Many students fall for the marketing gimmick mentioning that an essay company offers "100% Money-back Guarantee". There are nearly half a dozen ways in which this is (almost always intentionally) misleading.

The obvious implication to a casual student would be that the company offers a full refund should the client be disappointed with what they receive. There are numerous dubious essay companies that are misguided and desperate enough to offer this kind of guarantee, and they often land a few clueless victims. Such sites hope the clients will either be too lazy to pursue the refund or will somehow not mind the mediocre papers they receive. Worst case scenario, they figure, is that they get one refund request out of a hundred sales.

Not all these sites are that stupid though. Many scamming sites hope that this first impression created by the mention of the guarantee lasts with potential customers up until the point they part with their hard-earned cash in hopes of receiving a quality paper. This is because hidden somewhere in the fine print are disclaimers that are as varied and unintelligible as those who draft them.

Some sites state that the offer expires once the client's order is "assigned to a writer". Their insurance against this is that the papers are normally almost automatically "assigned" once the client completes payment, thus guaranteeing no refund claims.

The truth is that this kind of refund (full refund after service delivery) almost NEVER occurs. Actually, considering the nature of this industry, a customer should (for several reasons) question any service provider who promises to refund money on account of their (client) dissatisfaction with the final product.

There are those outfits that are a bit evolved. They calculate refund amounts according to how much work has already gone into the paper at the point of a refund claim. This sounds like a fair policy. As a writer, I have faced moments when a client cancels an order after I'm done with all the background research (which is sometimes the bulk of the work). The problem with this policy for most companies, however, is that discretion for determining the amount of "work already done" lies solely with said companies. Time-to-deadline is not what is used to calculate refund owed. A client has little claim over the amount of refund offered. They have to sit and eat it, even if it is 10% refund being offered 5hrs after payment on an order with a week's deadline.

Then there are the real bottom-of-the-barrel leeches who have absolutely nothing to lose. These are the shameless entities who take clients' money, don't deliver anything at all, refuse to offer any refund (since all this was their intention all along), threaten clients with exposure to their academic institutions should they raise a stink (either by filing charge-backs or whistle-blowing elsewhere), extort the clients further in a few cases, then move on to the next victims in love with claims of guarantees.

This money-back guarantee shouldn't offer ANY comfort to a student, nor should it be used as a criterion for picking a service vendor to use.

Thorough vetting remains the surest and safest way to pick a reliable, competent, and honest service provider.

There aren't many "legally recognized" industries plagued by deception and underhanded practices as much as this. The tales of people getting ripped off have spread so far and wide that the mention of "essay writing service" immediately conjures up an alert in almost everyone who hears it. Scam artists have largely contributed to the dubious perception people have of the essay writing business.

It is not only the paying clients who get victimized. The lies and con games of the majority are effectively stinking up the entire industry and adversely upsetting the operations of the genuine few.

I know this topic is extremely broad, and perhaps every fitting thread on this forum somehow addresses it.

It is imperative, however, that every opportunity to cleanse the market be taken and exhausted.

These are some of the most common lies peddled by scamming websites. This list does not come close to being exhaustive, and barely scratches the surface of the matter it aspires to address. It only mentions a few express lies and misrepresentations. It leaves out the devious tactics and illegal machinations not visible to the targeted customers. Many forum members have already contributed to those and will continue to. Some topics will never run out of new content.

The lies mentioned here are also not the darkest known to industry veterans, but rather those that students come across and need to watch out for:

1. All our writers are ENL writers. Very few essay companies employ only ENL writers. Very few. Most of the others say this because they know the effect it has on potential customers. Some sites say this without even fully understanding what it means.

2. Reviews and testimonials. Most (nearly all) reviews and testimonials from supposed customers are fake. Genuine students who use essay writing services wouldn't care enough to go through the hustle of finding a different forum/blog/site to post how "satisfied" they are with a product. They know they don't need to. All they have to do is use the same service next time, or at most tell a friend. A student has zero incentive singing praises of an essay company online. Many of them want to keep it a secret that they paid to get a paper completed.

