Maybe he has a condo on the beach in Boca ;-)

I vacationed near there and thought it was a dump in all honesty - very over-rated. You know "Boca Raton" means mouth of the rat in Spanish ... very apt. I far prefer the west coast of Florida - Sarasota and Bradenton.

I tried to reverse lookup their number. Is it usual for US businesses to have an unlisted number?

Are you serious? Peter Richardson (aka Georgios Anagnostopoulos) is raking in a fortune through a Swiss bank account with this scam and he knows that no-one can trace the money or get it back. Hell will freeze over before he apologizes.

Sorry you got scammed :-(

I'm thrilled, thanks :P

PS Don't forget to stomp your feet and slam the door on your way out!

as do presidents!

I choose to contract out assignments that I have no wish to spend the time writing myself. It's a small matter of opportunity cost.

I don't care what your problem is with people who write essays for money, or with people who buy essays, your sad little voice won't make one iota of difference to what has grown into a multi-million dollar industry.

Yes, I'm a fraud and a cheat but at least I'm not a self-righteous prig.

Take a couple of tylenol and have a lie down dear.

I'd say contact your credit card company and ask what the situation is with reverse charges in your country. In the UK you have 6 months from the date of purchase to dispute the transaction.

You've been very patient waiting 3 months for the work. As Beatrice has said, give a final deadline and then get onto your card company and get the transaction reversed. As it has been so long since the order, be very careful if you are only offered vague assurances about when you will ge the work. You don't want to be left in a position where it is too late to get your money back.

Good luck!

I've used ukessays several times and had no problems except for their being way overpriced. They don't ask for your payment details UNTIL they've assigned a writer and if the writer is late then you get a 10% discount every day they are late (not that they ever have been with my work). They also have a money back guarantee and they guaranteed £1,000 ($1,6000) compensation if any plagiarism is found in the work.

I've also used oxbridgeessays.com and they have also been fine. Not had any problems there and I have used them a couple of times. Again, they don't ask for your money until they have identified a writer.

My top pick American company is custompapers.com - this company has some good writers. GraduateWriter.com may be even better (for UK students at least).

For people considering using essay companies, do check out the companies carefully - there are a lot of companies that claim to be UK or US based but in fact are based in Pakistan / India / Ukraine / Panama / Switzerland etc and use poor quality writers. Some like Essay Relief are famous for being absolutely awful and complete rip-off merchants but there are plenty of others around who like to misrepresent themselves as good companies and have fancy websites to lure in unsuspecting students.

Regardless of where a company is based, try and get as much info as you can about the quality they provide. The best way is to talk to your friends and take a look at work that an essay company has already provided for them; online samples of work could have been written by anyone and they don't guarantee that your work will be of the same standard. Online reviews such as posts like this don't hold much value as you should ALWAYS remember that the person writing the post could be trying to promote their own company or undermine their opposition.

Never used them myself.

My point exactly. You can't trust reviews and you can't trust criticisms or deflections - nobody knows who is really posting!

Smoke and mirrors anyone?

Are they an unknown site? I have seen some good reviews of them on other messageboards but have never used them myself.

It's always difficult to know if people are really working for essay companies when good reviews come up; similarly when I see people posting bad reviews being denigrated and abused by other posters I start to wonder if the abusers are connected with the company being complained about.

Basically I'd say take anything you read online with a pinch of salt!

Nicole, you are welcome to email me if you want, just ask admins to forward your email to me or to provide you with my address. Whichever way works for you.

You're quoting Amy1978 and not me, but that's not a problem.

I broadly agree with what you say. These people ruin reputations of an entire nation. The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) is world class, and is in the same league as MIT, but presumably IIT graduates don't feel the need to pass themselves off as something thet are not. My objection to Devangini's posts is that he is clearly lying about his qualifications.

As for grammar, I'm sure that mine could do with sharpening up!

I've used Oxbridgeessays a few times - they're fine and provide good quality. I've also used ukessays and they've been okay but I think Oxbridgeessays provides better quality / research and works out cheaper as I think a 2:2 with Oxbridgeessays is about the same quality as a 2:1 with ukessays - that's just my experience. I've never ordered a 'first' u/g or master's level essay with either company so can't really say how they compare at that level.

