List of Penalties against Academic Writers?

Does anyone have a list of penalties / freelance writer terms (unavailable online for unregistered users)? Which are the most ridiculous / unfair ones in your opinion, and why? There have been discussions about penalties against academic freelance writers, but those were not always specific. Maybe by posting them and discussing them some essay service company owners would re-think their unscrupulous ways of doing business and start treating freelance writers more fairly.

Personally, these are the ones I find most ridiculous. I no longer work with any company or client with these terms, but these are some I learned the hard way in my earlier years. ;) Of course, these are not new to those who've been writing for a while or even hanging out in this forum. Just sharing my pet peeves.

- Those that require unlimited free revisions and the writer will not be paid until the customer is happy. We all want happy customers (happy = return customers) but let's be honest... some (not all, just some) will never be satisfied.

- Unfair penalties for slight deadline delays. Some will cut a large % from the writer's pay even if the deadline is only a few minutes late. I pride myself on meeting deadlines, but we're all human and an occasional delay shouldn't result in a major deduction. Some do not pay at all if the deadline is missed even by minutes. Of course, if a writer is constantly late, that's a different matter, but you get what I'm saying. :)

- re: 'free unlimited revisions' - so a writer will not get paid if he's completed 10 free revisions and refused to work on 11th free revision? I'd like to think a writer should get paid when he completed the order according to the given instructions (and provided up to, let's say, 1-3 free LIGHT revisions requested within a reasonable amount of time, let's say 2-3 days from a completion date),

- re: missed deadline penalties - so if a writer missed a deadline, but the customer didn't complain, the company would still enforce the penalty (taking the penalty's monetary value / deduction to themselves)? I'd like to think that a deduction would apply only if a customer had a problem with the missed deadline (most of them don't, especially if it was a slight delay).

One of the craziest penalties that was ever levied against me was having the QAD request that I revise a paper that I wrote 3 years ago for them! When I refused on the basis that it was too old and the client was most likely a graduate at that point, the department hit me with a fine, the full amount of the previous paper! Then reassigned the order for revision.

Another unbelievable penalty that I was hit with was after QAD supposedly, "checked" the paper for plagiarism using their private program. They claimed that the program detected 10 percent plagiarism in the paper so they fined me the amount of 10% in preparation for a client refund. Whaaat? When I asked for a copy of the plagiarism document, I could not believe my eyes. According to their software, even the words "I, the, is, are" were considered to be plagiarism! I asked them how I was supposed to write a paper without pronouns and connecting words. They simply said their program is infallible. I never did see the 10% they deducted.

Then, there was this instance when a short turn around time paper was assigned to me, without my requesting it. When I refused the order, guess what? Yup. another penalty because of "short term refusal" to do the work. Work I never asked for in the first place. I could go on, and on, and on, and on with more than 20 years of penalty experience, each penalty reason getting more creative than the previous one. I'll stop here before I give you enough material to start writing a book. Hahaha!

So.. the foreign essay services can steal money from freelance writers by:

- creating a bogus revision request (obviously they can login as a student and make up a story),
- creating fake plagiarism reports,
- assigning an order a freelance writer doesn't want and penalizing him/her for not completing it (in lawful countries a company cannot tell a contract writer to complete an order he/she doesn't want to complete or else they would face a formal investigation).

One should remember that the service owner / admin can always login as a customer and post false statements in order to achieve a certain goal (typically to create a bogus refund request - after that the money goes back directly to the admin/service, or to fire the writer).

Exactly. These bogus writing companies are very much outside of the realm of legalities in most countries. They do not function in a manner that would have them answerable by law because their country is, quite possibly, constantly engaged in unlawful activities in the first place. In all honesty, it did not occur to me that they could have been the ones requesting for the numerous revisions at any given point in time. Now that you mention it, it is quite possible that most of the revisions that I was getting was coming from a masked QAD person. That will explain why all the revision requests have to pass through QAD and the same department is hands on during the revision process.