3. Years of experience. Most websites are not truthful about how long they've been operational. Those of us who've been in this business long enough know that there are only a handful of essay writing companies that are more than 15 years old, with 3 or 4 having already hit the 20-year mark. Nearly all the rest are imitators, chancers, experimenters, fraudsters, and/or latecomers.

4. 100% Money back guarantee. There's no such thing, at least not in the sense it is normally intended to imply. I have covered this more exhaustively in a different thread.

5. FREE stuff. This is not a lie as much as it is a lame gimmick. Dozens of sites keep mentioning that they offer free bibliography page, free title page, free formatting, free online support etc. That's almost like Apple advertising that a new iPhone comes with a free screen.

6. Stats and Metrics. I'm yet to come across a site saying they deliver less than 90% of their orders on time, or that their average quality score is under 7/10. If you can't verify them, don't believe them.

7. Samples. This is especially true for sites that allow students to pick writers before placing orders. The writer samples are mostly not prepared by the writers attached to them. From a different perspective, consider the implications of a company giving out full rights to a paper it has prepared for a client only to later provide the same paper in future as a sample to a different student.

8. FREE plagiarism checker. I debated including this one then I figured it's better to err on the side of caution. This is a polarizing issue that has been discussed enough in several threads already. My opinion is that it belongs in this list. Hopefully, having it here will trigger some little restraint or initiate a thorough search for a more definite conclusion by a needy student.

Many campaigns (in this forum and other online platforms) advocate for the rights of student customers. It is not very often that folks here highlight the ordeals of writers in the hands of essay companies.

I have been a writer for more than a decade. During this time, I have witnessed all manner of practices from several essay companies run without clear-set regulations or standards of operation. Some of these practices are incredibly unfair while others are outright criminal.

I need to point out that it is only the unscrupulous sites that engage in these practices. Legitimate and established companies act right by their writers:

1. Force-assigning orders. During registration, most companies state that one of the benefits of working for them is that writers get to pick/take/bid only on orders they are happy and comfortable working on. This honeymoon phase doesn't last too long though. At some point, their Support Team needs people to work on those off-putting orders that no writer wants to touch (for whatever reason), but whose deadlines are fast approaching. This is why they "force-assign" to writers they think may complete the orders. Now, a writer is "free" to "reject" such assignments, but usually (and unofficially) at their own future expense. First, habitually rejecting force-assigned orders limits the number of future bids being accepted. Then there's a threshold for the number of rejections possible before triggering a "warning letter" for being uncooperative and unsupportive.

2. Manufacturing Lateness. There are several ways they do this. The common one is putting a paper back on "revision" with an unbelievably short deadline at a time when the writer is most likely unable to execute. A cruder way is by manually shortening an assigned paper's deadline and hoping that a writer won't notice (yes, it's been known to happen). They do this either to directly fine the writer for the late order/revision, to accumulate lateness counts to trigger an overall fine applied to all orders, or to prevent the writer from achieving bonus-tagged efficiency milestones.

3. Altering instructions midway without compensating the writer. The way most companies operate is that they charge the client a fee for changing order details (or changing the deadline) after work on it has started. This is normally to compensate for the work already done or the effort and inconvenience of changing course. Not all companies trickle this additional payment down to the writers.

4. Withholding funds unrelated to alleged infraction. Some sites dismiss writers (for plagiarism, lateness, or whatever) then deny them (the writers) access to the funds they've accumulated up to that point from previously completed papers. This is different from fining the writer to compensate the client. Even sites that have no stated compensatory obligations to the client (in the event of plagiarism or lateness) do this. This is just one example.

5. Robbing writers outright. There's a disreputable Eastern European group that has writers walking on eggshells the entire duration of their engagement with them. As soon as a writer's account accumulates funds above a certain amount, they become targets for random unfounded accusations. These charges are the pretext for immediate termination of employment, permanent deactivation of a writer's account (leaving no records for reference), and withholding of all funds due to the writer. There is zero room for putting on a defense or responding to the charges. All a writer gets is an email saying "We are sorry..."

