Just par for the course and a perfect example of why "UK" in essay company urls means absolutely nothing.

That's also one of the ways that teachers have been catching AI essays: they just enter their own essay prompts into ChatGPT (etc.) and then compare the results to essays submitted by students.

I'm going to take a wild guess that it didn't involve writing.

Agreed. Unfortunately, the OP never named the writer involved, which probably means that other students (including forum members) have since been victimized by the same person. When the blackmailer actually finds victims on this forum, it's even more important to identify him here.

In 25 years of doing this work, the only time I've ever seen instructions that permitted even "editorial assistance" from third parties were all for PhD dissertations, a few of which actually credited me, by name, as "Editor" in the final submission. Without exception, every one of the many hundreds (perhaps thousands) of instructions and honor codes for undergraduate essays that I've seen in project materials absolutely prohibited any outside help whatsoever, other than from the institution's writing center, and expressly required students to submit work that represented 100% their own work and their own writing.

The OP had only one other contribution to this forum, posted on the exact same date that he started this thread, which is also the date that he signed up on this forum: September 17, 2013. In his first post (#4 in the thread linked below), he pretended to be a student reporting a positive experience using a writer whose email he included (that was subsequently removed by admin). Obviously, that was probably his own email address. (Clicking on the U/N of any forum member brings up his profile, entire posting history, and the date that the user signed up on the forum.)
https://essayscam.org/forum/gt/independent-writers-companies-students-prefer-4483/

Agreed. The most important part of that is identifying "safe" independent writers. Start by reviewing long-term posting histories on forums such as this one and then make sure that any writer being considered is also willing to furnish his real ID and location and that all of the information provided in that regard is also capable of being verified completely independently on your end, such as through public-information databases, official government websites, etc.

They wouldn't even need to do a "proper" search, as described in my earlier post (#22) in this thread; if they did nothing more than enter the word "blackmail" (for example) into the search field, they'd see no fewer than 40 threads. That would take them a lot less time than typing out even the shortest question, instead.

At least that particular fear is unnecessary if they just make sure to use only writers willing to disclose (and prove) their real identity and location by providing information capable of being independently verified, because blackmail is completely impossible without the cloak of anonymity, at least in countries with functioning criminal justice systems.

This is ridiculously bad and totally irresponsible advice to be dispensing to students just looking for helpful advice in these threads. How could you (or anybody else) possibly ever know or provide assurance that a project provided by some writer about whom you know absolutely nothing or by some random essay company will actually be "100 original"? There are countless examples, just on this forum, detailing instances of completely plagiarized material blatantly copied and pasted in essays that were all "commissioned specifically" for customers, all of which "should" have been entirely original work. Obviously, if every writer and every essay company could be trusted to provide good original work, there'd never have been any need for a forum all about identifying and avoiding scams in this industry. In fact, scams of all kinds have always been rampant throughout this industry, including but hardly limited to plagiarized and recycled essays represented and sold at a premium price as "original" work.

My payment process is very simple and already described in my earlier post in this thread (and many others since 2008) and on my website, but I prefer to discuss prices privately with my clients. I'm perfectly comfortable relying on my writing ability as demonstrated in my posts, the published federal government samples linked on my website, and my ability to prove that I wrote them, as well as my real identity and my exact street address and (landline) phone number to prospective clients, but privately, as well.

This all complete nonsense. In any kind of traditional employment situation, the designation "Senior" (anything) denotes either more time (i.e. seniority) on the job or is an earned title based on performance, or some combination of both. Either way, it's almost always associated with higher pay, more perks, greater flexibility and autonomy (not less), and various other advantages, not wuith reduced flexibility or increased abuse of any kind.

In non-traditional industries, such as this one, it likely means much less, but would still only be associated withincreased appreciation by the company, not less appreciation and/or (especially) any kind of abuse or disregard, as announced by the above post. Most likely, it means priority access to the most desirable projects (not decreased flexibility to decline undesirable projects), and would only inspire greater loyalty, on the part of the company, as it relates to having the writer's back against inappropriate, obnoxious, and unreasonable hyper-demanding clients, and not a decrease in the company's regard for, loyalty to, or protection of the writer from unfair demands. The people who run any company would really have to be fools to treat senior employees worse than junior employees, because the former have the most experience, do the best work, and represent greater productivity and value to the company than their junior counterparts.

