Is using essay services considered plagiarism?

Hi guys

I was wondering if someone could help me a little. Is using essay services considered plagiarism? I would say yes and am totally against cheating due to wanting to uphold the integrity of academic studies, however......i recently started an Msc and became bewildered with one particular academic essay regarding strict critical analysis. I have always been ok with essays, but someone still miss the whole critical part so I searched various terms on google such as essay help, support etc. I found essaywriter as the top answer and decided what the hell, id approach them to write the piece (going against all my morals). I intended to use it honestly by basing my work upon theirs in order to support the structure of my own work, for guidelines. I know some students actually try to pass the work off as their own which is plagiarism really.

Anyway, stupidly enough i am at one of the top uk universities and my course convenor is aware someone off the course of 40 people has approached them - they admit they monitor these sites due to this growing issue. I am obviously not going to base anything on the work at all as they will clearly find out who i am, and il be chuked off the course and never work again!! What worries me is not the fact i lose £300 but that my uni will someone find out who i am due to the name and email and catch me anyway!!

How protected is my identity as i used real name on the order, my credit card etc. Will the lecturer posing as a writer be able to catch me out. I have never done anything like this before and never will again as im scared ive screwed up and they know who i am.

What are your thoughts will they be able to find out my details and expel me. Can i get the service to delete my details etc?

Cheers

My advice would be to check the essay you have paid for and see of you can find the same resources that the writer used in the piece. If these are available to you either electronically or in paper form you can these access these yourself and decide how to use these in your own piece.

If you use the paper you bought for ideas only and develop those ideas in your own style etc then you should be ok. Whoever wrote the paper for you would have had to have access to the sources quoted so it is likely that these saem sources are available globally. this would mean that if you hadn't approached one of these companies you might feasibly have found these sources from your own initiative.

By no means hand this in as your own work as this will be what the lecturer is looking for. using the ideas in the essay would not be considered plagiarism if you accessed the same sources and then did your own interpretation of the article accessed. remember to properly cite the pieces you have accessed and if they are internet based include the date on which you actually went on that site. using a pre-written essay in this manner is no different to consulting a model answer. if the sources quoted are easily accessible to you and it is obvious from the content of your work that you have read those sources then the lecturer could not accuse you of plagiarism. developing the ideas in the essay you bought and adding your own interpretation shows that you were only using this as a guideline.

alternatively if there was more than one question you could do for your course (and there usually is) you could do an entirely different question and then there is no way you could be accused of using an essay writing service.

Also, TW, essay companies don't usually pass on your real name or any of your personal details to their writers.

Might be worth checking your uni terms and conditions as to whether essay companies can be used - but as exwriter said, if you don't hand in the work but instead use it as a guide and do the work yourself, they'd be hard pushed to accuse you of plagairism.

Sounds like your almost saying that it doesn't matter if he hands it in as his own as the writer wouldn't know the customers identity.

Thanks for your comments much appreciated. I'm too petrified to pass it off as my own work as risk losing my place at uni. Im still stunned that these services exist - there seem to be hundreds if not thousands around - are they not considered types of fraud?

Im surprised they are legally allowed to exist if people do pass it off as their own work. Like ex writer said i think they are good for model answers but i do feel it is now a rip off. I paid £270 for the piece, which is good but not as critical as i had hoped. Also because my lecturer or someone who knows my course structure posed on the site as a "writer", they stated they were only offered £100 so in fact these sites are making a huge profit which is not being passed onto the writers.

May i ask how and why you become a freelance writer for these sites? And if you are lecturers yourselves what are your thoughts of these sites in general.

I initially joined up with UKessays in the mistaken belief that these essays were being sold to universities as model answers. Indeed the first email I had from this company purported to be associated with birmingham university. I had no reason to doubt that the essays would be used in this way especially since I had previously written model answers for colleges and universities.

When I discovered that students were using these sites and passing them off as their own work I was annoyed at having been conned into believing that the work would not be used in this manner. I found out that these were being used in this way through an email from the quality department which stated that the customer had complained that the essay did not get the requested grade. It was obvious that the essay had therefore been submitted without alteration otherwise the customer would not have been able to claim that the essay did not get the required grade if they had altered the paper into their own words.

I did what any reputable person would do and quit and now only assist with proof reading and editing services as well as online tuition in some cases. I find this rewarding morally and am happy not to be associated with assisting a student to cheat to succeed.

You have to look at something more legitimate in these sites. Most of the times you will get a lot of help from this forum as nearly all the sites are discussed here... Most of the members in this forum are freelancers as well and have experience with some sites and will help you in taking any decision about your project etc.

EW, do you have a copy of that first mail? I haven't been with the Company from day 1 so I'd be interested to read it.

