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Posts by Major / Posting Activity: ☆☆ 279
I am: Unspecified
Joined: Oct 03, 2006 		Last Post: Aug 28, 2019
Threads: 35
Posts: 1449  
Displayed posts: 1296 / page 2 of 33
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Major   
Jul 26, 2018
General Talk / Payment for writing Services upfront [17]

Well, I don't see you having to be 'pushy' at all ;):

You: can I pay only for first 5 or 10 pages and if I'm happy then I will pay for more as we go fair enough

Sheri, CustomPapers: Yes, I think that will be okay.

--

Anyway, I don't know your topic or specific order requirements; since they are OK with doing first 5 or 10 pages, I'd suggest that you order 5 pages and go from there; if it is not what you expected, they can still transfer the order to another writer (it may not be possible if half of the order was completed though). Regarding 'if they are legit' - for sure, they are a legitimate business located in the US. Still, it'd be interesting to read what freelance writers have to say on that (especially those who normally accept installment payments).
Major   
Jul 26, 2018
General Talk / Payment for writing Services upfront [17]

Something still doesn't add up. I'm sure they would not tell you 'if you're not happy with the writer, too bad.' I think your attitude may not promote the best buying strategy; if you ask a business providing a custom research service: "What if you send me 10 or even 50 pages and I don't like them - you will refund me the money, right?" - it may raise a red flag as it may strongly suggest you want to get the service for free. Just like teaching, custom research / writing is an intangible service; guess what your university board would tell you when you ask them about money back AFTER you have completed your class. That's why, as suggested, ordering 5 or 10 pages may be your (and their) best option; if you don't like it, it isn't going to create as much damage as ordering 50 pages.

I'd suggest to wait and see what others (freelance writers) have to say on that; but from my experience, you're not going to find a legitimate writer who would knowingly risk writing 10 pages for free; IF you have provided complete order instructions and made it clear what it is going to take to complete this project, and they are still willing to work on it, it may suggest they are capable of doing it.
Major   
Jul 26, 2018
General Talk / Payment for writing Services upfront [17]

It'd be interesting to know what you mean by 'being pushy' - does it mean they didn't want you to pay in installments? What did you have to do to 'persuade' them? There are some African and Eastern European 'PhDs and Doctors' on EssayChat that may be willing to help (some of them don't ask for any money upfront, but there's no guarantee on anything other than your identity being stolen ;)
Major   
Jul 20, 2018
General Talk / Upwork Review (Programming Project / Hourly Payment) - Bad Freelancer / Payment Disputed [18]

'Evidence' presented by Upwork has very suspicious reasoning behind it. Formally, they are an escrow company. But when there is a dispute between a buyer and a freelancer, they act as if the freelancer was their employee. In fact, they have no business judging the quality of the freelancer's work; if the work is not done to the buyer's satisfaction, their job is to refund the money either in full or part. But here, they essentially admit they are not an escrow service, but a company that hired the worker ('freelancer') to provide the service to the buyer. That changes the whole story and their whole business model (from tax point of view too).

And from Upwork's own User Agreement:

2.1 RELATIONSHIP WITH UPWORK

"Upwork merely makes the Site and Site Services available to enable Freelancers and Clients to find and transact directly with each other."

"You acknowledge, agree, and understand that Upwork is not a party to the relationship or any dealings between Client and Freelancer."

SO - Upwork is in clear violation of their own agreement every time they deny the client's complaint because they actively become a party to the relationship between client and freelancer. It can also be argued that whenever it happens, 'freelancers' should be treated as their own employees.
Major   
Jul 14, 2018
General Talk / Upwork Review (Programming Project / Hourly Payment) - Bad Freelancer / Payment Disputed [18]

Having reviewed Upwork's terms of service.. they literally state that they 'merely provide a platform for Internet payment services.' Their core business model is collecting commission for work paid (they charge both the buyer and the provider). Nothing else. The terms for the client / buyer (student) are even worse than all of those bad offshore writing services out there (if you're lucky, they may check the quality or plagiarism issue and give you a refund); with Upwork, they do nothing but take money from the buyer. If you happen to work with a scammer, it's your problem and they would fight to protect the scammer, not you (the buyer / student).