How is this different from what traditional plagiarism scanners do? The plagiarism scans that I've seen also identified exactly where the flagged text appears, as well as the exact date that the original source was first uploaded, in some cases, depending on the type of source involved.

I haven't changed my prices because I'm not really in direct competition with AI when it comes to price the same way that worse and/or less experienced writers are. That's mainly because AI is most useful to those students who were (already) perfectly happy just to get pretty bad essays from cheaper writers and essay companies; and those weren't the students doing any kind of price-versus-quality analysis about their essay sources, in the first place. They've shifted to AI, because all they need is something that fulfills the word count, since they don't care about quality and/or because they have professors who don't even read their essays. Lowering the price of essays now isn't going to matter to them, because they're only interested in options that are entirely free.

My "niche" has always been the more competitive students who want really high-quality essays that actually make sense and that stand up to a professor's critical read, and that are likely to receive a high mark vs. a "pass" just for having submitted something with a title, a reference page, and the right number of words, even though it's practically unreadable. Competitive students aren't going to be using any AI program -- at least none that's currently available -- and they already understand that you get what you pay for. They're not shifting to AI to get lousy essays for free, now, for the exact same reason that they've always chosen to pay more for good work than to pay less for the same lousy essays once written by unqualified human writers, but now generated by AI programs
.

Nope. My prices haven't changed at all.

The availability of AI has had zero impact on my pricing, because all of my existing clients already know that my work is worth what they've been paying me.

I've never been the least bit hesitant to tell people exactly what I do; and it's explained in as much detail as is possible to fit on my business card, along with my website url. They're usually either surprised that this business even exists in the first place and that it's possible to do this for a living or they're impressed that I'm able to write well in so many different academic areas. Once in a while, those kinds of conversations with strangers have actually generated work for me, either directly from that person or indirectly from a referral. Right now, I'm two chapters into a nursing dissertation for the NP who treated me a couple of years ago at an urgent care clinic.

Unfortunately, scam companies have CS reps who are very good and well trained at saying whatever it takes to gain the confidence of prospective customers. They know all the right answers to make you comfortable trusting them. It's not until they have your money and you complain about a blown deadline and/or about the totally unusable trash project they eventually send you that you find out you've been lied to and scammed. That's when they ghost you and then start threatening to expose you if you don't cancel your completely justified payment dispute.

The problem with this approach is that you've already invested all of the time and work producing the project. That's why nothing even gets onto my calendar, let alone researched or written, until full payment has been received. Clients can order as few pages as they want before trusting me with an entire project, but whatever they want me to write and deliver is always paid in full just to get booked, in the first place. In 25 years, I've never met any writer (or known of any essay company) who works on projects that haven't already been paid in full. The only exceptions have been for regular clients who asked for a one-time accommodation because of some financial problem (such as a deadline before their anticipated check from work), but I've already shared the reason that I'd never even consider doing this again for anybody, after I gave a long-term client a break and then never got paid, because it turned out to be her last vollege project that she just decided to get for free by ripping off the writer who always provided excellent work for her on dozens of projects over several years. Never again. No exceptions.

My comfort zone with new areas expanded tremendously over time, but strictly as a function of experience, not whether my projects came from essay companies or my private clients. However, I'd agree that independent writers are likely to be much more careful about always erring on the safe side, primarily because our own reputations mean much more to us than the reputations of essay companies that merely employed us along with hundreds of other writers.

By the time a company starts delaying payments, it's no longer a matter of staying afloat, because the ship is already sinking.

Prospective clients shouldn't really have much of a problem identifying writers who write well just from their posting history here.

Agreed...and stick to writers whose real identity and location are independently verifiable.

AI is actually pretty good for grammar, and AI writing is much better in that respect than all but the very best ESL writers, of whom I've encountered approximately 3 in the last 25 years. The problem for students is that even decent grammar can't save an atrocious essay that lacks any meaningful substantive content and/or that fabricates non-existent facts and "sources." A grammatically correct essay devoid of any real substantive content is a lot like a cake-shaped balloon covered in decent icing.

I haven't really found this to be the case. Quite a few of my clients tried AI and ended up returning to me, as soon as they compared the quality of their AI essays to my work. New inquiries are obviously down, but, fortunately, most of my established clients haven't gone anywhere.

Exactly.

