I think I was scammed (found Proquest UMI dissertation number in my document)

Hi, new here.

Won't disrespect the site nor the company I used, so will not name names.

Bought a paper (whether you believe it or not, I have a hard time conveying what I read into words, I can talk about it all day, so I needed a template, whatever) from a company. On time, paper was actually decent - BUT, right-clicking the document gives away alot of info.! Once I received the paper, I found in the properties a Proquest UMI dissertation number, the dates the file was created (in March - I asked for it last week... yeah!) and the person's name AND school. A quick search actually led me to find out who the person who wrote it was - but I am not the kind of person who would ever want to destroy someone's reputation or worse, so I never referred to the person's last name. The problem with the paper was that is was TOO GOOD. Unless this person had no other work, s/he wrote an amazing work. Given that I found all this info., I contacted the "customer service" and all of a sudden the writer disappeared (well, did not write back) and I was and still am bombarded by "this is original, it was a mistake - s/he COPIED AND PASTED -that's a quote - YOUR original essay into a larger one - huh???! Now, as I ask for a re-write since the material was good but so off tilt I could do nothing with it, they want to charge me.

What do I do? I'd hate to contact ProQuest/the University, the person is just trying to make a living, I understand it totally. It's the company which got under my skin by twisting my words, saying my request was not specific enough, and other b.s. (I saved all the e-mails). I was going to work on it this weekend but I asked for specifically only a few references but received almost 30!!!!! Card is charged already, so I'm stuck with something that I am convinced is plagiarized. I do have EVE software, but even when I run Moby Dick through it, it NEVER shows an plagiarism.

Please, any suggestions, ideas, help, etc. As I said I know the material and am being very respectful, but I shelled out about $400 US for this, and if it's a floater (plucked from online), I'm screwed. Thanks so much, and look forward to feedback. If you need to PM me, please do so.

If it doesn't show plagiarism in your thesis so why do you think you got scammed..? Maybe the document was saved on a public computer in a library. Most students here would actually be happy to receive a paper that cannot be detected by anti-plagiarism software ;). If I was a student, I'd take the paper and run away (glad I'm not though ").

Of course now that you have publicised on here your suspicions, there is always a danger that the university you attend might access this site and decide to check all essay submissions against those accessible on Proquest which means that if your essay was taken directly from someone else's work the university might just be able to trace the original even though your plagairism program did not detect any. In which case you are your own worst enemy as you have now drawn attention to the probable source of your paper.

struggling,

I have no idea what you just said - never mentioned my school - never mentioned anything, really. What is it that you are talking about?! Plus, I'm not going to hand in the work I got "as-is", that's not me.

Also, my school doesn't only uses Turnitin, in which they would need a digital copy - why would you post so "angrily"? I could be living in Alaska, using a proxy, fake name, etc. - sooooooo, what's your point.

Major seemed to get my point, and I do retract my statement. It's not plagiarized, just no where near what I needed.

I was not posting 'angrily' merely pointing out that there is no point to your post. You think you have been scammed but the plagiarism detector finds nothing so why would you think you have been scammed? By making an issue that you MIGHT have a plagairised paper invites the universities to check such places as Proquest since you seem to think this is the source of your paper. That was the point I was trying to make!

Hi,

yes I apologize. no scam, but I all that time thinking about it and finding out I lost time reviewing what was written to write. No, don't hand in work that isn't mine. But thanks for the feedback, appreciated.

Major, can you PM me, I tried but it says I need four useful posts. Thanks.

When an essay normally shows no plagiarism, students normally shut up and thank their lucky stars. What are you complaining about? The essay was relatively safe to submit for a grade till you personally removed that safety net. Are you crazy? you should have left well enough alone and thanked the writer for actually doing his job and doing it well. Geez! sometimes, I really can't understand these students. Writers can never win when the student himself doesn't know what he wants.

The university should have been informed of what happened. They need to learn about these things so they can develop a better database protection system. These universities keep previous student papers in their system as a reference point for current students. If their system was somehow compromised then their system could be undered useless in the future. This could also put the current user's reputation in a negative light as the action isa violation of every universities Academic Honor Code. It may not have been found out at the time but, action can still be taken at a future date, if the student is found out.

What probably happened is that the writer simply used the formatted template of an old dissertation instead of setting up a newly formatted document, and he probably explained that to a customer service rep who barely speaks English. If the writer had actually copied and pasted the work, the company probably wouldn't have admitted that to the client; instead, they'd have described it as some other much more innocent-sounding mistake. Granted, plagiarism scanning was much newer 13 years ago, when this thread was last active, but the OP did indicate that he checked it with some tools that were available back then and found no plagiarism flags. Had I noticed this thread back then, I'd have suggested that the OP simply search ProQuest for that document # to determine whether the essay content was actually copied from it; and if it was, to pursue a refund by just providing that info to his payment processor or credit card company, together with a link to the essay company website copy promising original writing.