These are just but a few of the infamous practices.

Anyone writing for a company guilty of any of these should consider quitting and working for a more civilized organization.

One of the pointers constantly used by students (as well as other players in the industry) to sieve the legit sites from the fraudsters and incompetents is pricing. The general opinion is that legit sites charge more for the same number of words/pages.

There is some validity in this notion. For a long time, it was a bit easy to tell (to some degree) which sites were hiring competent ENL writers. Since competition has always been stiff, new, experimenting sites needed to lower their prices to lure customers and test the market. They also lacked nearly all of the other reasonable legitimacy checkbox items, so they really needed to work that discounting angle. Several factors allowed them to do this and still remain operational. The dozens of sites that exploded into the industry between 2002-2012 were/are based in Ukraine, Philippines, Pakistan etc. The regulatory laws in those countries are a bit lax (major euphemism) compared to those in more developed countries.

This was even worse for a then (in those countries) unrecognizable field like online academic writing. New sites cropping up could operate flagrantly with zero adherence to any of the rules and standards that are the basic norm in the US/UK. Add on to this that they don't pay taxes, and what you have is a renegade setup that could undercut bona fide companies by up to 50% and still be profitable. Writers in the countries where they recruit from come unbelievably cheap. There are reported cases of writers being paid under a dollar per page, believe it or not.

Now, the legitimate US/UK companies have never enjoyed some of these luxuries, for reasons we don't need to get deep into here. Let us just focus on the most relevant one today, which is that competent ENL writers don't come cheap. Two main factors play to this. First, competence comes with the achievement of higher academic qualifications. Anybody with a Master's or PhD has career options and can easily secure a job in their field of study. It is therefore unlikely that they would work for meager wages completing academic papers in an industry lacking (among other things) conventional securities. Second, an ENL writer (at least somewhat) is most likely living in a developed country with a stable economy and enjoying certain employment guarantees. They don't have to settle an essay writing company offering low pay. A competent ENL writer can only work for a company paying rates high enough to persuade them into academic writing as a way of earning a living.

These dynamics have had the effect of maintaining the prices of legit companies above the others, making it easier to tell the two classes apart.

Over time, however, this has changed. The ESL sites have managed to leverage the slight traction they got through low prices into a somewhat steady client flow. They have also devised numerous marketing tactics (not all legit) that blind potential clients to cost. Now they can raise their prices to match the legitimate sites without losing as much business and while still maintaining the same lower expense bill. This renders the price telltale no longer reliable.

Nearly all of the infractions that writers get punished for by essay companies are enough to warrant outright termination of employment.

The decision to keep writers on the employment roster after particular offences speaks to poor judgment and lack of professionalism in the part of the companies.

A writer who plagiarizes (especially above a certain percentage) is not one to be trusted with future projects. It shouldn't matter how many flawless projects this writer has completed in the past. The issue that caused this one instance of plagiarism is bound to arise again in the future. It is shocking to learn the methods many sites use to deal with this matter though. There's one 'big' essay writing company (running several sites) that officially provides writers with a 'plagiarism report' for each submitted document, then offers suggestions on how to improve the document before resubmission. The system is actually officially designed to anticipate and accommodate plagiarism. That is an unfortunate state of affairs.

The same applies to the case where a writer submits a paper whose content is somehow irrelevant or unfitting. Failure to sufficiently understand and accurately interpret instructions/requirements is a rookie mistake which no paying customer should be exposed to, especially considering that actual academic credentials could be impacted. I understand that professional academic writing does not come naturally to all, and some may require training and time to learn. But this should not be at the potential expense of a paying customer.

What might be hard to sell is the notion that even a writer who submits work late should be fired. As a seasoned professional writer, I know there are some instances where unforeseen circumstances might cause delays. However, the impact of most of these instances can be neutralized by professional risk management on the part of the writer who is getting paid. This risk management should be part of the writer's job.

