Before PayPal extended buyer protection to digital services, a lot of customers got burned when they filed (otherwise) legitimate disputes that were summarily denied because buyer protection didn't cover digital services.

That's unfortunate for them, because using a writer whose only online presence is on social media greatly increases their chances of getting scammed and/or blackmailed.

Most of us who eventually managed to transition to complete independence originally started out writing for essay companies, which I did from 2003 to 2013.

Those of us with experience producing theses and dissertations are already used to this section-by-section process, as well as with the typical process of responding to and accommodating ongoing revision demands from reviewers. This is the only realistic way to go about outsourcing these kinds of projects, because combining our respective contributions (instead of just letting the writer provide each section) is much more cumbersome. I highly doubt that any writer, even one who happens to be in your area, will agree to in-person meetings, because of the extra time and inconvenience involved. It's not much different from asking an experienced website designer who normally works from the comfort of his home to meet you in person to discuss your website plans. There's really nothing that can't be communicated effectively by email. If necessary, phone conversations would be a more realistic option, and even that is rarely, if ever, necessary, unless it's the writer who needs additional clarification. At most, you could offer to pay for a supplemental written guide explaining how and why the writer produced each section. In ~25 years, I've had one or two clients ask for that, which isn't a problem as long as there's sufficient time available.

Generally, anytime you're dealing with an experienced and trusted service provider who has been doing something for a living for many years, (in any industry about which you probably know next to nothing, yourself), you really don't want to start off by imposing your expectations about how things are done in that industry or by that provider. If you need tutoring, you should hire a tutor; and if you need a dissertation written, you should ask the provider about his usual process and simply communicate whatever guidance and specifications you'd like to provide. Ordering a dissertation really isn't a learning opportunity, but simply a means of acquiring the specific service or piece of work that you need, just as ordering a new website isn't an opportunity to have the website designer help you learn how to design websites.

Anybody who's been writing essays for a living for a decade or two has written thousands of essays, and almost always in dozens of different academic areas, notwithstanding both the genuinely uninformed and the disingenuously malicious previous announcements from some posters that it isn't possible to do so very well. The same goes for the notion that there are any full time professional academic writers who write projects only in the same specific academic areas as their own degrees, because that just doesn't exist. None of that means that we necessarily know a lot about the subject of every essay that we're able to write at a high level before we start working on it. We obviously rely on high-quality resources available online and/or on the source material provided by our clients. I don't even write essays in my own degree areas without using source material.To my knowledge, nobody here has ever "proclaimed" to have written thousands of essays in dozens of academic areas purely from his own personal knowledge.

The types of risks are very similar to those associated with using any provider for a traditional academic essay. However, because outsourcing online exams typically involves greater disclosure of personal information, the likelihood of those risks materializing is much greater. Therefore, anybody even considering outsourcing exams should be even more careful about avoiding any provider who won't provide his own independently-verifiable identity and location, because when it comes to any kind of scam, fraud, blackmail, or extortion, the essential element that makes those crimes possible is the anonymity of the perpetrator. Nobody whose full identity is known could ever engage in any of those types of crimes, because the obvious consequences far outweigh any potential beneft.

Respectfully, I think I've previously explained that police have absolutely no concern, whatsoever, (or jurisdiction or enforcement authority) over academic honesty, because students' actions in that regard aren't a criminal matter. Likewise, schools have no concern, whatsoever, (or jurisdiction or enforcement authority) over matters of blackmail and fraud perpetrated by outside entities against students. Police don't care at all what you told your school about what you did or didn't submit for credit and/or whether or not those statements to your school are true; nor would police ever share any information about your blackmail or fraud situation (or any other crime against you) with any third party, including your school. The above holds entirely true even in countries (such as England and Australia) and other jurisdictions that may criminalize the production and sale of academic work for hire, because it's only the providers of those services whose conduct is ever covered by any of those statutes, never the conduct of the customer receiving or using those products.

Agree 100%

In a realistic practical sense, the odds are that it's not likely to be any better than AI, simply because, now, essay companies actually have no way of knowing that their writers aren't just using AI, because AI writing can't be detected by any kind of passive scan the way that plagiarism can be detected by plagiarism scanners. Chances are that many essay-company writers, especially newer writers, are now using AI to produce the projects that they upload to the company systems, thereby simultaneously scamming both the company's customers and the company.

