on this forum. First, your statement above is simply way too overgeneralized. Secondly, You've failed to substantiate anything you posted here with evidence. Finally, you have NOT made even a single post that is aligned with the central theme of this forum.

They might as well face it......


Is that like over-grilled?


I believe you're a scam writer trying to justify his position and failing miserably.

How could I have failed when people like you are very much around? You serve as my concrete evidence. Actually, you are the kind of users I was referring to,those who come here to shake off their misfortunes. Those with weird mindsets! Continue weeping buddy, it helps in reducing stress concentration.


I lack the appropriate words to express my at most discontent in your attempts to demonstrate some writing ingenuity. Instead, you confusingly stumble over ideas as you babble out irrelevant contributions. This is sad!

I know. This was the only intelligible part of the whole post.

Thanks for the joke - I really needed a hilarious one.

[Moved from]: Alexa is the best way to avoid academic research scams?

Best way to avoid scams.

Go to alexa.

Paste the link of the writing company.

Look where the IP comes from.

You guys are welcome.

Do thorough research. Read more here: money.usnews/money/personal-finance/articles/2011/07/26/9

ways-to-avoid-online-scams

Searching thoroughly about a person is the best alternative.

Knowing the location of a company's IP doesnot help in avoiding being scammed, in anyway. Most of these companies are hosted in the United States and The UK, but in real sense, they are run by people from "other parts" of the world; Ukrain for example.

who cares from where a writer or company is from. If the quality is good then why would students complain

[Moved from]: Why students ceaselessly fall for research service scams

I am always perplexed at the high number of students who are scammed by either American companies or foreign ones.
First, any student wishing to use the services of an essay company is, by default, lazy. Such student will not take time to study the company's operations and at the slightest persuasion, will fish out his credit card and throw his $ into thin air.

Students don't take time to investigate whether a company is scam or not. Additionally, ALL essay companies are shady and potential frauds, too. It doesn't matter whether a company is located in Washington or in Islamabad. Or these companies are out to make quick bucks and will care less about the quality of the papers that their writers produce. After all, year in year out, thousands of potential suckers join the universities and the vicious cycle of fraud and deceptions begin.

I believe students need to be educated on the basics of good academic writing. That way, they'll not be held hostage by shadowy companies operated by unethical businessmen.

You sure do use a lot or words to communicate nothing of substance.

YAWN.

(PS: Stop being so mad because your ripoff essay sites got shut down for engaging in various illegal activities.)

For the 1,000,000,000,000 time, i HAVE NEVER operated an essay website. Can you just please shut up.

You should never pay full amount upfront...ask for a discount at first and see if they have a policy for rework..u will be in safe mode by that.

I absolutely believe that scams against students who seek help with their assignments are unavoidable. Is it not ironic to say that internet scams, lies, victimization, etc., can be prevented when in fact, you cannot do so in the real, physical, face-to-face interactions in society?

Wickedness always manifests itself whenever we go. That is the reality of this world.

Anyway, I believe the best way to avoid scams has to do with the "very" thing scams are all about - money and communication. If you cannot communicate well with the people in the writing service, do not commit yourself to them. For instance, if you want to ask for any form of assurance from them - such as partial payment for large projects costing more than a hundred dollars - but were not given some, make serious considerations.

For a customer, ask them to allow partial payments for orders that cost a big deal of money.

For writers, build your trust little by little. If the company says that you have to have at least $100 in your earnings before you get your compensation, do not go beyond that. If you got paid in your first month, try earning a bit more until you finally get assured that the company pays what is due you - no matter how much it could ever be.

Just to remind, this is all about uncertainties and assurances. All you can do is to engage yourself to it or not. For how will you know if a good-looking service is a scam if you do not try finding it out? If you get victimized, you got the answer. If not, you got the answer as well. Just do not ever engage yourself too much.

If you have more advice, post them here (reviews of difficult situations welcome ).

Nonsense.

With due respect to you Writers2Beware, I am not saying a nonsense thing - as you would unhesitatingly comment on me. I do not mean that one cannot avoid scams. I simply claim that scams can happen even in ways you do not expect. You just cannot control their occurrences. Just consider this, look at the testimony of students scammed even by "prominent" writing services in the internet.

@queen sheba under whose authority to do you find that you can easily call the students who use academic writing services "lazy"? Do you know these students personally? Do you know their personal circumstances that led to their need to use a writing service? How dare you make assumptions based on a personal hate for the users of the academic writing services. You have no right to be judge and jury in this instance. You crossed the line. I've had it with your holier than though attitude that reeks across these forum pages. You are nothing but a less than impressive person trying to pass yourself off as an intellectual. Unfortunately, your intellect does shine through, and not in the positive manner that you hoped it would. I am glad that you eventually decided to call it quits and disappear from the forum. The place became better without you in it. Your venom never helped the students here. It only spewed hatred and discord. I am sure the students also did not appreciate your calling them lazy. No student is ever lazy. Too busy to do the paperwork maybe, never lazy.