DisgruntledStudent's first two points are valid, because commercial anti-plagiarism scanners typically do retain anything scanned, and the fine print of their TOS often even includes clauses that actually transfer copyright ownership (or an unlimited-use license) to your work. However, the following three points are absolutely ridiculous:

Obviously, this is completely under the control of users, and any student trying to maintain anonymity would have to be an idiot to include personally-identifying info in anything scanned.

They're not perfect, but they're pretty good at finding overt plagiarism. Professors couldn't care less about properly referenced quotes that get flagged, incorrectly; but this is also completely under the control of users: smart users know to delete all quotes and the entire reference page before scanning, to get a more accurate result. Reference pages should be scanned separately, just to make sure the writer didn't reuse an entire list of sources from a previous project. Almost all sources will get flagged, simply because they've all been cited hundreds or thousands of times before; so, what you want to check is that your project doesn't contain a suspicious number of sources that appear together in some other essay or other work. Scanners also sometimes flag common word combinations, but anything flagged can be checked by the professor, because scanners also indicate where else the flagged content was found. No history or economics professor cares about any coincidental string of four or five words that also happened to appear in a completely different context in some Biology or Engineering essay that's totally unrelated to the topic of the history or economics essay. As I've explained previously, even within a history essay, there's probably no possible way to write that WWII began on September 1, 1939, when the Nazis invaded Poland in any combination of words that hasn't already been written countless times. Professors understand that, as well, and aren't concerned with those types of "matches" in any plagiarism scan.

This is even more ridiculous. Those scanners also record and display the original source of the flagged content, as well as the date and time that your essay was submitted for scanning. If your flagged content matches something published (or previously scanned into the system by another student at a different college) years ago, that's obviously a problem, provided the match itself is relevant and not just an unrelated coincidental string of words. However, if the only match of the content flagged is an entire essay first uploaded by someone at your college a few days before your deadline, it's obvious to your professor that it's only your own work that you scanned, yourself, in preparation for submission. That's particularly true nowadays, when many professors actually require students to submit their work to the student version of Turnitin or some other plagiarism scanner before submission.

In a practical sense, it's impossible to recoup your losses by trying to sue any essay company, but for totally different reasons: (1) The "unclean hands" doctrine will likely bar any recovery, especially for any claim about the grade on work submitted based on the company's product; and (2) Even a small claims case creates a searchable record forever linking the names of the parties to which future prospective employers will have access in connection with their pre-employment backround checks. In some court systems, details about cases are available, too.

Just to clarify, in case newer members might misunderstand, it wasn't "my" company; it was just the main company I wrote for before I went completely independent in 2013. My company, first established in 2009, has always been a sole proprietorship without any affiliates, umbrella sites of any kind, or other writers.

You might want to tell him about this forum and direct him to what I just explained in Post # 3 about blackmailers vs. real writers.

Why would he even consider "abandoning" it, especially since losing the opportunity to attend that university would the exact worst-case scenario he'd fear, if he were being blackmailed?


First, if he agreed to pay them after they did the work for him, and they fulfilled their end of the agreement, why hasn't he already paid them, as agreed? Second, why would he assume that they're going to blackmail him after they (apparently) did a good enough job on the project to secure the successful outcome that he sought? In all likelihood, the writers haven't even thought of doing that and are just waiting to be paid whatever they rightfully earned for their work.

Blackmailers are always phony "writers" and phony companies that can't actually provide quality work; that's why their whole "business model" is blackmail instead of writing, in the first place. Legitimate writers and companies don't deliver high-quality work and then blackmail their satisfied clients. Blackmailers either provide nothing after being paid in advance or they deliver completely unusable garbage and the blackmail is their response to customers' rightful demands for refunds, to try to make them go away and just eat their losses. In your friend's case, he seems to have received exactly what he hoped to receive, and then used the work successfully, and he hasn't received any blackmail threat, right? So, why would he be considering abandoning his plans to attend the university instead of simply paying his writers?

In almost 20 years on this forum, I've only heard of one or two accusations against any legitimate writer ever threatening or "doxing" a customer, and it was because the customer fraudulently cancelled the payment after the writer delivered exactly what he'd promised to deliver. Legitimate writers hope to convert every satisfied customer into a long-term repeat customer. In fact, a successful admission essay is perfect in that respect, because that's a student who will probably use the same writer all through his university studies; and four years of regular paid work from a happy customer is worth much more to any (real) writer than some lump-sum payment generated through blackmail. Blackmailers don't really write anything and legitimate writers don't blackmail anybody. So, why would your friend want to give writers who, apparently, did good work for him a legitimate reason to be angry and possibly motivate them to retaliate against him for ripping them off by not paying whatever he rightfully owes them, especially when your friend hasn't already been blackmailed?

