I guess an important thing is worth mentioning here: the delivery date. I can imagine a writing service or a freelance writer may advertise: "We only charge $5 per page*"

* - when Delivery Date is 365 days or longer

Would advertising $5 per page be truthful? It would. Would it be honest? It would definitely not. I've also noticed some "American" or "UK" companies have dropped their prices a little without mentioning they work with ESL writers.. but that's another story.

Yes, when an "essay writer"'s profile mentions 'professor' or 'PhD' - the profile is surely fabricated..
Btw - what are these pictures about, are these from Facebook or something?

Aren't Uvocorp / Essayshark Ukrainian though? You can upload picture via the Storage button near the form.

It's a true and concise summary, congratulations ; ) I'd like to see the list you refer to; could you post it here (you may remove http:// not to create hyperlinks to them). And the comments above likely apply to other unqualified freelance 'writers' who pretend to be what they are not.

That's why there are few freelance writers who continue working independently for many years; it's much easier and faster to scam one student, register a new email under a new, fake name, and continue scamming. Rinse and repeat. If it wasn't so easy to create a new identity (by creating a new email / writer account), there would be 80% less fraud writers than there are today.

If you spam, be smart about that. The truth is, you have never used their service. 'Perfect length...' - how much did they charge you for that? If you order a research service, the 'perfect length' is not on top of a student's priorities (it is if one tries to give a fraudulent review).

In 2018, the chances of becoming a successful 'essay writer' when starting from scratch are pretty slim. I noticed some foreign (especially Ukrainian / Russian) services have been spamming a promotion: "Our prices start from $5 per page!" The problem is, such services don't use writers at all; they have programmers to auto-generate garbage (sometimes they first translate Russian texts into English and use their software to paraphrase it).

Still, I don't believe so. If you think he's in the US only because his Paypal address was associated with a fake postal address or he uses his partner-in-crime's address, that's not always the case. I do hope he leaves you alone by 'servicing' other, unsuspecting students (pun intended ;).

Here are my assumptions:

1. The scammer purporting to be an 'essay writer' has been found via Twitter.

2. His username is listed as fraud on this page: https://essayscam.org/forum/es/list-spamming-scamming-foreign-twitter-freelance-6050/

Am I correct? :(

Another assumption - he is truly located in Kenya (not that all Kenyan writers are frauds, but they are active on social media pretending to be US/UK writers). Or perhaps in Ukraine, even though legitimate Ukrainian freelance writers typically have more integrity.

This is one of the pitfalls when trying to work directly with a 'freelance writer': you don't really know who he/she is (unless you work with a very reputable freelance writer who's been known to the academic research community for years). When working with a reputable essay writing company, they are in control and won't allow to let it happen.

I've seen students cheering up when a scam writer contacted them about their homework assignment and offered great rates; in the end, they may save some money to receive a semi-plagiarized paper, but their risk being harassed or blackmailed.

At this point, I'd avoid replying to any suspicious emails from 'investigators' or 'professors' because those are, most likely, going to be fake. Some of these scammers may use free email accounts associated with keywords like: lawyer, academia, etc. to try to fool the recipient into thinking the message is authentic, so be careful.

I read the related thread below about forced revisions and inadequate payments to writers; it reminds ESL services based in non-English speaking countries :(

--

Message content updated - see below.

I'm a freelance writer. This company is terrible. They didn't tell me how much they paid. I found out the pay is not that great. On top of that, they gave me a revision that basically required re-writing one whole paper and revising another without any consideration for me. I am actually going to give up on them and continue with my other place full time. I don't think I will get paid by them but oh well...

---

UPDATE:

I would like to retract this statement / review about Acematiks, fully realizing that it was my responsibility to complete only orders I could handle. The revision was not unwarranted but adequate. I've done revisions before for another company and they are nothing new. I took on too much that weekend. I would like to remove this statement from the website, if that is possible, as it does not reflect my ongoing feelings about the company.