I have always believed that students get scammed because they forget that the best recommendation for a writing service will always come from their peers. The academic writing industry in an open secret on all college and university campuses. Students admit to using these services in private. Therefore, they have ample experience, both good and bad, when it comes to these writing companies. These are information that they freely share with one another so there is no reason for any student to get scammed unless he goes in looking for a writing company or independent writer blindly.

Let's put it this way, nobody who asks for directions ever gets lost. Sure it might take him time to get to where he is going but the instructions and experiences of others that he can learn from by simply asking for referrals or follow up questions can help him get the writing help he needs sooner rather than later. So, you don't want to get scammed? Avoid it by asking for recommendations from your friends and classmates. They will always have a good writer or writing company to recommend to you.

That's actually very much the exception rather than the rule. Once in a while, I do get requests from two or three friends together for different versions of the same project, as well as new clients who mention that a previous client recommended them. However, I get very few one-time clients, because almost every first-time client of mine uses me at least a half a dozen or a dozen times or more, depending mainly on when they found me in their academic careers. If many of them referred just one new client to me, I'd quickly be inundated with more work than I could ever possibly produce. The truth is that most of my clients never admit to anybody where they got their projects for several reasons: (1) They know that college friendships often change or end and that what they admit to someone who might be a "friend" today could easily come back to bite them in the a#$ tomorrow; (2) They're graded on a curve and don't want to share the competitive advantage that my work provides; and (3) They simply prefer to have everybody (friends and family included) believe that they wrote these essays themselves and they probably show them off to their parents as though they really wrote them. In fact, I've had clients who are senior-level managers in government agencies and fairly-high-ranking officers in the armed forces tell me, very specifically, that they'd never even tell their spouses or anybody else in their own families that I wrote their theses and dissertations for them. I've even had people in intimate partnerships place orders for their partners without telling them that because they wanted their partners to think that they wrote their projects for them. So, trust me when I tell you that they're not very often telling their classmates or school friends about this, either.

The other side of the spectrum is that even the closest friends in college (and life) don't share "everything." Some won't share their experience out of embarrassment or, as @FreelanceWriter said, to claim the credit for themselves. Some might have no problem sharing the service with a friend who may need help, too, BUT what if that friend becomes a foe? Do they really want to risk their "friend" knowing something that could hinder their degree? Even if they have already obtained the degree, it's still a risk as degrees have been revoked for similar issues.

If a writer is wanting to reach the university crowd in person, making in person visits to student halls, etc. is a way to go. A few will tell others, but the majority won't. You have to be proactive in finding clients. If you're looking to work for a company versus independently, you still have to be proactive but you also have to be very careful. I'd personally go the indie route but a newcomer may have to contract with a company to get a foot in the door.

Exactly. This is precisely why even a high number of long-term repeat customers generates so few direct referrals; because I'm quite sure that all of them have plenty of friends who need the same services just as much as they do and that they're fully aware of that.

I agree. I think that most of our long-term clients have worked out a system for themselves, if you will, and part of that system is maintaining complete silence about what they are doing. There is a lot of stigma associated with this work, and while that isn't necessarily warranted, most students want to avoid that as much as possible. It is true that some students share information about trusted writing sites or particular freelance writers, but for the most part, they keep their involvement with academic writing professionals to themselves.

To be very frank if you want to get saved from essay research scams then you must start researching on reliable sources, which provide relevant information on dialy basis to students. I had searched for over month and then find some trusted resources.

I mean anyone here with 'FEATURED' next to their name is pretty much a solid choice. Just make an account, contact them with the specifics, pay the invoice and away we go.

"Featured" just means that the user is paying for his name to be advertised on the forum. Does that mean that the forum actually did a background check on the "featured" writers to make sure they aren't running scams? Nobody can be sure of what exactly is entailed in the "featured" tag, which serves a purpose similar to the blue check mark / verified tag on social media. Should a writer with that next to his username be trusted? Well, not considering the paid advertising amount, then yes, it does raise the "trust" factor more than a notch. However, it never hurts to err on the side of caution. Do your own investigation before hiring a writer. Recommendations should work best and offer a higher sense of trust than a mere "featured" tag next to a username.

By itself, the fact that a writer is "featured" obviously doesn't necessarily mean all that much, simply because it's just a form of paid advertising. However, it does, at least, mean that we're not anonymous to the forum admin because they know our real identities. The variable that's much more important to someone worried about the legitimacy and reliability of a writer on this forum is how long we've been active on this forum using the same ID without any complaints about our work. New clients should still test any writer with a small project anytime that's possible; but chances are that a writer who has been a member of this forum for more than a decade without any complaints from clients about having been ripped off or about having received unsatisfactory work is not going to disappoint any new clients, either.