The Writer's Bureau don't award degrees or offer any degree courses - they offer home study open learning courses i.e courses open to anyone who can pay for them regardless of their qualifications (or lack of them). The Writers Bureau is accredited by The Open & Distance Learning Quality Council and is a member of the British Learning Association; it has NO connection with any of the Royal Academies.

You may have a certificate saying you have been awarded a degree from the Royal Academy but if you do it is as fake as you are, as even those academies that do award degrees do not offer open or distance learning and the degrees are not franchised. I can make a certificate saying I graduated with highest honors from Yale but it doesn't make it true!

I've used custompapers.com before and they were good - the paper quality was okay and they kept to the deadline. They also seem to be good on fast turnaround papers and you can deal directly with your writer (I asked mine if she could write my paper sooner and she did).

I've not used customessays.co.uk before - I looked up their details and they say on their website that they are based in Sheffield but whois says the registrant is based in London and yet the domain was registered by an Australian IT company; they may be perfectly okay but I get nervous when it looks as though they may be operating through a string of accommodation addresses.

Other UK companies that I've used that have been fine are ukessays.com and oxbridgeessays.com - both are pricier than custompapers so I guess it all depends what your budget is and whether you think a UK / US writer is most suited to your topic. Most topics are international - doesn't much matter where the writer is if they have access to electronic databases - but sometimes you need a' local' writer such as for law essays, or perhaps something where local knowledge would be important.

No, I don't - my essays are 3,000 words - very occasionally 5,000 words.

I'd be amazed if a real PhD holder was writing essays for students but I suppose it is possible if the job market was poor wherever they were living, or if their home circumstances meant that they were unable to work in a more regular position.

At the moment I pay around $25 for 250 words with US companies and around $50 for 250 words with UK companies. The writers in both cases are college graduates (or so the websites claim!) but I wouldn't expect that they would have PhDs.

The maximum I would pay would depend upon assurances of quality as just because the writer has a PhD wouldn't necessarily mean that s/he was a great writer. If I found a really good writer, who happened to have a PhD, then I would say $75 an hour for research based on secondary material would be reasonable and more if I wanted original research done.

As someone who uses essay companies quite frequently it is interesting to see the variations within companies, in terms of quality, as well as between companies. I really prefer to use companies that allow you to request the same writer for repeat orders as sometimes you do come across a really good writer; knowing that the writer has a good grasp of their subject and has a good writing style takes a lot of the worry out of using essay companies. I don't mind tinkering with spelling and / or grammar if the essay content and writing style are both good.

Customers may expect perfect grammar and perfect punctuation but I've yet to find an essay company that delivers in both these respects, as well as providing good quality research. I've used seven different US essay companies (six of which were verified by another site that claims to check the companies credentials), and three different UK companies, and the writing quality varies tremendously even when the US / UK spelling differences are taken out of the equation.

Based on my experience, I think the problem is industry-wide as essay companies depend on freelance writers who need to churn out high volumes of essays to pay their bills. It's understandable that quality suffers as writers are trying to maximize the number of papers that they complete in any given period.

After trying several companies, the companies that I now return to have researchers who can at least develop a good argument based on a range of reputable / appropriate sources. It's not much of a hardship to go through the essay and make a few corrections here and there.

PS To Devangini: There are several royal academies in England, covering the arts, humanities, sciences and engineering: only the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal Academy of Arts, and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts actually award degrees and none of these degrees are in "writing". The remaining royal academies house museum collections, libraries, and exhibitions; they also promote further learning in their respective areas by providing scholarships and bursaries to gifted postgraduate researchers and academics.

They can't sue you if you gave a factual account of your dealings with them - only if you exaggerated or gave a misleading account. If you stick to the facts you won't have any problems or need to post apologies.

By the way, not being a member of the BBB doesn't mean anything in itself as basically it's a subscription organization.

and then....

If you didn't order from them then why did you say that you did? Why didn't you post the name of the website that you actually ordered from and say that this company is in fact connected with Essay Relief and then other people could avoid it too?

If you realized you were doing business with Essay Relief as soon as you received the payment receipt then you could have contacted 2CO or your credit card issuer at that time and said that you had been misled into ordering and that you do not want to do business with criminals. It still isn't too late to get a chargeback.

