I am the OP. My original post had/s nothing to do with the
very small percentage of "legit" writers in the essay industry who inexplicably refuse to obtain a reputable, traceable, verifiable email address that will distinguish them from the throngs of scammers who infest the servers of anonymous email providers like Gmail and Yahoo. It is not my responsibility to provide caveats in defense of the known handful of "legit" writers who use anonymous email every time I communicate about general safety measures.
The bottom line is that thousands of fraudulent "writers" from third-world countries open and close Gmail accounts at the drop of a hat. Any such fraudster can open a Gmail account in
literally 2 minutes, wiping his/her dirty slate clean with
literally no losses in terms of time, dollars, reputation, and emotional investment. In complete contrast, a fraudster can't register a domain, design a Web site, write Web copy for each Web page, configure link structure, find/pay for/configure hosting, configure incoming/outgoing servers for domain-based mail, configure a payment system, submit to search engines/directories, work on SEO (both on- and off-page), etc. in 2 minutes.
Therefore,
if we assume that all other factors are equal (and that is being
extremely generous to the average fraudster and/or writer who uses an anonymous email address to try to attract business), it is much less risky for a customer to deal with a company that uses a company domain-based email address(es). The reason is simple: the average company/site owner in the essay industry has invested much more time/money/energy/emotion in his/her identify and reputation than the average Gmail account owner. Therefore, the average company/site owner is much less likely to commit intentional fraud. That is simply indisputable.
As for the value of placing a small "test" order with a "writer" who's using an anonymous Gmail account, that is utterly useless if the anonymous writer is, indeed, a fraudster. A fraudster can incredibly easily fake, steal, or otherwise misappropriate a short writing sample on any given topic, simply by stealing it from a Google search and altering it (if necessary). Anonymous fraudsters have even taken it a step further by paying a legit company to write a short sample and then using that sample to fool an unsuspecting customer into shelling out big dollars for a 100-page dissertation (for example).