Normally, the company does not fire the writer though. They say that you can quit if you want to but they won't fire you because you don't have a formal, written, signed contract with the company. Therefore, they do not face any legal sanctions either with regards to they way they defraud their own writers. It's a technicality that they exploit to the hilt and it gives them to gumption to say hurtful things to the writers who only wish to get their fair salary for the work delivered. They always tell the complaining writers that freelancers are free to leave anytime, they will not be stopped since there is no binding document between the company and the writer.

You're right - they don't 'fire' a writer just like they would fire a regular employee, but in many cases they do treat them as a regular employee, so they take advantage of all the best opportunities for themselves. FYI - from a legal point of view, a formal/written/signed contract with a company does not mean a worker is or is not a contractor (a contractor may be classified as a regular employee based on certain actions or expectations of their employer).

@Major These academic outsourcing companies claim that the "contracts" are on a per project basis and as such, do not constitute regular employment with them. They know every trick in the book when it comes to getting around recognizing a writer who has a long standing relationship with them in terms of a work relationship. My shortest working relationship with a writing company was 2 years. The longest, was 7 years. Each time, I would try to get an employee certification from them for reasons such as opening a bank account or something. Each time, I was refused and reminded that I am not an employee. I take clients directly upon their referral. That, in their opinion, did not make them my employer, even after I pointed out that they were the ones who signed my paycheck. They would then explain that they merely, "hold on" to my earnings in case there are problems. They offer an "assistance" service when it comes to salary collection. That did not, in their explanation, make them my employer. They were only payment conduits. I told them a conduit would not be charging penalties on the work of the writers. Hahahaha!

The line between an independent contractor vs a regular employee is fluid and should be determined on case-by-case basis (it's been discussed here). In general, if they force you to work on a specific order you don't want, it may suggest they want to treat you as a regular employee. But if you take any orders you like, it may suggest you are a contractor. There are other variables related to that, but these are one of the strongest ones when it comes to employee classification.

Any company that uses penalties as some type of negative reinforcement is completely wrong. You may be able to cite some other industries where this practice is used, but there are NONE to my knowledge and for good reason. It's just stupid. If you don't take the time to invest in your credentialing and customer service, you can expect negative outcomes. Boo-hoo. Major (as usual) is right on. If you need advice, listen to this man.

Good for you @ProfessorVerb. Like I said previously, my academic outsourcing experience is mostly related to Ukraine based companies. These were all horrific times for me in line with the performance of my profession and I would only wish that sort of work experience on my worst enemies. I am actually learning a lot from @Major and I am applying what I have learned from him. It is always fun to carry on an extended, and enlightening conversation with him. He is a consummate professional who does not mind sharing his knowledge with others so they too can benefit from his wisdom.

There were a number of negative outcomes for some of the writing companies I worked for. Mass resignations being one of those results. Somehow, the companies refused to acknowledge that they were treating the writers negatively. So leaving was usually the only option we were left with. No use crying over spilled milk now. I am just glad that I have the "wisdom of the sages" to refer to now as I embark on a new journey in relation to my writing career. Thanks @Major and @ProfessorVerb for being generous with the experience lessons and insightful advice.

The penalties spoken of in this thread still remains. The problem, is that the companies are having a difficult time enforcing it. They know that if they enforce the rules in an arbitrary manner, then their writers are going to walk. However, they want to keep most of the income for themselves. So they are caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. Yes, there are companies that have tried to enforce the fining system soon after schools reopened. I know of a few of them to closed shop soon after because the writers walked out en masse after the penalties were applied. Their greed was their demise.

The penalties that these companies have recently come up with are already laughable. For example, there is one writing company that penalizes the writer for "early submission" of the paper. They would rather that their writers do not upload the orders early. A penalty is applied for orders that are uploaded prior to a 12 hour deadline. The paper can only be submitted to the client 12 hours before the deadline time. Otherwise, the writer is penalized based on the number of hours early that he submitted the paper. They make up penalties just to keep more of the profit.

That's absolutely ridiculous. Which company does that?