George:

This company has a UK registered office even though the guy behind it is a total fraud and based overseas. The UK registration is useful as it means that you can take action against him even without being in the country yourself.

If you decided that you wanted to sue him through the small claims court you could actually do this inexpensively online from your home country (see moneyclaim.gov.uk/csmco2/index.jsp - you don't need to be in the UK. It would then be for the company complained against to defend the claim - if they didn't then judgment is automatically in your favour.

As the company seeks cash payments through a Swiss bank account, it is possible that they are evading their UK tax liabilities. You may want to alert the United Kingdom VAT fraud team about the company: UK telephone number 0800 59 5000 or you can email them at: customs.confidential@hmrc.gsi.gov.uk and don't forget to pass on the Swiss bank account details to them so that they can investigate the way that this company collects payments offshore.

As the company is UK registered, it has responsibilities to trade in an appropriate matter. You can complain to the UK Government's Companies House that the company is trading unfairly by complaining to them at enquiries@companies-house.gov.uk or post your complaint and evidence to them - the companies-house.gov.uk website will give you a full mailing address.

You can also complain to the UK Government's Trading Standards Authority which investigates complaints about breaches of consumer law in the UK: consumerdirect.gov.uk - you can also telephone them on 08454 04 05 06.

Hope this helps & that you get some redress. The UK is one of the best countries in the world for consumer protection legislation but they do need people to actually make official complaints so that they can investigate.

Why did you order from Essay Relief anyway? You only have to google the company name to see dozens of references to them being total frauds. I can understand people still getting scammed by Essay Relief's satellite sites but you'd have to be having more than a ditzy blonde moment to order from the master scammers these days.

Why are you patiently waiting for a refund from Essay Relief? You obviously know about chargebacks if this is what you did with the other company. If you have ordered a paper with a credit card then contact 2CO and get your money back or tell your credit card company that you've been scammed and get a chargeback.

I'm not interested in the company that did you an excellent job. You show no judgment and no common sense.

I've used them before and they've not been late. Have you factored in the time zone issue? I know in the essays I've ordered the deadline is usually midnight in their time zone - which I think is US central time - so if I ordered a paper that was due midnight 3 Nov I'd actually get it by 6am 4 Nov as my time zone is six hours ahead of their time zone.

I hope you get your situation sorted out. Let us know!

I have a general ordering question regarding custompapers if anyone knows the answer: has anyone ever requested that the same writer who has done a previous piece for you works on your new order? have they agreed to this?

You'd be mad to post it here unless you posted it with your full name as with just the user name you'd have a hard time proving it was you who made the original post. Your school wouldn't need to see it here - once it's posted online anti-plagiarism software like turnitin would pick it up and if your school uses such software your submitted essay would likely match at least in part to the one posted online and you'd have a lot of questions to answer!

Search the posts here and cross check people's recommendations with other sites like ripoffreport. I'm sure you will be able to find a good company who will edit your essay for you.

Good luck!

Yes, all depends what their anti-plagiarism software is ....

Any anti-plagiarism software that doesn't store a copy of the paper in its database is okay if the student is planning to submit the purchased essay in its entirety as their own work. Turnitin is the only anti-plagirism software that I'm aware of that actually stores a copy of all scanned work in its online database.

Like I said earlier, any essay company would be stupid to run papers through turnitin before selling them to students - many companies say their don't condone plagiarism but I doubt that any would want it known that they were selling you a product (an essay) that cannot be turned in as your own as they've already stored a copy in an online database that is globally available to schools, colleges and universities. It would be commercial suicide.

I'm never sure how much faith to place in anti-plagiarism guarantees. I suspect many companies don't check their writers' work at all and some may do no more than checking a couple of key sentences in google. I guess it is up to the student to check anything they buy and satisfy themselves that they are happy with the essay. I tend to use what I buy as a framework and then rewrite it so that it is more my language and style anyway - I'm sure it still counts as being plagiarised when I hand it in though.

Yes, if they do use turnitin to check for plagiarism then the essay remains in turnitin's database and if someone tried to submit that essay then it would come up as 100% plagiarised.

Which site were you referring to? They must be quite stupid if they are bragging that they were scanning essays through turnitin before selling them to students.