Aspiring independent writers can hone their skills and learn the trade while simultaneously taking on projects. A company, however, should only offer clients services of thoroughly vetted and fully qualified experts. Like I had earlier mentioned, any company that habitually tries to rehabilitate offending writers and continuously accommodates transgressions is not acting in the best interests of its clients. To the contrary, it is exposing them to considerable risks.

The main purpose of this forum, I believe, is to expose scams in the online academic writing world. I hope, however, that this doesn't preclude the discussion of other vulnerabilities in the industry besides outright scams.

It might be helpful to look at these hazards from the perspective of how students expose themselves to disappointments (in general). This is not to pass the blame on to the students, but to underscore their role in their own letdown:

1. Picking a wrong service provider. This is by far the main cause of disappointments for thousands of students. This is a never-ending subject. Forum members have debated it here for years. Let me state that any student who knows of EssayScam should be out of this danger.

2. Giving incorrect paper details and requirements when ordering. This includes picking the wrong referencing style/format, misrepresenting the academic level (perhaps to lower the price), specifying the wrong paper type etc.

3. Leaving out crucial information. I once had a student wait until just before I sent her the paper to mention that it was mandatory to use 2 specific books.

4. Procrastinating until the last minute to place an order. This one causes disappointments if enhanced by the first point. Competent and experienced writers can produce 25 pages of top-quality work even within a 24hr period. But waiting until the last minute then selecting a writer with limited experience working under pressure is bound to lead to letdowns.

5. Unrealistic expectations. This leads to disappointments in most situations in life anyway. In this business, you should consider yourself lucky (or at least ahead) if you even get what you pay for. Many don't.

6. Believing every marketing message out there. Students should realize that academic writing, although unique in its own way, is still a business much like most others. It is unwise to take some of the claims literally or as absolute truths. The car in front is NOT ALWAYS a Toyota. Red Bull DOES NOT give you wings. Uber might not have the safest rides on the road (and was actually sued for claiming so). These 3 examples demonstrate exaggerations that toe the line on what is allowed in advertising. Virtually all marketing messages are meant to convert prospects into paying customers. They should therefore not be taken at face value, especially in an industry such as this. Some of the claims by essay writing websites go beyond permitted puffery. The scammers inject intentionally misleading information. Some of this material is even passed on as statistical data and third-party content. I have expounded more on this point in another thread.

For more than a decade I have worked as an academic writer for various essay companies. I have written for reputable US and UK companies as well as for a few sites operated outside of these 2 territories.

Over the years I have noticed that most of these essay companies keep recruiting new writers every year. Of course, it is good practice for any business to always stay ahead by constantly adding on to its talent pool. However, my observation speaks to more than just efforts at reinforcing human resource. Many essay companies, especially the 2nd generation ones (if I'm allowed to call them that), find it hard to deliver because they lack sufficient competent talent.

The industry, of late, has not been growing as fast as it did the previous decade. The reasons for this are several, and a different topic altogether. Nevertheless, essay companies are desperately in search of competent writers even with lower orders each season.

There are several reasons for this. Here are a few:

1. Many non-US/UK companies don't pay enough to sustain good writers, so there's little mystery there.

2. Competent labor can sometimes be hard to sustain, even for well-paying firms. A writer who is good might get a better offer and leave. I've been approached by competing companies twice.

3. Many writers realize that their input forms the gist of the final product to the customer. They figure they can cut the "middleman" and avoid profit-sharing. Of course, they initially encounter a whole new beast when they try venturing on their own.

4. In a few cases, writers leave not because of the rate of pay, but because there's little work from which to earn. This is especially true for 2 of the most established UK companies. Their legitimacy places pressure on their expense accounts. Such pressure is not experienced by ESL sites (topic for another day). As such (and for other reasons), the prices of these UK sites are way higher than the industry average. This gives them higher margins, but ultimately alienates thousands of students on tight budgets. The result is that these premium sites get fewer customers than their mid-level competitors. When orders to complete are scarce, writers get frustrated, no matter how lucrative the margins are.

