I delivered the whole paper to the client, but he only paid for part of it. I need your views...

It's now approximately 144 hours, since a student from the University of South Florida requested that I complete his 20 page paper in a span of 24hrs, which I accepted, though I was aware of the challenges ahead. The client seemed very generous, and even paid an upfront payment, and the balance was to be paid on submission. Therefore, I did deliver the paper 20 hours after it was assigned, ensuring that his deadline was met. However, I now realize I made a big mistake, since I submitted the whole paper to him. He has kept quiet, and I now do not know how to reach him. It is evident that he has decided that since he has the full paper, he is not going to play his part. I hereby ask forum members to advice me accordingly of the appropriate action I should take. If someone has any intentions of destroying you, I believe you should also do the same. Please advice me, I need help asap!!!

Sometimes they do come back and given that it was a weekend s/he may have had one too many and is now dealing with a very nasty hangover. But in your case my crystal ball tells me you are unlucky and that you should be thankful for the small upfront payment you got.

This was probably a first time client for you but should serve as a good lesson in future.

I also had a similar incident in which we had an agreement that the paper would be uploaded in stages and the client would be sending an equivalent amount of money to my paypal.

This was a good plan but as usual things can go wrong and in my case, I mistakenly sent the whole paper instead of half and immediately the client told me that he had to go to the bank to get more money so he could complete the rest of the payment.

Well, the rest is history because I did not even bother waiting for him to come back or communicate.

However, mine was not a whole 20 page paper and the cost of that lesson was perfectly commensurate with what I learned. In fact, I am glad it happened because now my default position is to be suspicious, which is why I have not lost any money since that debacle. You can publish the paper, threaten the client and all but I would suggest you move on and redirect your energies.

Always take payment up front in future and learn from the lesson. In this case since the customer has not paid, you have every right to post the paper online which makes it pretty useless to anyone wanting to hand it in as their own. The threat of which *might* bring your customer back to the table to pay up.

I have always done it, and he had already placed an upfront payment, only to express his generosity.


I am waiting to seek advice regarding the appropriate action that should be taken, since he had paid the upfront payment. The only big mistake that I made is submit the paper in whole instead of bits. I do not know what to do because the client seems to have varnished and can't find him anywhere. Anyone with a clue of how to go about this situation? I have sent the client several messages, but he has not bothered replying to any of them.

It's your business mistake. Cannot blame client for that. Maybe he dont have money for full paper so he paid part only. You can post the part not paid here so we judge your writing skill. lolz

post the paper here, eat the loss, and be wiser next time.

"fool me once, shame on you. fool me twice, shame on me."

I am student, but my advise to you is to sent him every page, I mean you send him a page and then he pay for that page.. until you send him the last page and In this case you will get all your money and the student will get his paper

Hey Intelligent,

As a general rule of thumb for the future, I'd suggest you request the syllabus for the course along with the instructions for the assignment for each assignment you agree to take on. Doing so serves the dual purpose of (a) ensuring quality via clarifying exactly which topics were covered in the course; and (b) providing you the contact information of the professor so you can have some recourse in the event of client nonpayment. Asking under the pretense of (a) can sound reasonable enough, depending on the client and your relationship with them, to deflect suspicion that you would do (b).

I'm assuming you don't have the professor's contact info, in which case you are probably S.O.L.

I smell a rat!

The mistake on your part was that you delivered the full paper to the client. Since he had you on a tight deadline, you had him at your mercy as well. If I were the writer involved in this situation, I would have divided the number of pages by the number of hours till it comes due. I would have sent him only 5 pages per 5 hours. The deal being, once he has the first 5 pages, he will have a useless paper.

So after he receives the first batch, he would have needed to make an additional payment to me before he got the next 5 pages, in another 5 hours. The cycle would have continued until he completed his payments. For the final 5 pages, I would have asked for the balance to be paid before I sent it to him.

It's too bad that you conducted business with this student in good faith and got screwed in the process. It's been some time since this event happened, I wonder, did you ever get the rest of what he owed you @Intelligent? If you did not, how did you handle the situation? I am sure the others here would like to know what happened so they can have a reference point for action should it happen to them.

I've never understood why any writer would ever agree to work on, let alone actually deliver anything before it's paid. Essay companies don't take any orders until they're fully paid and neither should any freelance writer. In fact, there's probably no product of any type that can be ordered online without being paid for in full when you place the order, and custom essays should be no different. If a client wants to limit his potential risk with a new writer, he can simply order and pay for just the first few pages of a project first; and more generally, it should always be up to the client how many pre-paid pages of a longer project to order at a time. Obviously, that means clients can't wait until a day or two before their deadlines just to start contacting prospective writers.

