They probably just do it because they figure that they'll get the highest quality of work on their 1-pg projects by selecting "PhD Level." Meanwhile, (with the possible exception of the newest fledgling writers who might be afraid to take those projects), company writers usually pay almost no attention whatsoever to what "level" customers check on those screens.

Once you've found this forum, you don't really need any additional sources of information on writers who have been active here for many years under the same ID, other than Googling their emails and websites. Just use the search function here, and, as always, change the default "Titles" to "Messages" so that your search returns aren't limited to threads with the name of the writer in the thread title. You can also use the messaging system to contact clients who've already indicated that they've used the writer you're considering.

If you didn't actually submit anything written for you, there's been no violation. College honor codes aren't like criminal law, because there's no such thing as "attempted" academic dishonesty or "conspiracy" to commit academic dishonesty. In the event that your school contacts you about it and demands a response, you can say that you did consider purchasing an essay but changed your mind and ended up writing it yourself. To take action against you, they'd need the actual essay that the writer claims to have written for you; so if you wrote and submitted your own essay, the writer couldn't possibly have it to show them for them to confirm that you actually submitted someone else's work as your own.

You don't think students already know that they have the option to write their own essays before contacting you?


So, you're saying that you have some clients who actually buy both a prewritten essay from you, first, and then a custom essay on the same topic? That's fascinating. What essay company would this be that you own? I'd really love to read your website.

An experienced US writer is fully capable of providing very high-quality UK work up to and including full dissertations. Conversely, there are plenty of UK-based essay companies and UK-educated writers who provide nothing of the sort. About half of my post-graduate clients are enrolled in UK universities. Sometimes, new prospective UK clients still decline my services after I disclose that I'm neither UK-based nor nor UK-educated, as is their prerogative.

If I were a customer, I would only use a company or writer whose TOS don't restrict what you may or may not do with the project or whose TOS say that the company or writer retains the copyright to the work after it's paid for and delivered. My customers own the work that I provide and it's totally up to them how they use it and what they choose to do with it once I've delivered it.

The OP's ESL English makes it a little difficult to understand, but his premise was that he believes all essay companies are scams in varying degrees, but that some of them might provide decent work more often than others; and he was hoping to find one of the more reliable ones even if it's the case that none of them is entirely scam-free. There are essay companies that aren't necessarily scams, per se; but anytime you use any company with hundreds of different writers, the quality of the work that you receive will always depend on which of their many writers takes the project off their assignment board, which means the same company might provide decent work on one project and horrible work on another.

The company for which I did the most writing before going completely independent definitely wasn't a scam; nevertheless, I encountered plenty of requests along the lines of "I'm placing another order for the same project because the writer who wrote it for me the first time is terrible and shouldn't even call himself a writer. Please do NOT allow [Name of Writer] to write my project again!" I also had the opportunity to see some of those projects and I really wouldn't blame a customer for assuming that the whole company was a scam judging by that project, especially if that project was his only experience with the company.

Turnitin single-handedly killed the value of recycled essays and is probably the main reason that I've been able to earn a decent living writing original academic papers.

Exactly.

I've explained this here countless times, but legitimate companies and writers don't schedule (let alone work on or deliver any portion of) any project that hasn't been paid for in full at the time the order is placed. The only exception might be a brand new and totally inexperienced writer who is really very desperate to find clients. Busy writers can't take the chance that any project they spend their time writing might not be paid; and they don't have the time (or need the hassle of having) to chase after payments for already-delivered work. Customers at least have access to online forums and other resources where they can check out the reputations of writers, but there's nothing comparable for writers to check out the "reputations" of every client who wants to order a project for the first time. If new clients are still apprehensive about trusting a writer even after doing their due diligence to check out their reputations, the only reasonable option is simply to order a very small project at first, and make sure to do so with plenty of time before the deadline in case things don't work out with that writer.

It's none of my business why anybody needs my services. Once my customers receive my work, it's also entirely up to them what they do with it because they own it.

Based on what some of my new clients send me after having first tried one of my cheaper competitors, that sounds perfectly accurate.