I'm surprised there are still some students who consider using such platforms. 100% risk falls on the buyer / student. Of course, they may claim this suspicious 'business model' only applies to 'hourly contracts,' but seeing this review it's hard to believe that.
Major   
Jul 13, 2018
General Talk / Upwork Review (Programming Project / Hourly Payment) - Bad Freelancer / Payment Disputed [18]

IMO, despite the fact they are a huge company, Upwork is walking on thin ice here. They claim to provide all those tools for the buyer (who is essentially an employer) to control the work, timing, behavior, etc. of a freelancer. Depending on jurisdiction, a really pis**ed off customer / buyer could take it to court and win it by reclassifying all Upwork buyers as employers. If that were to happen, Upwork / Freelancer / Fivver / Guru etc. business models would collapse and they would be forced to close their businesses.

A second problem - in this case I'm sure the freelancer / programmer is from a non-developed country where service provider (not customer) is always right. In those countries, it's typically impossible to return an item to a store or claim money back. Such providers think that the quality of their work doesn't really matter as long as they showed up and 'worked' on something. Upwork should be clear about that before they sign up freelancers.
Major   
Jul 06, 2018
General Talk / Is a refund for a custom-written essay justified? Refund time. [23]

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.
Major   
Jul 04, 2018
General Talk / Is a refund for a custom-written essay justified? Refund time. [23]

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 :
Major   
Jul 04, 2018
General Talk / Is a refund for a custom-written essay justified? Refund time. [23]

No company issues refunds just because customers says they're "not satisfied."

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)?
Major   
Jun 27, 2018
General Talk / Sites on DND (Do Not Discuss) list [24]

They can claim so many things on this forum to the detriment of the company but not be able to really back up their claims.

Actually, almost all sites (with a couple of exceptions) listed on the DND had real students complain about their services. It's fairly easy to spot bogus reviews. I'd say that about 80%-90% of the DND listings are owned by 2-3 offshore companies which have created dozens of sites to attract one-time customers.
Major   
Jun 05, 2018
General Talk / Grammarly Review - User Content Ownership vs Licensing (or "How You Got Owned") [7]

This is an excellent report. Considering everything presented above... shouldn't all serious professionals (attorneys, ghostwriters / freelance writers, doctors, teachers / professors who grade student papers, programmers etc.) who use such tools disclose to their clients that they use them? If someone hires a professional to create something custom / to be owned exclusively by them and it turns out the hired person gives the license (in their own name because you as the client don't expect to pay for content to be used by somebody else for free), then they might be in breach of contract if they use such tools.

In other words, if I hire you to write a book and you as a freelance writer give license to the book to third parties (and don't tell me about it), then you may be in legal troubles. Even if you tell me about it, your compensation is going to be substantially reduced (up to 100% unless you manage to cancel this irrevocable, worldwide, and perpetual license in international courts ;)
Major   
Jun 01, 2018
Essay Services / Legit Essay Writing services. [26]

they must be doing something right in their business model.

First, they pay their non-English 'writers' as little as $2-$4 per page (or take a full content written in their local native languages and run it through Google translator), then run it through an auto-editing tool to pretty it up. Their cost is much less than what legitimate companies in the UK or US pay. The bad quality or semi-plagiarized content doesn't work for English graduate-level orders for literate customers, but it may work well for the rest. So one can say they are more efficient due to cheap labor and technology.

Second, they aren't required to follow the US/UK/EU laws, especially copyright and labor. A legitimate Western academic research company cannot treat their freelance writers like regular employees, but they can, ie. they can require them to work at certain days and hours, force them to work on something they don't want (or face penalties), control their vacation time, and monitor the methods of completing the job.