Any human writer who writes well enough to take money for writing already writes much better than any AI program. The only conceivable combination of human writing and AI writing that makes sense might be for a student who is very good at researching and organizing information but not at writing it out to use AI to improve his own self-researched project. AI programs can't provide the substantive content to support anything better than a C-/D essay (at best) and can't improve the writing of anybody who already knows how to write.

That's unfortunate. About the only thing customers can do to make that kind of thing impossible is to use only providers who will provide you with their (verifiable) real names and locations, because blackmail, especially in the developed world, simply cannot be perpetrated successfully without anonymity.

I really meant it more as a general suggestion to anybody who's actually been blackmailed, so that other potential victims know which companies or writers to avoid, which, I believe, is the main purpose of this forum. However, once they've already contacted your school, or (more likely, I'm guesssing), managed to trick you into contacting your professor yourself and admitting to it, unnecessarily, (either way), there's really nothing more that they can do to you.

I responded to your other post with suggestions for using the search function on this forum to find 37 posts where I've previously answered just about every possible question about what to do (and what not to do) if you're being blackmailed. To help make this forum as helpful as it can be to everybody else, the other thing that you definitely should do is immediately identify the site/writer responsible for blackmailing you.

Anybody with general questions or concerns about being blackmailed or threatened by any service provider should just use the search function on this forum. Search "blackmail" in "Topic Titles."

Anybody with blackmail-related questions or concerns specifically about any service provider actually threatening to contact your school (or claiming to have already done so, etc.) should use the same search function, but change the default from "Topic Titles" to "Messages," put my forum ID into the "Username" field, select "Exact Phrase" and search the phrase "your school" in my previous posts. If you do it correctly, you should see these 37 posts:

essayscam.org/forum/index.php?phrase=your+school&searchType=2&where=0&forum=&posterName=freelancewriter&action=search&searchGo=1

I never wrote for any company that used a bidding system, but I imagine that the best and most experienced writers typically bid higher than the worst and least experienced writers. The implications for customers should be obvious.

...or they could just look for a whole lot of words that say practically nothing substantive and read about the same as a typical C-/D student-written essay...

Actually, many if not most old, pre-written essays, especially in basic undergraduate courses, are probably more usefull than AI-generated essays on the same topics. For example, the content of 101-level courses in Economics, History, Literature, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology (etc.) hasn't changed very much, if at all, in decades. Therefore, a (good) old essay on basic theory in all of those fields would probably provide a much better model for anybody hoping to learn how to write a good essay than anything generated by AI, regardless of when those two essays were produced. Obviously, neither can be submitted for credit (for different reasons), but at least a (good) old essay might demonstrate some decent scholarship, whereas an AI-generated essay is completely devoid of meaningful substantive content, regardless of having been created more recently.

Agreed.

I wonder whether illegitimate sites are having an even harder time than legit sites and writers, because illegitimate providers necessarily rely much more on first-time customers, whereas legit providers rely primarily on long-term repeat customers whose continued business they've earned by delivering good work.

The only way to get around those modern systems is for students to coordinate with writers to schedule a live test at a specific date and time. Then, the student has to log in to the system, copy/paste the questions to the writer, and the writer has to copy/paste the answers back. Usually, remote live exams allow much more time than necessary for a good student or a very experienced writer to send back the answers with enough time left to upload them with time to spare.

I was doing just fine for years with nothing but my AOL email address, but I had to create my website in 2009 for one very specific reason caused by one specific person:

Back then, the most prolific poster on this forum was (quite obviously) one of the owners (or principals) of the essay company for which at least three or four other forum users and I had all been writing for many years. I believe that person was a male who represented himself here as a female, probably as part of his attempt to conceal his identity and self-interested motives for patrolling this forum 24/7/365, while pretending his only purpose was to be an "industry watchdog" for the benefit of students. The reason that we originally signed up here in the first place was at the specific request of one of that company's CS reps, who asked their best (meaning their most requested) writers to help address a malicious and totally untrue public accusation about that company. All of us also happened to use forum IDs here that were identical to our company writer IDs; so, the person who created a whole thread about "deceptive" writers using emails instead of websites knew exactly who each of us was, as well as what our email addresses were at the time. Most importantly, he also knew, full well, that we were all totally legitimate writers whose essays he was selling and that we were the best writers at that company at the time that he decided to create that thread, essentially, warning customers never to trust any independent writers who used their email addresses for independent work.

https://essayscam.org/forum/es/emails-deceptive-anonymous-writers-gmail-yahoo-826/2/

That company owner/principal who posted here clearly believed that none of us had any right to accept clients from this forum, even if they weren't already company customers, and would routinely threaten to get us fired for various things we posted here, all while simultaneously denying any direct association with the company that employed us. He even got one of their CS reps to contact me about taking customers from this forum, to which I responded by asking how it was any of their business where I found private clients if they didn't own or run this forum, which pretty much ended that exchange.