There's no doubt that, generally, Americans' grasp of grammar in their own language is substantially worse than that of native speakers of other languages. However, Americans who've been writing for a living for decades obviously tend to know grammar much better than the average American who doesn't write for a living. Some of us are actually grammarians who only deviate from strict grammar deliberately and for a very specific reason, such as where grammar that is technically correct may sound more awkward than colloquialisms, especially in student essays.

The only thing I ever knew about that company was that it used to advertise here.

There's no such thing as a defamation suit for saying something broad, like "any company that charges less than $20/pg is a scam" because you can't "defame" an entire class of people or companies. You can't get sued by any good NES writer in NYC for saying "every academic writer in NYC is really just a terrible ESL writer," either. To be defamed, you'd need to be sufficiently identifiable as the specific entity being referenced. The only exception would be where there are so few of them that "all" could reasonably be said to be a reference to you, such as "every single lawyer in this town is a thieving crook who robs his clients" in a town with only two lawyers.

I'd love to know what essay company you run, because this is ridiculous. The writer's only obligation is to confirm acceptance of the order and then to write the exact project ordered according to the specs provided, and to deliver it on time. That's it. No experienced writer who isn't desperate for work would ever agree to maintain constant contact with the client.


This is even more ridiculous. The client's role ends once the writer has the order and all of the specs and materials. It's not a collaborative effort with the client involved "reviewing" each page as it progresses towards completion. No writer needs this kind of complication, especially from clients who hire good writers in the first place, precisely, because good writers have infinitely more experience writing projects than a typical student. You don't come into the car repair shop every 5 minutes to "check the work" of the mechanic fixing your transmission, right? Same goes when you hire a professional writer. Finally, if the writer were actually to check for feedback from clients throughout every project, deadlines would be blown, simply because customers often fail to respond to emails promptly, effectively burning off valuable days in between each email exchange. No experienced writer would ever allow this kind of constant monitoring and second guessing.


Any essay company for which I ever worked automatically notified customers when their projects were taken by writers. That's not the writer's responsibility. Writers just take assignments off the project boards and put them on their calendars. Between then and the deadline, when or how much at a time the writer actually does the work is nobody's business as long as he meets the specs and delivers a high-quality project on time. For projects under roughly 10 pages, I'll usually write them in one sitting with maybe one meal break or something. I'm not sending the client the first half and waiting for his comments before I get back to it and finish it. If my work meets the order specs, my work is done. If the customer wants me to make some after-the-fact editing, that's fine, but unless I made some objective mistake, that's always a charged edit.

THIS was the obvious problem with the OP's situation, not anything to do with a writer failing to maintain sufficient contact with the client.


All "100% Refund Guarantees" by essay companies are immediate red flags that you're dealing with a scam. Legit providers never make completely ridiculous claims about "refunds" based on "satisfaction."

Agreed.

That description probably applies to the majority of essay companies currently in existence, except that they might have many unqualified ESL "writers" instead of just a few.

It's not at all uncommon for failing essay companies to squeeze as much work as possible out of their writers before closing shop without ever paying them for their last month's work.

How do affiliate programs work between essay companies? When I wrote for one of the largest U.S. essay companies, I became aware that my project requests came from (at least) several different -- and, seemingly, totally independent -- competing companies, all with their own websites; but I didn't know whether they were "affiliates" or just the same company registering a long list of DBAs to dominate the market.

Exactly. Sometimes, I get project inquiries asking me for a price, but when I ask some of the most basic questions that I need to know, they respond that they have to get back to me about it. The thing is, the answers to the kinds of questions I'm talking about would already be known to anybody inquiring about his own project: such as whether the project is for a history class or a writing class, for just one example. The delayed response makes it obvious to me that the person contacting me isn't the student, but someone just trying to insert himself as a middleman, hoping to represent himself as the writer, and sell my work to the customer after taking a big cut of the payment. There are numerous other giveaways that I'm not going to detail here for obvious reasons, but suffice it to say that this happens fairly often.