Third, they can get away with illegal (in the US/UK/EU) activities like hacking of academic and government websites (OR their legitimate competitors) to insert links to give them unfair advantage in search engines. Many of them have teamed up with online criminals because they know the FBI or CIA won't pursue them, unless they get caught in crimes related to more sinister activities. Or they have taken advantage of the loopholes like illegal Youtube star advertising of academic paper services (this loophole has been closed only recently).

So, to your point, it's like comparing two professional athletes: a female-born woman (ENL US/UK/EU service) vs. a man who has become a transgender 'woman' at the age of 18 (ESL offshore services). Who is in a better position to win a long-term race? The man. But the laws are catching up and these advantages may (or may not) disappear.
Major   
May 31, 2018
Essay Services / Legit Essay Writing services. [26]

As I see it today, there are 3 groups of 'academic paper services':

1. Illegitimate ESL (located in a non-English speaking country, using non-native English writers, and untruthful about this crucial fact).

2. Legitimate ENL (located in a Western English-speaking country, using mostly or exclusively native-English writers).

3. Legitimate ESL (located in a non-English speaking country, using mostly non-native English writers, but truthful about that).

Regarding the proportions, they might appear staggeringly unequal for a casual observer. A few years ago the proportions were more stable, but today to me it looks something like this:

Academic paper essay writing services today.
Major   
May 23, 2018
General Talk / What is the best tool to do plagiarism checking? [101]

Right. In the near future, absolutely everything will be somewhat plagiarized, so the only way would be to try using synonyms which would make the content even less smart. The original source has got to the point right away; all other 'derivatives' just dumb it down trying to make the same point, but written in 'other words.' Like:

2+2=4 (Original)
2+1+0-2+3=4 ('Non-plagiarized' Derivative)

I doubt most professors enjoy reading that.
Major   
May 22, 2018
Essay Services / List of spamming | scamming | foreign TWITTER freelance writer | essay service accounts [40]

At first, I thought all those fake news are a 'nuttin' burger, but now, having seen how easy it is for hackers to create hundreds or thousands accounts that have custom pictures, profile descriptions, and automatically add followers at the time of account creation, and it can happen within a few hours, I'm starting to change my mind. Twitter's inaction is self-sabotaging.
Major   
May 22, 2018
Essay Services / Possible blackmail (paid for a coding assignment)! Advice needed! [14]

I wouldn't try to do a chargeback just yet. You have time to do it and it's possible they see this thread and refund you in the meantime. Regarding confidentiality agreement.. it sounds good in theory, but they must record such meetings and note what they were about. It could be misinterpreted by another person in the future and other persons (not only the specific counselor) may have access to the file now or in the future.
Major   
May 22, 2018
Essay Services / Possible blackmail (paid for a coding assignment)! Advice needed! [14]

The "Returns Policy" has obviously been stolen / plagiarized from unrelated but legitimate websites (it's basically a copy-paste). Still, the policy states you are surely eligible for a refund within 3 days (if the project was not completed and sent to you within that time).

Yes, they / IWORKBOXX LIMITED are from Pakistan (used to be incorporated in the UK but now their status appears to be 'dissolved' - it's likely they still exist but only as a Pakistani company, if it's even a company) - check out: beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10037102

Well, the bottom line is that you did nothing wrong. You've been scammed. You didn't receive the service and you didn't use it. I'm not sure if talking to a university counselor is a good idea at this point; they may record this as an "incident" in their files and it could work against you in the future. Even if they "contact" the university, they cannot show anything other than your payment (they won't show any work sent to you or downloaded by you).
Major   
May 22, 2018
Essay Services / Possible blackmail (paid for a coding assignment)! Advice needed! [14]

How much did you pay? Do you know their country location (it should be listed in your Paypal receipt email) - I'm pretty sure they are from India or Pakistan? And how soon after the payment (in minutes) did you contact them to cancel it?
Major   
May 22, 2018
Writing Careers / When will orders pick up for writers this season? Summer / holiday strategies? [22]

Based on Google trends data I created this chart that seems to be a pretty good representation of a typical 'essay writing season' for freelance writers and academic paper services. The overall trend is downward due to some negative factors, like the fraudsters' strategy to create hundreds of websites to scam a few students at a time or publishing totally bogus reviews written by their own writers. This has created uncertainty among students because when only 1 out of 50 websites found on Google is legitimate, figuring out who is a scam or not may be tricky.