It is with the sincerest apologies that I retract this statement, understanding it was my fault that the revision was difficult because I hadn't taken an order I was exactly proficient in. Thus, it warranted an extensive revision. I am embarrassed about the comment above and now that I think about it, the entire situation could have been avoided if I had asked for some clarification about the paper. On top of that, I took on wayyy too much work that weekend. I hate it when this happens, but sometimes we do the order almost completely wrong because of some oversight. The comment was unprofessional and misguided... It doesn't say anything about the company.

Such students may be a pain indeed. How can they 'cancel the order' if most (if not all) of it has already been delivered? Like cancelling an ice-cream desert after eating most of it ;)

So it seems the 'Quality & Assurance(?)' teams of foreign writing services work like a sales team on 100% commission. That would justify their dishonest / fraudulent operations; the money they steal from writers goes into their own pockets. The more imaginary problems they find, the more money they make. The funny thing is that those Q&A people are often English-illiterate (they rely on the buggy software only), so it adds to the insult.

A paying customer / student typically doesn't care a service provider has better things to do than his order. That actually proves my point - a freelancer (not only a freelance writer, but also any other contract worker) who bails out on an order is something quite common and if that happens, the joke and lost time is on the student. So if a student is willing to risk a single point of failure, it's up to them.

PS - I'm not specifically talking about you or FW, but in general terms. A student reading this may think - '..hm, but I found a freelance writer who has a nice website and charges only $10 per page, I'll go with him!' (not knowing 90% of unknown / other freelance writers are scammers from 3rd world countries).

1. Live chat support.
2. Phone support.
3. If something goes wrong, customer relies on you only (or your wife/aunt/uncle/grandpa at best).
4. You screw up the paper? (not necessarily because of your own fault) Customer relies on you only, no other options, time wasted.

If an order is small it's possible to manage a crisis. What about a dissertation, PhD thesis, or any other long-term project? A single point of failure (you, a single writer) and months or work can be lost (I don't know many writers who would want to continue writing a dissertation not started / researched by them, not to mention trying to keep the same writing style - the cost would be more than starting it from scratch). At best you can refund, but you won't cover the cost of having another writer start it from scratch to meet the deadline (reputable services would).

So in reality, a customer has two choices:

1. Order from Amazon and have all the conveniences and protections they offer. Have a piece of mind that third-parties watch the progress or deadline and act if something goes wrong.

2. Order from an ebay store and deal with an owner by email.

Price - about the same. If given a choice, students would likely choose Amazon, wouldn't they.

If a company paid you, let's say, $15 per page and now you charge the same students $30 per page, I don't see how you eliminated a middle man. You removed the features, convenience, and protections offered by a company and started to charge more for less. You (technically) removed one middle man (the company), but replaced it with another (less capable and convenient) one.

Why would you charge 2-3 times more when you run your own business vs. when you write for a company? From a socialist point of view, it's not fair to charge students more for the same product.

You always claim a customer would be better off choosing working with a freelance writer and companies do nothing but increase the price. But when you are in a position of a company (running your own business), you charge your customers substantially more (probably even more than the company charges their customers). When you work for a company, you think like a socialist; when you work for yourself, you suddenly change your perspective and think like a capitalist. You cannot be a socialist and a capitalist at the same time (maybe in NY it's possible though).

When you run your own business AND charge about the same or more that you'd charge as a big company writer (or the company itself), the reality is that it is not a good deal for a customer who'd rather go to an all-inclusive hotel (a real writing service with 24-7 customer service, live chat, phone support, usable website, available multiple writers in case of emergencies) than to stay in a small do-it-yourself motel.

So please stop pretending you are just a "freelance writer" - you run your own service and charge as much as all-inclusive companies do without offering nearly the same experience.

If we go by this logic, freelance writers who work for themselves should never charge more than what they would charge if they wrote for a company. Why would they want to charge them substantially more; only because they run their own website/business?

Some students on social media were posting fake information that it would cost money just to search on Google or Bing. There's a lot of misinformation related to it.

• 
  Net Neutrality vs Writing Services
  

Actually, reading 'reviews' is as useful as thinking about yesterday's weather; 95% of 'positive' reviews are fake.