The only kinds of fraud that students who read this forum care about are the types of fraud that are perpetrated against them. If they're comfortable with the idea of outsourcing their essays in the first place, they're not the least bit concerned about how or why their writers became academic essay writers or about the ethics of being a professional academic writer. They read this forum to help them avoid getting ripped off by scam companies and simply to find a legitimate and reliable source of academic writing who will provide exactly what they promise to provide in return for payment. A perfect analogy would be the relationship between marijuana smokers and their dealers: pot buyers really couldn't care less about how or why their dealers became pot dealers, or about how criminal law applies to pot dealing. To buyers, a legit dealer is someone who gives them a good product and exactly as much of it as was paid for; and a "fraud" is a dealer who gives them a lousy product or less of a good product than they paid for, or who takes their money and gives them a bag of oregano instead of pot. Whether it's in the realm of academic essays or pot, satisfied customers who use the same provider many times and for many years obviously don't consider their providers "frauds."

I'm guessing the OP never became a writer.

Unless a customer specifically asks me to write a mediocre essay (which happens but only very rarely), I assume that my customers wouldn't consider me to be doing them a "favor" by providing them with a piece of writing that was "disorganized and unfocused in some parts." While I do routinely tone down my writing to the level of excellent undergraduate (vs. higher level) work, I'd never intentionally send them anything that requires corrections on their end. I always assume that they're paying me their hard-earned money for work that's submission-ready in quality and without any mistakes. Whether they ultimately choose to use my work as a model or as an actual submission is entirely their choice and nothing that I would have any way of knowing once my work is complete. However, even (perhaps, especially) when the work is intended as a model essay, I know that what they're paying me for is a model of what a project is supposed to look like when it's done perfectly, not imperfectly, much less "disorganized and unfocused in some parts." That would seem to me to defeat the whole purpose of paying for a model essay, in the first place.

Thank you (both). Customers (and prospective customers) who take the time to read my FAQs and then follow those simple instructions for requesting a price on a project will find me to be very polite and appreciative of their interest in my services. Customers who don't bother reading my FAQs and/or don't bother following those instructions for requesting a price on a project and/or those who ask me to do things for them that my FAQs very clearly explain that I never do for anybody (like schedule projects before payment) because they think that all of that only applies to other people will find me to be much less patient and, therefore, somewhat less polite and less appreciative of their interest in my services. Still others, like notsotypicalblonde in the thread linked here: https://essayscam.org/forum/es/essayservices-dissertation-help-needed-4434/#msg66179 appreciate my work, but are a little put off by the fact that I use emails the way other people use text messages, in that I don't usually bother with salutations or address people by their names. As I've explained in my review thread, that's just how I've always used email in general.

Obviously, I always want new clients; but I'm at the point in my career where I just don't need to chase after (or worry about losing) clients whose initial inquiries suggest that they're going to be more difficult to deal with than clients whose initial inquiries suggest that they're going to be easier to deal with (mainly because they've just taken the time to read my FAQs and follow simple instructions for requesting a price quote on a project). So, if you send me a project proposal that includes the topic, basic instructions, length, due date, and any alternate possible due dates in your first email, you will probably describe me as very polite and appreciative, based on my response. By contrast, if you email me anything along the following lines, you'll probably get a different kind of response from me, and you'll have no way of knowing that it's because you've already started off the wrong way with me, by totally ignoring the information and requests that I've included in my FAQs for very specific reasons and to save me wasted time emailing unnecessarily for information that belongs in the very first email:

"Hi. How much for a 2,000-word Psychology project?"
(No due date and no project specs or indication of academic level.)

"How much time do you need for a 1,200-word Nursing paper?"
(No due date and chances are you're not looking to pay what I'd charge to drop everything else in my life and do it for you in the next 2 hours.)

"Can I pay you half now and half on delivery? Because I've already been ripped off by other companies twice."
(My FAQs could not possibly be more clear about this.)

"Please tell me about your services."
(You mean like maybe writing it all out for you in great detail in a whole website that you can just read before contacting me?)

"Why should I trust you?"
(You probably shouldn't trust anybody with more than a small project, as explained in my FAQs and in a decade's worth of my forum posts.)

