I've heard as well of companies threatening to give all of your order information to your university - so I used a different name and said a different university than the one I attend for fear of this.

I was told I was getting a refund as well, but I'm concerned about refunds not coming through from any company. I was promised a full refund from one but they said it will take 10 business days, which I fear could be subjective given it's the holidays.

I'm worried that these companies can just close and reopen under another name and never pay anyone back while they jump from business number to business number.

The point is that universities call it cheating. Even if you just use someone else's edit ideas. If you have someone offer edit ideas and you copy them verbatim then it is now considered cheating. I had a sign an agreement not to do that in order to get into my MA program. They now don't even want students using others students books because the other student may have underlined key points and made their own notes in the margin that you may use.

It is cheating to take someone else's completed essay and saying it is your own, but as for taking essay advice, I disagree.
The writing help services at school can't even tell you more than "there may be a few writing mistakes in this sentence" and "it should be reworded a bit"

I think its gotten too extreme because there are so many similar essays.
Personally I couldn't find a fair person to help with my essays and I'm not willing to risk another scam, but if I found a reputable writer, I would use them if only to get a different view and some edit ideas. What is the difference between using someone's edit advice and reading aloud your essay to a smart roommate for their feedback? None.

From my experience don't go with a super cheap one. They won't deliver and when you cancel they apologize and say they can use your money to credit for another order with a top writer. It seems to just be a way for them to get a deposit on a more expensive writing project.

Do schools look the other way when it comes to essay cheaters?

A professor once was going on about using essay writing services for reports he needed done. He then went on about how he's seen too many students have breakdowns in Grad and Doctorate programs because something about how essay writing is something the human mind can't naturally do. He even said his favorite sites, which at the time I didn't think to remember what he said or write it down because I was doing all my own work. It just came across as if he was encouraging students to use an online essay writing services.This is counter to a large anti-cheating agreement students have to sign.

I get the feeling that while the school says they're strict on cheating problems, the profs and departments really don't care. I suppose if they're goal is to get great research proposals and essays that can be added to journals, they wouldn't want to know.

I wouldn't be surprise if some day they get rid of essay writing and find an alternative.

I think my post would go here.
I just wanted to talk of scams with essaywriters advertising on such sites as Kijiji.
I shouldn't have used the person I did because I didn't get my money back and I happened on a strange scam of using other students credentials.

I may be preaching to the converted but this surprised me. There are people saying they write essays edit etc, with photos you assume are of them. Often if you google their name and the university they say they've gone to you can find a connection. I used two different fake emails (meaning not my real name) and sent emails to two different people - I thought. One said he was a PhD student at a specific school and had won writing awards. I only needed him to proof read a document, and ended up not going with his services.I googled his name and school and sure enough his name (but no photo) was linked to the university and the awards he said he had were legit. I assumed if he put a photo of himself on Kijijii then it must be the same guy.

The other guy said he had been an undergrad and a TA, He could get to work right away on a book report for me. He asked for 150 and I gave it to him. He asked all the right questions, gave a time frame, and I trusted him. Not 24 hours before he was to give it to me he said he needed more money. I said no and he didn't finish it. He didn't give me back my money either. He said it was a big job. A real student can judge their time better and a professional doesn't haggle like that. I didn't want a report that would probably be a piece of garbage given the unprofessionalism of this person.

Here's what is odd, looking through our correspondence, at one point he used my other name - from the other email that I used to corresponde ith the PhD student who was going to do some other work for me. It was a dead give away that the two writers were one person.

After a few days of finishing my essays myself, which I really didn't want to do so last minute, I was able to get an email to the PhD department asking them to forward my email to the PhD student (the guy who's services I never used), where I asked if he was the Kijiji writer using his name and credentials. He emailed me back and said "trust me, that is not me"

I assume the reason the fake students using the photos is to say they haven't used someone else's credentials if the photo is of someone else.

Anyway that was my experience. If you are a PhD or Master's student I would advise not leaving you photo blank on your school profile or better yet put up an avatar that says "not a writer". Some students may advertise with their photo that they do essay writing, but not while their still in school I'd assume.

I used a regular writing service that couldn't deliver on time and said they're refunding me (fingers crossed) so if I had to go with a writer again I'd use an online service over these freelance writers.