There is always something fishy when the name says one thing and the details say something completely different. Like "Obamacare = affordable" or "Net Neutrality = Confusing." I guess when big corporations like AT&T or Comcast would start slowing services to their customer favorites' websites, customers would leave to their competition that don't slow them down. So the end effect may not be negative. I'm not sure how it would affect essay writing services - would it?

I noticed there's a lot of scam and spam on social media (related to academic paper writing / editing services). Potential customers turn out to be fraudulent freelance writers, suspicious essay service owners, or Internet marketers who try to get your attention only to get a 'like' or 'follow' from you. Sometimes, at first, it may seem you talk to a 'student' but when you see their posting history or engagements it's clear he or she is not a student or someone who'd be interested in your writing services. So the time spent on social media vs. the potential rewards in new customer acquisition is very small, possibly in the 0-2% range.

In addition, yes - privacy is a concern. Facebook will record all the people you exchange information with (either via direct or indirect contacts) to profile you among both current and future 'friends.'

The $3.5-$10 rate per page - it suggests their customers are all ESL students (possibly from countries like China or India)? Because a native English speaker educated and living in a Western country is not going to work for $4 per page.

Could you explain how they define "full-time writers"? Do they go to work to their physical office?

That's a valid point. And when you consider that the Ukrainians run, roughly, 600+ different websites (owned by up to a few "entrepreneurs"), the actual returning client ratio is no more than 20%. It's like out of 10 students something on Amazon, 8 would never order from them again. Obviously, their sites lie about the ratio, but that's nothing unexpected.


Indeed. 90%+ of 'positive reviews' are totally made up by those services; 100% of positive video reviews are also totally fabricated.

I've been wondering how good/excellent legitimate freelance writers are going to compete with the fraudsters; I've seen a flashy website operated from Ukraine (for public, on "About Us" the location was, you guessed it, USA / New York) featuring a 'freelance writer' who offers his services for $5-$10 per page (depending on deadline). Obviously, it's a scam, but I believe the fraudster may often produce something 'good enough' for an average customer who may not instantly notice the paper has been auto-paraphrased or plagiarized / recently submitted to TurnItIn. And the fact that the student's personal identity will be hacked in the future is another story and many students, frankly, don't care.

Then same student who visits, let's say, FW's profile, may wonder if paying 3-5 times more per page is his/her best financial option. How would you respond to that?

If you go to a social media and post publicly you're going to pay for an essay written and your offer is $20 for 10 pages, numerous scammers with fake "Harvard / Yale" profiles will contact you, ready to deliver. So if it counts as an "order," you may be right about the 'steady growth,' but if we talk about real orders (completed by real / US-UK-EU-educated writers), it may not be the same story because more and more students may think that anything more than $20 per page is not a good deal. Most of them will eventually learn the hard way that quality doesn't come cheap, but in the meantime they may keep trying the fraudsters who can only lower the price to get their attention.

I'd be skeptic about 'private writers' numbers. The reality is that the market has been flooded with low-educated scammers aka. 'writers' who have no choice but to compete with very low prices (and flashy websites in most cases). Especially the first-time customers think they get a great deal until they find out the paper was mediocre or software-paraphrased at best.

To make sure we're on the same page - as far as I know, since the 'Featured / Recommended Writers / Recommended Services' have been implemented (a couple of years ago?) I haven't seen a single complain regarding the recommended writers or services. So something must be working well and if a first-time student is reading this, it may be their best option, unless they prefer to spend hours doing their own research ;)

Recommended Freelance Writers - https://essayscam.org/freelance-writers/
Recommended Writing Services - https://essayscam.org/forum/rs/

How did you try to access it - by calling 'Legit Nat' number?

Read the first #1 post in the thread from the student: essayscam.org/forum/gt/research-writer-threatening-4611/. He claims he was scammed despite following your general suggestion about ordering a couple test pages to try a writer / service out. You continue giving this advice but scammers have figured it out years ago; they have one good writer (sometimes they just order the trial pages from a legitimate company) and once the trial pages are completed a student incorrectly assumes the rest would be of the same quality. But the rest is written by uneducated / foreign contractors (or just copy-pasted), so the whole trial process is usually a waste of time and money. It makes no sense trying out an essay company because they have many writers and could assign the rest of the project to someone else (unless you specifically request that you want to continue with the 'tried' writer).