One day, as part of his continuous but lower-key attempts to steer all customers away from any independent writers, this person created that new thread to announce that no customer should ever trust any "deceptive" writer who used an email address instead of a website, and without ever acknowledging that there were definitely some totally legitimate writers who used only our emails, which he absolutely knew was true, because his own company was simultaneously selling the many essays written by us, and under the same company-writer IDs as our forum IDs, here. I believe that this was actually a deliberate attempt to try to steer potential customers away from us, specifically, because he believed that we were "stealing" customers from his company just by advertising our independent services here.

That's why I had to create my own website.

Satisfied existing clients aren't going anywhere, but new-customer inquiries are down, at least until they all discover for themselves how bad AI essay writing really is.

I haven't made any changes because the difference that I've noticed doesn't really relate to pricing; rather, it relates to the choice of whether or not to use a human writer, at all. Students who are experimenting with AI for their essays aren't looking for lower prices from human writers; they're looking for an entirely free alternative. So, they're less likely to be enticed to use a human writer by lower prices closer to those of the many totally unqualified writers and various types of scam artists who use ridiculously low pricing to dupe inexperienced customers. Meanwhile, students who have already found out why AI isn't a viable option (unless they're happy with a C- or a D) are simply in the exact same position now as they were before AI: namely, they're either looking for the cheapest writers or they're looking for really good writers who have always charged more than their unqualified counterparts. Frankly, my experience seems to bear that out, because even though new-client inquiries are down, neither my conversion rate of first inquiries into customers nor my retention rate of first-time clients into long-term clients has changed very much, if at all.

In my recent experience, it's only students who haven't actually tried using AI for their essays who think that AI is a better option than using a good human writer. Some of my clients tried AI and then showed me their results when they came back to me, either to redo those projects or for their subsequent projects, the exact same way that some students find their way to me only after having first received their projects from other essay companies and/or writers and sometimes show me what they got from those providers. More often than not, that happens with fairly large (30-pg+) projects, probably because keeping their cost per page down is more important to them on longer projects. Unfortunately, that also means they've already wasted a lot of money on useless work from cheaper but less qualified -- or totally unqualified -- providers by the time they end up ordering the exact same project from me to do correctly, sometimes, at a higher price than my original quote, because it ends up being a much shorter rush deadline.

The quality of a writing sample from any company is, at most, evidence of the skills of the one writer who wrote that sample. All essay companies (that aren't sole proprietorships) have dozens (or hundreds) of writers whose talents vary substantially, from excellent (sometimes) to absolutely terrible (much more often). Also, when you judge any sample, you're already trusting the company that one of their writers really wrote it, which may still be entirely irrelevant to you, even if that's true, unless your project is going to be written by the same writer who wrote the sample. Obviously, no essay company posts samples from their worst writers, one of whom is much more likely to take your order than the writer whose posted sample you reviewed.

The main reason that college students have always sought out ways of avoiding having to write their own essays is that academic institutions mandate way too many courses totally outside of students' genuine academic interests and major courses of study as a prerequisite for graduation. That's especially true in degree areas that involve little if any writing in their corresponding vocational fields.

...until they get their essays back with a grade...

It really depends a lot on the particular sentence involved. An extremely generic and/or common sentence, such as "World War II started with Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939" has been written countless times in every possible way; so it wouldn't be an issue, even if flagged. However, when a more complex and unique sentence is flagged, that will often trigger a closer review, because it could suggest that the writer plagiarized much more than just a single stray sentence, typically, by rewriting source material without citing it throughout the essay, but simply forgot to rewrite (or delete) that particular sentence.

It's always a great laugh when someone who, quite clearly, has never actually worked in a field presumes to post his "tutorial" on the topic.

Agree 100%.

This is true, in general. However, legit companies that hired real writers now have to worry about their writers using AI. The tricks that college professors have learned to ID AI-generated writing don't involve passive detection scans and wouldn't work for essay companies the way that plagiarism scans helped them deter plagiarism among their writers. It can be done, but not by running them automatically through a scanner; it would involve manual review of every essay, which would be totally impractical for essay companies.