A typical academic writing and research season in given months .
Major   
May 17, 2018
Essay Services / edubirdie.com any opinions? [35]

... creative solutions .. it's like someone very familiar with the severe anti-drug laws in Malaysia going to a Malaysia Airlines terminal and talking some random travelers (Youtubers) into delivering a package with 'recreational drugs' in exchange for some cash. It may sound creative to you, but to them, at this point, it's probably not.
Major   
May 17, 2018
Essay Services / edubirdie.com any opinions? [35]

business model is based on a constant supply of first-time/last-time customers

Excellent point. And all those fake names like "Jasmine Carlos" - who comes up with them.
Major   
May 16, 2018
General Talk / What is the best tool to do plagiarism checking? [101]

I've just stumbled upon another 'free' plagiarism tool called Quetext. Checking the terms of service, it says:

"You do not transfer ownership of your Content by posting it and we make no claim of ownership to your content. However, by posting Content, you grant us an irrevocable right and permission to reproduce, encode, store, copy, transmit, or otherwise use your Content. Please note that this license continues even if you stop using our Sites."

I'm not a lawyer, but to me it reads like: "When you submit your own original content (essay, research paper, dissertation, PhD thesis, etc.) to check it for plagiarism, you are welcome to keep copyright, but we can still do whatever we want with the said content."

Obviously, the real fight is about publishing / making profit from it. If the copyright owner hasn't published the work yet, 90% of those who check it for plagiarism haven't, and Quetext does publish it surrounded by ads or puts it in a database of pre-written academic papers for sale - too bad, it's going to be attributed to Quetext because they were the first to publish it. The copyright holder can do nothing about it because they agreed to having their work reproduced and copied.

It's the same old story; such Terms apply to virtually all free plagiarism detection tools that treat the checked content as their own. I wonder why students continue giving away their intellectual work and rights for free; they could use Google to achieve the same without any risk and it would be free too.
Major   
May 15, 2018
General Talk / Average price per page and deadline: US / UK services vs ESL (non-English) services [8]

So I took 8 popular academic research services and divided them between:

- LEGITIMATE / ENGLISH (4 from US, 4 from UK) and
- ESL / NON-ENGLISH (8 from random non-English speaking countries like Pakistan, Ukraine, Kenya, India, Russia).

I wanted to compare differences in prices, but not only their country's location point of view, but also in relation to how far the project deadline is. Before this test, I concluded that most ESL services, for some reason, offer much better 'deals' when deadline is very distant. I've always been wondering why / how it's possible that the same writer (employee) would work for much less ONLY BECAUSE the deadline was distant. It has never made much sense to me, considering the fact that even such badly-reviewed services like Fiverr don't offer much discount if the deadline is far in the future. It DOES make sense that services / freelance writers may charge substantially more for rush orders, but if a research project can be comfortably done within, let's say, a week, the price cannot be considerably lower only if it is scheduled to be completed within two weeks.

The results of my findings are presented below. In summary:

- ESL writing services charge, on average, 21.65% less when deadline is far in the future vs. regular deadline. On the other hand, established US / UK services charge only 6.37% less in that case. Charging a few percent less makes sense, but over 20% seems to suggest that a service is not only ESL, but also suspicious.

- The average combined price per page (completed within a default deadline) of a foreign / ESL research service is: 20.50 USD. The average combined price per page of a legitimate US / UK service is: 57.50 USD PER PAGE; wow - that was a little unexpected as it seems a lot, but we know UK-based services [over]charge (?) a lot. If we only take an average price of US-based services, the average cost is closer to $34 per page.

- Services that charge less than $20 per page are obvious offshore scams.