If the client does wait until there's only a ridiculously short time left before his deadline, his procrastination shouldn't become the writer's problem. In those cases, it's the client, not the writer, who has, essentially, eliminated the client's option of limiting his risk by ordering the project in smaller pre-paid sections. The suggested solution of writing and delivering 5 pre-paid pages every few hours all day long isn't that practical, because unless the client is available to receive each email and issue the subsequent payment immediately upon receipt of each section, the writer is inconvenienced by having to choose between waiting for each payment before continuing work or doing more work on the project before it's paid. It's not impossible, but (again) it turns the client's procrastination into the writer's problem and/or unnecessary inconvenience. Generally, nobody is assigning 10 or 20-page projects to students a day or two (or even a week) before they're due; those projects are usually assigned very early in the term and not due for months. So, if a client burns 7.5 weeks off an 8-week deadline, that shouldn't be the writer's problem and it shouldn't be the writer who needs to take a risk or be inconvenienced because of it.

I've suggested many times that clients should try out any new writer with a very short project and a long deadline first, before ordering a longer project or one with a very short deadline. In the worst-case scenario, at least you can still get the project from someone else in time for your deadline. If you wait until the end of a term to contact writers you've never used before for a big important project, you're putting yourself, totally unnecessarily, into a bad position where you don't really have a chance to limit your risk anymore. As between who should fairly have to take the risk of getting burned, the writer didn't cause that problem in the first place and getting burned for 20 pages (or whatever) of hard work that doesn't get paid by the client is just as bad as getting burned for the money when some writer doesn't deliver a pre-paid project as promised.

When it comes to short turn-around papers, a writer should never accept a partial payment upfront. That almost always results in a non-payment of the balance later on. I make it a point to charge the full price upfront for any order that has a minimum of 48 hours turnaround time. The client needs to understand that since it is a short deadline paper, the writer will not have time to upload a partial paper (which is what a partial payment is for) and wait for revision instructions before uploading the full paper. Such a system only works for long turn around papers. In this instance, it is understood that the writer will have provided the full paper without any chance for revision requests prior to the submission. Hence the full payment requirement. I am afraid the OP had some back luck with this client. He was too trusting in a business that always deals with a gray area. The only thing someone in this position can do, based upon the information he provided, is to add this to his experience list. Remember what happened this time and make sure you don't repeat the same mistakes later on. Yes, lessons are always hard learned in this business.

The size of the project truly matters in this discussion.

If I anticipate to work with a client for long-term, then I would usually be alright with providing work before getting paid. Better yet, the 50-50 method wherein the client gives a 50% down payment also works. If I perceive a potential client to be one that I stick with, then I would be generally alright with being patient, especially if it's already their typical payment scheme for other writers. As long as they keep giving me the income that I expect, then there shouldn't be an issue concerning such.

However, when there are shorter projects, then I would expect that the payment would be upfront. There shouldn't be a reason for a client to not provide this, especially because shorter projects usually also indicates that they need to pay me less than they would if it was a massive one.

If I'm being asked to deliver a rush order, then, of course, it will only be wise to ask for a payment upfront. Typically in the industry, papers to be delivered within a shorter time frame are more expensive because it requires a tremendous amount of effort and time from the writer. Therefore, writers should be cautious of having an equitable relationship with their clients in these instances because the probability of being scammed can be higher (due to how expensive the entire project would be).

That's strictly your opinion and simply not a view shared by any experienced writer (or essay company) I've ever known. We will never do any work on any project, much less actually deliver any of it, until it's been paid for in full, regardless of how long or short the project is. No exceptions. It's already difficult and time-consuming enough just keeping track of a dozen or two-dozen pre-paid projects pending on my calendar at any given time. Also having to keep track of payments owed for delivered work would only complicate things and waste more of my time unnecessarily, let alone the additional wasted time and hassle (and inevitable losses) associated with having to follow up to remind clients to pay for delivered work or chase down overdue payments. The only workable option for writers who don't want to waste their time tracking down and chasing after payments and (inevitably) also dealing with getting ripped off for some of those payments is simply taking payment for whatever portion of projects new clients are willing to pay for in advance. On satisfactory delivery of the first pre-paid section, the client pays for the next section and receives it by the next deadline. If the client doesn't contact me with enough time to split up the project into sections, full payment in advance is the only option available and that's not my problem. I'm happy to take full payment and deliver the full project by any deadline that I'm capable of meeting. Time management in relation to the project's deadline on the client's end is strictly the client's responsibility, just as completing projects on deadline is strictly my responsibility. If clients don't leave sufficient time to split projects into smaller sections, they deprive themselves of the option of splitting up the project into sections.

Aside from posting the original paper online and threatening to report the student to his professor, provided he gave you enough information to do so, you can kiss the rest of the payment goodbye. Never turn over the full paper to the client. If need be, you could have submitted the first 2 pages after the upfront payment, then the last page, upon completion. With the rest of the paper being submitted only after you verified the deposit to your account. Yes, there are some students who ask to be blackmailed through their actions. However, it is up to the writer to protect himself during the payment process so such actions need not be taken.