"Can you send me a sample on the same topic as my project?"
(Sure. That's why I spent my time explaining in my FAQs that I'll only send unrelated samples so that they can't be reused instead of ordering a project .)

"Hi. How much per page?"
(Brilliant question, because a 2-pg high school project due in a month is just as difficult as a 50-pg PhD dissertation chapter due in 3 days.)

The very first sentence (in large font) on their web page is grammatically incorrect and was definitely written by an ESL writer. The second sentence on their web page is grammatically incomprehenisble. It's always a huge red flag anytime you see a guarantee of a 100% refund just because you're "not satisfied" with their work. Legitimate companies sometimes offer refunds for missing deadlines and for delivering work that was plagiarized by any of their writers; more commonly, they promise only to provide a free revision, not a refund. No legitimate essay company refunds payments (much less 100% of your payment) just because customers say that they aren't "satisfied" with their essays. If it sounds too good to be true, it is.

All you need to do is search for "blackmail" using the search function here to get your answer.

You're probably not going to be able to identify scam companies just by their websites. Generally, because I've been doing this for 20 years and because I'm a grammarian, I can always spot ESL writing on websites claiming that their companies are located in the UK or US and/or that all of their writers are ENL; but most prospective customers can't do that. Other tip offs would include representations that all of their writers hold "advanced degrees" and (especially) that the company "assigns" writers who are "experts" in the particular subject matter of every project. Terms of service that sound too good to be true are another tipoff, because no essay company provides free revisions, let alone "unlimited" free revisions or refunds anytime customers (merely say that they) aren't satisfied with their work. Real essay companies (and writers) spell out the criteria that entitle you to a free revision, and limit those criteria to reasonable situations, such as their failure to follow the original specs for the project. As a prospective customer, you should Google the names and website urls and email addresses of any company you're considering and then use the search function on this forum. To do the latter effectively, you'll need to change the default "titles" to "messages" so that your search results aren't limited only to threads with the term for which you're searching in the thread title.

Actually, I have many more than "several" testimonials at this forum. In addition to several testimonials posted directly by clients on my profile page, alone, I also have twice as many testimonials on my review page, such as those from notsotypicalblonde in this thread (that I added as quotes along with links to their original threads where all of those comments can be found), and several comments from some of my most talented legitimate competitors, including Professor Verb, who referred to me as "the best in the business," in one of them, which I really appreciate). Equally important is the fact that I've been active on this forum under this same ID since October of 2008 without a single complaint from anybody about the quality of my work.

This is correct. Transfer of copyright has absolutely nothing to do with the issue of knowingly providing work intended to be used for the purposes covered by those criminal statutes.

I've written several dozen of them for US, UK, Australian, and European clients, including two PhD dissertations (with overlapping deadlines) for two totally different PhD degrees for a single client (who left a review on my forum profile page).

I've never needed the slightest bit of help from any other writers, much less from an entire "team" of writers, or from the clients, either. Generally, the reason students (including PhD degree candidates) hire a professional writer in the first place is, precisely, because they want to be able to outsource the entire project. The main reason some clients prefer to remain involved during the process is simply that they don't trust the writer not to screw it up; but if they trust the provider, they'd much rather be able to cross the task entirely off their To Do list and just let the writer deliver their completed dissertations by the deadline promised.

Typically, PhD clients provide much of the source material, together with the detailed dissertation guide distributed by their academic institutions; and then, they pay for an Intro section or for the Literature Review section. Once they're satisfied that I know what I'm doing and that they can trust me to provide exactly what they're expecting, they just pay for the rest of the dissertation and they leave me alone until I deliver the completed dissertation, as promised.

Their webcopy alone should be enough a warning about the quality of writing you can expect from them; so are their samples if you check them.

The site no longer seems to be in existence, but I'm not bypassing my computer's system alert prompt to find out for sure.

Agreed.