Obviously, this 'research' is not very accurate, but it may serve as a good starting point, especially to students who have no idea about the 'example research and writing market.' I tried to be objective (adjusted the price depending on how many words one page a given service offered; averaged a default date vs. distant date if they were unreasonably different from the rest, etc.).

Average price per page and deadline of US UK writing services vs. foreign non-English .
Major   
May 12, 2018
Essay Services / So I tried fiverr.com for essay content writing - it failed and it sucks [10]

From what I've noticed, a large number of the writer accounts on Fiverr are somehow associated with each other. They may work in some kind of affiliated groups which allows them to create multiple accounts and associate them with English-speaking countries to fool their prospective customers. Some of their bios strongly suggest they have been written by average ESL writers (or translated via Google translator from their native language).

Most of the accounts have 'reviews' from alleged customers, but they are either non-genuine or useless (like 'Great job writer.'). I wouldn't be surprised if these 'affiliates' placed fake orders to be able to leave positive feedbacks. All in all, below average ESL writers dominate the place and I wouldn't suggest an American or British student to consider hiring them.
Major   
May 11, 2018
Essay Services / Any quality writers at CriticalProof? [40]

It used to be pretty good service (definitely run by a UK-person). But now, for some reason, it's completely gone. It seems the semi-literate foreign scammers (that charge $10-$20 per page) start taking over. It may be worthy a new thread.
Major   
May 06, 2018
Essay Services / edubirdie.com any opinions? [35]

My legitimate independent competitors and I compete against one another honorably and amicably

Saying one thing in public and backstabbing in private is not the best definition of 'honorable.' When some other writer or service contacted you if you'd be interested in completing the order, you chose to criticize them. Or whenever some other writer or service has been criticized, you add fuel to the fire to present your own service in a positive light.

This is too far-fetched IMO.

If you knew more, it would not appear that way to you. The BBC is part of the 'old media' that is in constant fight with the new media (ie. Google / Youtube / Facebook etc.). The indirect goal of the old media might have been to discredit the competitor (ie. Youtube / Google), ie. that they have no control over advertisers and actual content published on their platforms. The goal was achieved, but there could be other aspects to it too.

For example, could you explain why almost only non-UK 'academic cheating' services have ever had bad press in the British media? Is it just a coincidence? All the examples / PDFs of 'dishonest writing services' have been carefully picked to only show those that are not British-owned. It's like writing a big news report entitled: 'The History of Automobiles' and not mentioning the word Ford.
Major   
May 05, 2018
Essay Services / edubirdie.com any opinions? [35]

I'm not quite sure this works against them.

In a short term, yes. But in the long term.. when students find out that even prominent Youtube stars have no recourse against the Ukrainian laws (or lack of thereof), they may consider double-checking the service's or writer's true location before ordering from them. Otherwise, they can end up in the same situation.

The companies don't necessarily have Russians/Ukrainians doing the actual writing.

The point was that a turtle will never be faster than a rabbit. Your riposte was that a snail or a night crawler might be faster than a rabbit. Not.

Regarding the whole drama, I understand Youtube / Google. They have received bad publicity on something they (at least Google) have banned from advertising. The Ukrainian managers have found a way to get around the ban and took advantage of lack of legal knowledge / experience of Youtube publishers. Youtube / Google made no money on those inside deals so it's not surprising they have no problem banning the videos.

The only question is, who sponsored the BBC investigations and why. The same Ukrainian services (and / or their competition) have been buying unattributed links from HuffPosts and other mainstream reporters / bloggers. It's forbidden by Google search TOS, but it's been going on for years now.
Major   
May 01, 2018
Essay Services / edubirdie.com any opinions? [35]

I don't know what to think about it.. I'm starting to feel more and more suspicious about the state of the UK media in regards to reporting of academic paper services. EduBirdie (located in Ukraine, but having a market presence in the UK) and other non-UK-based research services working with UK students have been attacked by the big UK media for years now, but UKEssays (which is located in the UK and is the biggest of them and has advertised on big UK media outlets and has been promoting academic cheating by guaranteeing actual academic grades) has never had bad press (until the start of this year when they lost an appeal regarding false advertising). Is it just a coincidence or well played politics? Still hard to say.
Major   
Apr 25, 2018
Writing Careers / Two Tier QAD Check Now Being Implemented by Some Companies [7]

You probably mean the foreign services that advertise to work with, let's say, 400 'writers' but only a few (so called 'top-tier writers') are capable of writing a sentence without a serious grammatical or logical error. And their 'quality assurance managers' very often hardly understand any English (but since they are friends or family members of the owners, they have been promoted to 'managerial' positions). It's a slippery slope, indeed.