It doesn't matter very much for customers of scam companies and/or legit but bad companies that use unqualified writers, because their clients were already going to get unusable copied/pasted work (or nothing at all) for their money. However, now, customers have to worry about receiving AI-generated work even from legit companies with real writers, because companies wouldn't know when their own writers are taking AI shortcuts. Unlike independent writers, essay company writers don't have to worry about their own reputations if they deliver bad work and/or get caught using AI (or plagiarizing), because it's only the reputation of the company at stake and not a direct risk to their own credibility if their work gets ID'd as AI writing.

That's absolutely ridiculous. Which company does that?

I'm sorry, but no writer who isn't an absolute fool (or incredibly desperate for work) would ever allow a company to make any of the demands described earlier in this thread by "Smiley73." I'm doubtful that any legit American company would ever even have tried any of that nonsense in the first place, because it would have cost them all of their best writers. When independent contractors accept a project, their only obligation is to fulfill the exact specs, requirements, and deadline listed for the project at the time they accept it. The idea of unilaterally "changing" the deadline on the writer after the fact, demanding "drafts" at any point before the deadline, and especially, demanding revisions to a project delivered a year before so that it can be resold to someone else are all so laughably ridiculous that I have trouble believing that they ever really happened.

Writers pay the inflated cost of everything, too. If writing companies start reducing their already-low payout rates now, during this economy, I think many of their writers would simply stop writing for them, altogether, and decide to look for some other kind of work, instead: a pay cut for the same work would be the proverbial camel's-back-breaking straw. Two of the only other good, legit, American writers I know went back to things like bartending when AI made it hard for them to get by on their writing alone: one is now pursuing a PhD in environmental science for the alternate career track that he chose and the other is now in nursing school, which shouldn't be too hard for him after writing (literally) thousands of nursing projects for his clients.

Sometimes, certain new prospective customers just raise way too many red flags for me to trust any type of payment that can fail or be reversed through fraudulent means. Without going into any detail, publicly, about what constitutes a red flag or what those fraudulent means might be, (for obvious reasons), if I have concerns about trusting payments from a new customer, I give them the option of paying via bank wire or Western Union. The work only gets onto my calendar after my bank confirms that the money has posted permanently to my account or after I pick up the cash from Western Union. Occasionally, new customers are so concerned about maintaining their anonymity that they're actually the ones who request to pay by WU.

COVID only affected my business for about the first 3 months, during which time most colleges suspended classes, altogether. By the summer of 2020, everything was back to normal for me, because the shift to online education didn't really reduce the demand for academic essays very much, if at all. I was actually very surprised about that at the time, because I didn't anticipate such a quick and widespread transition to online education.

I always included it on my resume without mincing words. For every prospective employer turned off by the nature of this type of work, there are probably 10 other prospective employers who care much more that a job applicant for a writing position has many years of experience and competence handling an extremely wide variety of subject-matter areas and (especially) meeting very tight (often overlapping) short deadlines.

I get more and more project inquiries from students who send me some portion of the project with a request to continue and complete it as well as already-completed projects with requests for me to "edit" or "improve" them. They usually don't admit to having used AI for it, but it's pretty obvious from their responses to my asking who wrote whatever they want me to look at and/or why they only wrote a portion of it. In any case, I usually have to tell them that the draft they provided is unusable (because it almost always is complete garbage) and that the only thing that I can do for them is write the whole project from scratch without using anything from their drafts. I tell them that it's none of my business who wrote the draft or how it was produced, but that I can't work with material that may not be accurate and I suggest that they Google the phrase "AI hallucination."

That's probably true. It's also somewhat similar to the way Better Business Bureaus work, in principle, except in reverse: They typically reserve their highest "AAA" ratings for businesses that choose to pay for a BBB subscription. What's worse is that they typically refuse to restore higher ratings to businesses that receive totally unfounded complaints and/or that completely resolve their complaints satisfactorily, unless or until those businesses agree to pay for a subscription. Then, when the business does finally purchase a subscription, its ratings magically improve, instantly. Here's a good article explaining all of that in much greater detail: business.time.com/2013/03/19/why-the-better-business-bureau-should-give-itself-a-bad-grade/

Hopefully you're right. The most insidious harm that these kinds of "specialist" sites pose is that their supposed expertise in specific academic areas seems highly appealing to naive prospective customers pursuing degrees in those particular fields.