I've not seen any company that actually says they use turnitin software to check the essay though; the sites that I've seen all say they use some form of anti-plagiarism software to check the essay before providing it but I've not yet seen turnitin actually named as that software. I gather that access to turnitin is also quite costly and I think many essay companies are actually low budget operations (if not total scammers) so I doubt that they'd stretch to subscribing to turnitin anyway.

The essay company I like to use say they have their own anti-plagiarism software, which may or may not be true (could be running a couple of sentences through google for all I know!), and they guarantee that the essay will never be stored in an online database. It's good enough for me.

I see another UK company is giving students the chance to sell their old essays through an essay bank - ukessays.com[DND*] say they are starting this service from 31st Oct ... spooky! ;-). Students get 50% of the selling costs of the essay paid directly to them by paypal. All sounds okay but there is no indication yet who determines the selling price of the essay (the company or the student).

I also found another site where you can sell essays: myessays.com and they also can pay you by paypal. This site takes 40% of the selling costs and gives the student 60% and it allows the student to set the price of their own essay.

I'm in the UK too and my uni uses it on a voluntary basis. Students are given personal log-in details and encouraged to run their essays through Turnitin before handing them in.

I've never put my essays through as I don't want them stored for all eternity in Turnitin's database.

I have heard too that students have been accused of plagiarism when they've used part of one of their own essays to write a later essay (i.e. when you're building on earlier work). Seems silly that you can be accused of plagiarising yourself!

Might be - the UK has a lot of problems with companies like Essay Relief which actually operate from Pakistan but claim to be British so it might be this sort of operation in this case too.

I just looked up the domain for this one:

The registrant is Kashif Bhutto
and address is given c/o care of Network Solutions, PO Box 447, Herndon, VA
20172

I don't think they are British even though they claim to be. And on the website they say they have been going since 1999 and have had 30,000 customers but the domain was only registered on 5 September 2006.... so, for me, I think they are not quite what they seem.

Yes, it's an essay bank. You send your essay and they review it and if it is up to standard (whatever their standard is) they put it on the site for people to buy. Every time the essay gets purchased you get commission. So for a 2,000 word essay you submitted, you'd get £10 (about $16) every time it's sold. It's stated upfront to buyers that the essay theyre getting are prewritten and can be purchased over and over so it is not 'unique' - I think they do offer a custom written service but I've never used that and have not heard anything good or bad about it.

I sent a couple of essays to them - took them 2 days to reply but they did accept the essays for their database.

When they do reply they ask you for your paypal / bank details so that they can pay you your commission for each time they sell your essay. You providing this info is agreement that they can put your essays in their database.

I haven't decided whether to go ahead and pass my paypal details on to them yet - they're based in Cyprus which shouldn't be a factor really but I would have preferred that they were based in the UK as their website implies they are.

Hey, I'm just happy to get a mention ;-) Hope you get everything sorted! :)

Or perhaps she didn't use her real name to register for this site - I didn't! Makes sense on her part given that she provided details of her course and location....

I'm curious, why did you post "Again, *********.com has not received any emails from anyone named Kimberly." when it was your first post? Very strange .... unless someone else posting was representing ********* but not being clear in their post that they were posting as such.

This is a weird site in many ways. Anyone can sign up and say anything / claim to represent a company but there is no way of knowing who is really a student and who is really a company representative.

Buyer beware!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've never heard of a modern book being exclusive to a university before. I thought that the act of publishing a book meant in essence that it is widely available and can be bought, loaned (inter library loans etc), resold etc.

I googled the 2006 edition of "A child's world: Infancy through
adolescence" and it is certainly widely available - Amazon have it for $10.95 and my university has two copies available.

Silverlake, your argument is weak to start with (nonsensical in relation to the book) and you certainly do yourself no favors with your inflammatory comments.

What happened? I used them and they were fine - expensive but good quality - that was for 5,000 words. They never asked me for more money and they kept to the deadline.

I doubt that you have lost everything as even if the standard was poor you can make a claim to your credit card company that the product was defective as the work did not meet the advertised standard. Your credit card company should then be able to do a charge back.

If you paid by credit card you should contact your card issuer and ask them to do a chargeback.

At custompapers.com I paid $350 for 3,500 words - bargaining might work, don't know as I've never tried it. I wanted quality - which I got - and I felt that $350 was a fair price tho I don't know how much of that is actually paid to the researcher and how much goes to the company in administration charges.