The bottom line is, the 'Quality Assurance' method imposed by some of the non-US / non-UK services is a joke because it's performed by the weakest links, ie. people who have no idea what constitutes high research or writing quality.
Major   
Apr 24, 2018
Essay Services / Ukessays: Industry leading guarantees or big lots of bollox? [33]

It's a step in the right direction; you may notice this dishonest / illegal in most countries activity has been reported above several years ago. Now it's time to make it right with students who use their 'free' plagiarism scanning tool which publishes the scanned content in full on their own website.
Major   
Apr 24, 2018
Essay Services / Has anyone used studentshare.net to write an essay? [22]

I visited the site again; there are indeed stolen copyrighted logos published on the website. If logos are stolen / published without the explicit consent of the trademark owners, what else could be stolen or hidden? I don't know a student who would 1) create an account, 2) 'contribute' their own papers to a foreign database of pre-written essays. So the whole idea is fishy and most claims from the FAQ page are false.
Major   
Apr 24, 2018
General Talk / Advice on what to do when the work you received was really bad [10]

Have you submitted the project as your own for a credit? If so, you risk more than you think and your claims may be invalid if their TOS don't allow it :(

Without seeing all the emails, it's hard to determine who is right. Could you post all the email correspondence here for us to review them?
Major   
Apr 21, 2018
Writing Careers / Academic ghostwriting market - newbie writer's questions [14]

I'm not sure about thousands of people; out of 10 'freelance writer' accounts, 1-3 may be real / legitimate; same story with writing services (one fraudster manages 50+ websites under different names). A writer for hire doesn't typically work 40-hours a week; most of them work unscheduled hours (sometimes it may be 10 hrs a week, sometimes 50 hrs).
Major   
Apr 21, 2018
Writing Careers / Academic ghostwriting market - newbie writer's questions [14]

If you only work for $1 then yes, your chances of getting better deals are very good. If you want communities that provide no substance, there are some available but you'll not get much any insight information there.
Major   
Apr 21, 2018
Writing Careers / Academic ghostwriting market - newbie writer's questions [14]

I'd advise to stay in the local area (assuming by 'local' you mean your country or some kind of university community) and slowly build reputation to gain more local clients. Going into the 'world ghostwriting market,' you'll have to compete with thousands of other ESL writers for less money you (probably) get now. UNLESS you have some extraordinary education or research skills related to hard-sciences like engineering, physics, math, accounting, computing etc.. then you could use your knowledge to successfully compete in these areas with native English speakers.

Regarding your future efforts to earn a PhD degree - working as an academic ghostwriter is not going to negatively affect your professional career.
Major   
Apr 10, 2018
General Talk / When a writing company lies, what can be done? [22]

Ok, so $5/page within a year is honest advertising.. despite the fact there might be one such order per decade.. ok I get it. If something (in theory) can happen, it's good to go. Honest business ;) Something like hiring a retired PhD contractor who may write one page per year and advertising that <our team of 600 writers includes PhDs> (when there is only one dormant PhD in the 'team' and the rest are just ESL college dropouts from suspicious countries). It's not referring to you, but such reasoning only gives hints to the fraudsters on how to stay 'legal' and be dishonest at the same time.
Major   
Apr 08, 2018
General Talk / When a writing company lies, what can be done? [22]

What kind of proof do you need? My point was that I hope you would be perfectly fine if a legitimate writing service advertised that their prices start from $5 per page (if delivered within a year).