Intelligent persons here (like WB or others) have pointed out that the 'Absolutely incorrect' was in fact correct, so it is correct.

From that 4611 thread: "I was given a quote of 560 and agreed to it because I had asked the person to write a couple of pages beforehand and was confident with her style. since then, the person has consistently missed deadlines, given me substandard work and not follow any of the requirements" (but you still continue giving this deficient 'advice' to first try a writer by giving him a 2-page project .. ).

Anyway, it's understandable that you treat anyone who posts here as a competitor so when some other freelance writer or writing service fails you respond to advertise your qualities. You go into the next gear especially when you think I have personally something to do with the failed service (but you will always defend another company you have worked with knowing the persons involved would not play nice games with you if you tried to bad-mouth them or their writers). Nevertheless, you're right that it's pointless fighting when the real fraudsters are on the loose ;)

Regarding the topic.. now I see (from the date selection), the OP must have used an Ukrainian writing service (thinking / hoping they are legitimate US or UK-based company).

Your response about the deadline (considering my quoted parts that the 20 day deadline was likely not really such a big issue) may suggest you have never worked on a complex, long-term project (from a customer service/ support point of view). I have no idea what the project or company was, but I know what it takes to work on such a big PhD-level order and know what being flexible means. There are customers who select a 20-day-due date but later suggest that it's okay to deliver it later as long as the quality is assured (it was apparently not the case here but that's quite a common scenario). If the REAL deadline was 20 days, do you think the OP would continue working with them "for the last 5 months" (or vice-versa)? Working on something that is past due and cannot be submitted anyway?

What triggered my response was attacking a company (when someone attacks a freelance writer you try to defend them no matter what).

The deadline was not the issue:

"I was very flexible when they consistently asked for extensions."
"For the last 5 months I worked with them."
"So I finally rushed my writers."

It seems the OP has signaled from the very beginning his/her real deadline was months away.


I understand multiple writers worked on the order, so any new writer has probably tried to work with whatever old/previous version he/she was sent.

I don't know (we don't know) what company the OP means, it could be legitimate or not. But my point was that it could be you who would have to eat the losses if you worked for that company as a freelance writer. Imagine a customer telling the company your writing level was not quite PhD and requests a refund. Would you be happy to oblige after having spent 3 weeks on working on the project? In general, would you refund 100% of the order amount after having written 80 pages JUST BECAUSE your customer claimed your writing level was not up to his or her standards?

Maybe that's why you have started working for yourself (it was probably a smart decision) instead of having to deal with such situations.

As I mentioned, a graduate student should know after reviewing the first few pages if the writing level was what he expected; otherwise, I say it's not 100% service or freelance writer's fault.

It's always nice to hear a freelance writer suggests a customer to ask for a full refund when ordering from a competitor (hint - perhaps you may order something from him and then ask for a refund and do a chargeback; he may be okay with that and may even complement your thoughtfulness ;).

Anyway, regarding your post. 23K words in 20 days is indeed a lot for a PhD-level paper. Your mistake was to continue working with them when you noticed a problem, but since you chose to do so, now blaming them for your bad decision is not a perfect option. I'd personally take 40% refund and forget about it / find someone else. Otherwise, you'd keep stressing it and wondering if they published it or not.

You are talking complete nonsense; spend another year here for more insight. Posting your real name (like Udombo or similar) would be enough to deter customers; that's why African fraudsters use generic English names to scam customers. But you know it from experience, so there's no need muddying the waters.

The problem is, the 'satisfaction ratings' are totally gamed by the fraudsters, so reading all those 'Top 10 academic paper service reviews' website or looking for fake rating stars is a complete waste of time. As I mentioned, it's not easy to notice a scammer and the safest way is to use reputable (old) services or freelance writers.

So we can safely assume US / UK services engage in illegal activities.. oh well )

You probably didn't know someone from a 3rd world country would be doing your assignment? The site is associated with:

instantassignmenthelp.com.au
instantassignmenthelp.ae
goassignmenthelp.com.au

from India.