I very much doubt it since this was probably 3 years ago that I received it. I quit your company quite some time ago and started my own legitimate business not as a writer.

Due to the way that the email was worded i passed this to several of my friends and colleagues who also started writing for your company also believing these were model answers for universities. These friends have also quit mostly due to ethically issues although some have simply not got the time to do it anymore and others had issues regarding the fines, and the way they were treated by the company as a whole.

I do not buy the excuse that the university monitors these websites in order to catch students using the service. It doesn't follow because they would actually have to work for the website in order to keep up their cover. Thus aiding in the violation of the very academic rules they claim to uphold by doing the undercover work. That sounds like a professor trying to use a scare tactic on the students and nothing more. Using essay services can never be considered plagiarism because the rights to the paper are turned over to the student for his use in the manner he requires. Essay companies will not willingly submit the essay to a site like Turnitin, which would render the paper useless. A student can safely use the essay without fear of plagiarism provided he changes the model paper enough for it to contain most of his own words. In fact, he should only retain the in-text citations and paraphrased information with sources for use in his original paper. A student who speaks English fluently will not have a problem paraphrasing the entire paper if necessary.

Interestingly, a decent number of professors (current and retired) also work as academic writers. I know a few who actively teach and write.

And something funny...
I was contracting with a company when I was still in college. I had a customer I helped through his entire course. That next semester, guess who my professor was. Yep! Of course, he didn't know my full name, but I knew his from the emails we had exchanged. Then when he listed his personal email in the syllabus, I knew for sure it was him. I never said a word. I didn't have a problem with it. It was apparent he was probably trying to teach full time and get his PhD all the while juggling family life. I'm glad that I (a lowly undergrad at the time) could help him with his PhD level work. And it seems I did help... he was a great teacher. LOL. ;)

That aside, sure, I knew his name, but when I contracted with that company, I signed an agreement to keep information confidential. I know not everyone gives a flip about promises, but I do.

All (intentional) plagiarism is cheating; but not all cheating necessarily involves plagiarism. Plagiarism only refers to the originality of your writing and/or to the full, proper, and sufficient disclosure of any sources of every unoriginal idea in your work. Turning in a piece of writing that you paid someone else to write is (obviously) cheating, but it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with plagiarism as long as nothing in the work is (also) plagiarized or (deliberately) improperly or insufficiently cited. I'm not passing judgment and it's absolutely none of my business how my clients choose to use my work, because anything they pay me to write belongs to them once they receive it. But since this decade-old thread has been resurrected, I'm just answering the OP's question.

Contrary to some students perception, professors do not have the time to scour the internet for possible plagiarism in the work of their students. That is why they use a software for that. Using essay services cannot be considered plagiarism because the papers developed for the students are original in terms of content and presentation. It is not a piece of work that comes from previously published work. It is not plagiarism when you hire someone to write the essay for you. Provided the paper that results is of original content. Professors can't even tell the difference between a student's original work and a paid for paper. That is, provided the paper is done correctly and not atrociously as some 3rd rate writers from questionable companies are prone to do. Don't worry about it. Plagiarism is a totally different case from having a paper originally written for you.

If a student purchases a an original model paper, then he has not plagiarized since he did not write the paper. Now, assuming that the student chose to not use the model paper, meaning he did not submit if for a grade, and he instead, chose to write a new paper based on the purchased text. Is that plagiarism? I do not think so. I believe it is not plagiarism when you only take bits and pieces from a paper that was never submitted, thus it never became part of any plagiarism checking database. The paper remains an original regardless of how the student uses the model paper. The only question here is if the student did a plagiarism check on his own, which puts the essay into a database, and results in parts of the student written paper appearing as plagiarized parts. Otherwise, no, having your paper written for you, an original paper, will never be considered plagiarism.

Using an essay service to write your paper is not in itself an act of plagiarism. Rather, it is an act of hiring academic help to complete your paper. However, when the writer plagiarizes the content of the paper, then the paper, rather than the act of using the writing service, becomes a plagiarism problem. It is easy to see how someone could easily get confused by this since academic writers from 3rd world countries have been known to rely on plagiarism to complete their work orders. Do not confuse the plagiarism action of the writer with the act of hiring the essay writing service.

Thank you for clarifying this point for us students @noted. I did not realize that it is alright to hire a writing service, since that is an act that cannot be considered plagiarism, but it is not okay for the company writer to turn in a plagiarized paper to me, as the client. So, I guess that my habit of rewriting the paid paper in its entirety is something that has protected me from plagiarism problems all this time.

Writers plagiarising papers are lazy ones. Poorly paraphrased papers as well as wrong or none citation are features of plagiarism. For example, three-word rule is a common guideline used to avoid verbatim plagiarism during paraphrasing. Try not to write three consecutive words from a content.