An excessive number of citations is certainly poor, amateurish writing that's typical for lower-level students (and inexperienced writers), and it usually means the paper is devoid of any real scholarship; but it isn't directly related to "plagiarism" at all. I've seen plenty of student essays that cited almost every sentence. Actually, it usually represents a very conscientious effort on the part of a student to avoid plagiarizing anything. The problem with those types of essays is that they don't represent any original thought or analysis; but (technically) if everything is paraphrased and properly cited, the one thing it's not is plagiarism.

I'm confused.

In this thread, you're saying this:




However, in this thread, here, you posted the exact opposite:
https://essayscam.org/forum/es/thewritescholars-5878/#msg83219




How do you reconcile all of this conflicting advice?

As I've explained many times, the only sensible way to test any new writer is simply to pay for a very small project (or for a small portion of a larger project), first, and one that has a long deadline, just in case you don't receive work of the quality that you're expecting. No experienced writer who is any good will agree to accept anything less than full payment up front for any project. A customer who is afraid to pay for even a very small project in advance to test a new writer is, essentially, guaranteeing that any writer you do find is desperate for business; and usually, there's a very good reason for that desperation. Also, I have never heard of any legitimate essay company anywhere that accepts "25% of the full amount" for any project that it schedules.

This is true:


Large companies may book dozens of projects per day, which is a volume of work that no independent writer could possibly match.

This is not true:


While I'm not a genius, I can write almost any project much better than almost any college undergraduate can write the same project, and in almost any subject area. The topic range of even the best writer will narrow at higher levels of education; but a good writer with a lot of experience doing this can still produce a better project than most graduate students in many fields of study, if not most fields of study.

This is not true, either:


What I said above does not apply to most writers at essay companies. When you hire a really good freelance writer, you're paying for the fact that your results aren't substantially determined by which writer (of hundreds) happens to take your project.

I agree with the post above. That's why anytime you read anything along the lines of the following, you can be 100% certain that whoever wrote it is simply promoting his own company:

It depends on the project. To anybody in a similar situation, you don't have any right to dispute the charge until your deadline passes without delivery. Whether or not it can be done in the remaining two weeks, they should still have procedures for responding to your emails and for updating you. Once the deadline passes without delivery, you can disput the charge based on the agreed upon deadline havin been an essetial element of the agreeent.

An A+ Better Business Bureau rating actually means next to nothing, because, despite the "Bureau" in its name, the BBB isn't a government agency and isn't really in business to protect consumers, at all. They are a subscription-based business whose real customers are the businesses that pay them for a membership and for a high rating.

Generally, the way it works is that businesses that pay membership dues typically get "A+" ratings and businesses that don't typically get much lower ratings, even without any complaints against them. There are countless examples of BBB-accredited businesses under criminal investigation for fraud and/or that are subjects of lawsuits initiated by state attorneys general, such as Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut. This old 20/20 report (linked below) details that, as well as the fact that even totally fictitious companies have been awarded A+ ratings as soon as the researchers who set up BBB memberships for those fictitious entities paid their membership dues, including nonexistent restaurants, a fake business named "Hamas" (after the international terrorist group), and the (real) skinhead Neo-Nazi organization called "Stormfront."

The organization has also been accused (quite credibly) of running something much like a protection racket. Typically, organizations with paid memberships retain A+ ratings irrespective of how many complaints have been filed against them (as long as they "respond" to them) while high-quality businesses (such as one of Wolfgang Puck's restaurants and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Boston) receive F ratings because of a single complaint against them. Meanwhile, for another specific example, one non-member company (a Los Angeles antique store that only had one already-resolved complaint) received a C- rating that the BBB absolutely refused to change (even though the complaint had been satisfactorily resolved) unless the owner paid the BBB for membership dues. One day after the owner paid $395 for her BBB membership, that rating was changed from C- to an A and the record of that old complaint removed.

