I engaged a reputable freelance writer about 11 days ago to help me out with a paper. It's someone I've used before - I found them on both this site and essaychat.com and I vetted them prior to using them previously. It's someone that a lot of the freelance writers and students on all these sites seem to think highly of.

When I approached them for this job I had time up my sleeve. They had a few delays etc. but I was understanding because I trusted them and more importantly I valued their work. They're on the slightly more expensive side but I'm always happy to pay for quality work and I even paid 50% upfront. We worked out an outline, workshopped exactly what I required and I provided them with possible deadlines (as well as lots of material). I've been in touch with them almost every day for the last 11 days. The absolute latest drop-dead deadline I had was around 7.5 hours ago (Thursday evening) - I made this very clear to them when I engaged them.

We agreed that they would provide the paper on Wednesday evening, but they emailed me Wednesday afternoon and asked if it was okay to submit Thursday evening instead. I agreed (since that was my drop-dead hard deadline). & I have not heard back since!!! No paper by the deadline, no emails, no communication, nothing :(

I'm at a bit of a loss. I obviously still need my paper and have basically tried to deal with my rising levels of panic and anxiety over the last 8 or so hours :( I'm extremely disappointed that this person has done this to me (particularly given that I'm a repeat client). I'm also seriously confused as it does seem out of character. The main reason I went to the effort of setting this up with a freelancer is I thought they'd be more vested in meeting deadlines and guaranteeing repeat business.

I did pay via Paypal so I do have the option of seeking a refund that way - how long should I wait til I do that? I'm also interested from hearing from the freelance essay writers on this site - do you have any advice on what I should do? Have you ever done this to a client?

I do have the person's name from the Paypal transaction - any ideas on how I could hunt down a phone number for them from that info without lodging a Paypal dispute?

So I'm currently considering these two sites -paperdue.com/ (I think they used to be madpapers) and abtermpapers.com/. I've looked them up on whois and both sites appear to have been registered for years. I've had some email communication with the latter and they seem genuine and a native English speaker.

They both seem legit but I just thought I would put the call out there to see if anyone else has any actual experience of them? Any fellow students who have used them and can provide some feedback on how the experience was? Whether their writing is well-researched, are they responsive to emails, and do they meet deadlines?

Many thanks in advance.