It depends on what you mean by "legit"...

I think a good and fast customer service is very important. Customer service will usually tell you a lot about the company because you can determine:

1. Promptness in Reply to Your Questions

For me waiting more than 24 hours is not acceptable. Assuming the company has many clients, it still takes a couple of minutes to write and send a reply so if the company is serious and "legit," they should reply quick. Some companies will even answer you on Saturday evening while others don't work at weekends.

2. The Quality of the Answer(s)

Before ordering anything from an essay writing company I send an email to their support with a question that requires at least a few sentences to answer. For example, "How long have you been in the writing business and how can I be assured you will not plagiarize or resell my paper?". Or "To which libraries do you have access to? Would you be able to fax or ship me the sources used in the paper?" The quality of the answer will usually tell me if the customer person is a native English speaker and if they know what they are talking about (sometimes it seems the customer service have no idea what they're doing or how to answer even the simplest questions...). A company that cannot afford a native English speaker customer person is not very likely to hire English native writers either.

Here are some other tips:

- Ask what methods of payment they accept; if they only accept 2checkout or similar, it's not usually a good sign. I tend to think more legit companies accept most or all of these: credit cards, paypal/e-gold, bank transfer, money order, western union. If you choose to pay by bank transfer you will know the location of the bank too.

- Look at their website - does it look professional; is the web copy written well, does it answer at least some of most common questions?

- Is it possible to contact them not only by email, but also by phone, fax, snail mail?

- Can you contact the writer directly? (some affiliate companies may have no idea who will be writing your paper unless you have placed an order; even though it does not disqualify them, it's always better to know you or at least the company can contact the writer should there be any problems with your paper)

- When ordering a big paper (let's say 50 pages or more), ask them to provide some background of the writer who will be writing your paper and the writer's overview on your topic. This might help you determine if the writer is at least familiar with the subject

As far as "dirt on some sites through a forum or newsgroup" is concerned, the information you may find on forums or newsgroups is quite often misleading. I think some competing companies may actually pretend to be an "unsatisfied client" in order to defame another company.

As I wrote above, you need to do your own research before you select a "legit" writing company. Good luck!

I think sometimes you cannot predict the things can go wrong. It's quite possible the writer had a personal emergency or something - I know it may happen to every, even the most reputable company.

It's good they refunded your money - it shows their intentions were good...

I'm not sure how many pages total you ordered, but if you ordered let's say 20 pages and they had enough time to complete them and they reassured you they will complete them, it's not good indeed.

I don't think advertising sites here on the forum is permitted...

You write: "A well made site can easily trick someone into thinking its legit" but what I suggest is to actually contact the site's support in advance and ask a specific question/s. You are right - the look of the site doesn't tell everything, but contacting people who actually work for the site will tell you a lot....

That's plenty of time. I think one good writer can custom-write at least 6 pages a day...

chris, you can email me at alldragon8@