It doesn't take much time to research what the BBB really does (and doesn't do) for yourself; but the examples referenced above are all detailed here:

abcnews.go.com/Blotter/business-bureau-best-ratings-money-buy/story?id=12123843

dealnews.com/features/What-Happens-When-You-Submit-a-Complaint-to-the-Better-Business-Bureau/1946621.html

I always want as many new customers as possible, but not enough to answer questions already quite clearly answered in my FAQs, and not enough to jump through hoops to "prove" that I'm legit to new clients who are too skittish to test me with a short project, which happens to be the only way of really determining whether a writer is reliable and any good, because anybody can simply lie in response to questions. I've probably lost many potential clients by responding to their emails with a request that they read my FAQs (and the rest of my website) before asking me any questions. Sometimes, they actually respond by telling me that I need to work on my customer service skills. Other times, I hear back from them again a few weeks later after they get ripped off by some company that specializes in "customer service skills" -- until they have your money, that is -- rather than in actually writing good essays.

Last year, I explained to a new prospective client exactly how I needed him to send me project materials as Word or PDF files and when he did something totally different, such as by sending me 20 individual scans (or jpgs) of single pages one at a time, I told him that if he wanted to do business, he would have to follow my instructions. He responded with a nasty email telling me that he's the customer and that I needed to follow HIS instructions. Just a few weeks ago, someone contacted me and asked me to explain my qualifications, subject areas of competence, and my policies (all of which are detailed on my website). I responded (as usual) by asking her to please read my FAQs and just send me any project for which she wanted a price quote unless she had questions not specifically answered in my FAQs or addressed elsewhere on my site. I never received a response until a few days ago, by which time she'd received a totally useless essay from some essay company. She needed the same project now, but with only two days left to complete it before her deadline.

I get emails that start exactly this way from new prospective clients about once a week.

Good News/Bad News:

The good news is that if they didn't provide the work until 10 days after your deadline, you don't owe them the balance because the deadline was an essential element of the transaction. You can probably dispute the deposit with your credit card company for that reason, too; just provide them with the emails. There's no such thing as "attempted academic dishonesty," and you never received -- much less submitted -- their work for credit, because they didn't send it until way after your deadline had already passed. They don't know where you go to school, anyway, although it's not too difficult for them to find that out using the information that you divulged.

The bad news is that Google results last forever. If they choose to post all of that info online, it will pop up every time a prospective employer (or anybody else) Googles you for the foreseeable future. Employers (unlike academic ethics committees) will definitely consider that type of information even though you never submitted the work for academic credit at your school. With the stacks of resumes that they receive for every decent position (especially nowadays), no employer is going to bother interviewing any candidate if the employer's preliminary screening reveals anything potentially derogatory, especially about academic dishonesty. They won't give you a chance to explain, either; they'll simply discard your application.

Depending on how much the initial deposit was, you might try telling them that you're going to let them keep it instead of disputing that charge with your credit card company based on the missed deadline, but that you won't be paying the balance for a project that they provided 10 days after your specified deadline; and that if you discover that they actually publicized any of your information, you will immediately proceed to recover that deposit through your credit card company.

Good luck.

It's too late for the OP, but for anybody else reading this: the time to do your due dilligence researching essay providers who can be trusted is always before you place an order, never only afterwards.

While Turnitin destroyed the business of reselling pre-written essays, it was equally responsible for the sudden explosion of the demand for original custom-written essays since 2007. In my opinion, plagiarism scanning is the best thing that ever happened to good independent writers.

Just ignore them. Don't argue with them or even bother responding at all. You never submitted the work for credit and there's no such thing as "attempted academic dishonesty." If anybody ever asks you about it, (which is very unlikely), you ordered a model project to help you understand how to write your own project. Just block their email address and don't worry about it.

MC = Master Card. Just call MC and tell them you why want to dispute the charge.

Sunbeamsvc AKA "Professor Verb" was known as one of the best writers in this industry. Both of us used to write for the same essay company and after we became independent writers, we provided mutual emergency backup and sometimes referred clients to one another. He retired about a year ago.

If you have emails that clearly show that you agreed on an October deadline but received nothing from them until they sent incomplete work in December, you might be able to initiate a chargeback through MC.

How did you issue the payments to them?

Linda obviously speaks English quite well; but her writing would only be appropriate for an ESL student, and not one hoping for a high grade on that assignment. Apart from the obvious signs of ESL writing, it is also substantively inadequate and suffers from typical amateurish writing issues that really have nothing to do with the distinction between ESL and ENL writing.