5. There are companies that outright frustrate writers. The Ukrainian twins are well known for this. They offer miserable pay, impose random unfair fines, manufacture lateness, delay payments, change payment terms, introduce incredibly abusive terms mid-contract, force-assign projects, assign 'editors' who get a portion of the writers' cut etc. This item deserves a thread of its own.

6. Then there are just those writers who at some point decide they don't want to spend the rest of their productive adult lives completing academic papers for students.

The con artists in this industry are working extremely hard to blur the line between them and the legitimate entities. They are greater in number (than the legit outfits) and some of them are awash with cash. They are constantly inventing new ways to pass themselves off as the real deal and cheat students. This is why efforts to uncover their practices must constantly be updated.

New students seeking essay writing services face the constant risk of being scammed, extorted, or disappointed by the experience. The good news is that many of these students are aware of the dangers they face, and attempt to safeguard against them. The bad news is that some of these safeguards are either outdated or based on wrong premises.

I will mention a few of these and briefly state why they are invalid:

1. Grammatically flawless web copy. This used to be a valid indicator until a decade ago when the cons found out students were getting harder to fool. Nowadays, for a few hundred dollars, they can invest in hiring competent ENL writers to come up with excellent web content.

2. Pricing. Gone are the days when you could tell the legitimacy of an essay company based on how much they charged per page. Nowadays even the shadiest sites match their prices with the most prominent companies. It is their hope that some clients still relying on this indicator might stumble upon them. I have covered this topic in greater detail in a different thread.

3. A Companies House registration number. This one is for those companies claiming to be based in the UK. It takes a few hours of filling forms and like $30 to get a UK registered company from almost anywhere in the world. There are agencies fiercely competing to get clients to register companies through them. Having a UK-registered company means nothing at all in this industry, except only that that individual/group has put in a little more effort than many of the other fraudsters who are too cheap or too stupid (often both) to do the same.

4. Fluent phone or chat representative/agent. It doesn't cost that much to hire one. It is not that agent who will work on a placed order.

5. SSL Cert. This might be hard to believe, but this is what some students look out for when determining whether a site is legitimate. Obviously, a site that hasn't gone through the trouble to secure all of its transactions through HTTPS connections could be riskier. But this is strictly a transaction safety/security issue, not a service delivery competence indicator. It has nothing to do with (or show about) the person taking the money or the one who will handle the order, if at all.

There are some details of the inner workings of many essay companies that remain unknown to most of the students who pay them for academic papers:

1. Papers to be completed NOT necessarily get assigned to the most suitable writer. Sometimes a paper gets completed by a writer who isn't exactly familiar with the topic, or even qualified in the discipline. In most essay companies, available orders are published on an assignments board for writers to bid on. Any writer with the clearance level (status) the assignment demands can take or bid on it. Very few companies (just 2 that I know of) deny a writer the chance to work on a paper solely because it falls outside his discipline(s) or area of specialization. Depending on how each individual system works, a Philosophy paper can be picked by a writer with an Engineering academic background.

2. Sometimes a paper doesn't get worked on until the very last day. Students think that once they place orders and confirm payment, a writer gets assigned immediately. They don't realize that a paper gets picked up by a writer (mostly) based on its appeal (difficulty, pay rate, instructions, deadline etc.) compared to the other available papers. Less desirable orders take longer to get a writer. It is not a first come, first served kind of scenario.

3. Many companies pay their writers less than 35% the rate charged to the customer. This is especially true for most ESL sites.

4. For essay companies with certain formats, the writer who gets assigned might not be the one who actually works on the paper. There has been a growing tendency of company writers to outsource work to other parties for a fraction of the pay. This happens in companies with inefficient mechanisms and where management has limited control over writers.

5. Sometimes the online operative/agent has little clue of the complex details the client is talking about. The specifics are normally just forwarded to the writer to make heads or tails of. This is true especially for sites run from Ukraine, Nigeria, India, Kenya, Pakistan, Philippines.

6. One of the main functions of company agents and operatives is to ensure that there is no direct contact between writers and customers. Otherwise, if only for efficiency, no company would have some of these middlemen in place.