How do writers / essay services deal with customers who try to steal their money?

FreelanceWriter's response in this thread got me wondered, how freelance writers and legitimate writing services should deal with fraudulent transactions or lying customers. What if you were a writer who's completed a 30-page writing order and you receive a notification from Paypal that the charge was not 'authorized' by the buyer or that the buyer claims the order does not meet their academic standards?

How would you typically deal with this situation (especially that you KNOW the customer is not being truthful about the whole situation and that your order has met or exceeded the highest expectations of an academic institution). You risk having the order amount chargebacked (or it has already been chargebacked).. and now what.. Would you allow the customer to have your money 'stolen' this way or perhaps you'd take some actions to try to recover your money?

In my experience related to working for various companies, the company sets a rate of refund for the client, based upon a specific time-frame or degree of accusation regarding the quality of the work.

It is something that they set before hand in order to ensure that, in the event of refunds, only a portion of the money will be returned to the client unless, the charge is plagiarism and the accusation can be proven by the student.

Knowing that the company functions this way, I would try to apply a similar method as an independent writer. That means, I would already have a set of refund policies to share with the student prior to the finalization of the order.

That way, the client and the writer enter into the deal with a full disclosure and refund agreement. As a PayPal "seller", one has the ability to dictate the terms of refunds to the "client".

This is something that PayPal takes into consideration when investigating charge back claims. So, if the client is informed beforehand, and PayPal has a copy of my charge back policy, I believe that the money paid to me will not be stolen or, not totally stolen. In the event of a charge back, one can offer evidence to PayPal, via communication with the client, regarding the refund policy that was previously agreed upon.

That should help to preserve the money that was paid out to me. Companies expect unreasonable charge backs. That is why they not only overcharge the client for the price of the paper, but they also implement refund rules upon sign up with the service. Independent writers can learn from the company business models and adjust it to suit their needs.

What if you lose all the appeals and the money gets refunded to the customer? At this point it's now you against the deceiving customer. Would you still try to recover your money; if so, how?

I would still try to recover it by trying too settle the problem outside of PayPal. If I want to really keep the money, I would contact a lawyer and have him draw up an enforcible electronic contact for me that could be used with all my clients from the moment I started the business. In this line of work, I believe that you should cover the bases and plug the holes before you agree to do any work. This is a work related risk that all independent writers face. As a company based writer, you get to keep some of the pay, even with penalties. An independent writer runs the risk of giving away a free paper. However, I don't think that students would be that dishonest. The whole business is based on trust and honesty. While there may be incidents in the vein of what you described, those cases are few and far between. If it does happen in the manner described, I'll have to chalk it up to experience, dust myself off, and keep going. No sense losing asleep over something I tried to, but could not change.

The cost of hiring a lawyer and investigation proceeding would likely be about the same or more as the order amount. If a scammer used a proxy and/or was based in another country, it would add up and the overall cost and such an effort would be prohibitive. Imagine hiring a lawyer in the scammer's country, translate and notarize all documents into the local language, then subpoena their IP and email address (it would probably stop there as it'd be unlikely to get through the subpoena requests).

Then chalk it up to experience and just swallow the loss. It's a no win situation in Paypal, no win situation via legal means, all avenues for keeping even a part of your cash had been blocked. Nowhere to turn, everything to lose. It's a nightmare scenario that may or may not happen.

I'm sure all independent writers have experienced such a or a similar loss at some point in their careers. Make up the loss with your next orders. The duty of preventing a charge back lies with the writer and how he sets up the transaction. One can only prepare so much protection in this case. If the client is shrewed, the writer has to be slick.

If I were involved, I would make sure I have as many PayPal safeguards installed as possible. When all else fails, I can at least say I tried. If the clients also use dummy addresses then it would be difficult to enforce a block from my end. I would not enter into a contract with a defeatist attitude but I would always go in knowing that up to a certain period, the client could still file for a refund and hope it never happens.

Again, that's why working with a company has some benefits in terms of income and refund scenarios in my opinion. Your income, while still subject to fines and refunds, is better protected in a way.

I think scam students / clients should be dealt with an appropriate way if they try to steal money from hard working freelance writers. I once spent a week tracking a fraudster and he begged me not to report him to the police and repaid me back in full.

The only time a client ever tried this kind of thing with me, I hired a private investigator to determine his identity and then I just contacted him at his college email address because he'd stopped responding from the email he'd used previously. He ended up responding immediately, reissuing payment in full, and he also reimbursed me for the cost of the private investigator, which was more than the price of the project.


This will only help you with a PayPal dispute. Otherwise, if it's an outright attempt to rip you off after delivering a good project, even the best contract won't help you because the problem is the practicality and cost associated with pursuing your claim, even with a "contract" whose terms entitle you to payment.

That's my backup plan if I'm not successful finding out all the relevant info myself.

I'm always fascinated by private investigators abilities to determine identities from seemingly nothing. I wonder why he even bothered scamming you if he was able to reimburse the cost of the paper and investigator instantly, people are weird.

Probably just because he thought he could get away with it. I think he learned a valuable lesson that you're only anonymous online until you give someone enough of a reason to devote the resources necessary to find out who you are.

It all depends upon whether the student is dealing with a direct freelance writer or, if he is dealing with a writer through an academic writing company. If the student is dealing directly with the writer, I have always found a way to settle the problem amicably with the client. I normally manage to do this because there is a refund schedule in place for all orders under a specific amount (normally a large cost order and only at the request of the client. Something I normally dissuade the client from doing). With refund rules and regulations in place, I often manage to avoid having charge back claims or refund filings.

Now, if the client is passing through a writer attached to a writing company, that becomes a bit murkier to deal with. When dealing with a company, there is often a loss involved because of the difficulty in negotiating the charge back claims. If I see that the writer is definitely at fault, then I do not fight the refund. However, if the writer proves to have provided everything the client requested, then I fight for only a partial refund for the writer's benefit. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's all on a case to case basis.

There has got to be legal repercussions to this. While you cannot necessarily accommodate to every situation, this is still theft for a service that was given. However, I do agree that it can be quite tricky when it comes to essay writing services because it's difficult to explain a situation. This is why legitimacy of the service is pivotal - both for the client and the writer. Having terms and conditions and legitimate paperwork goes a long way.

The terms and conditions published on a website are all but meaningless if the company doesn't actually honor them. This forum is full of complaints from customers who got burned precisely because they trusted the terms and conditions and "guarantees" published by the companies with which they chose to do business, partly on the basis of those terms and conditions. Legitimate companies do honor their terms and conditions, but if you end up trusting the wrong company, you'll only find out how meaningless their representations and promises are after they already have your money and you try to get them to honor the terms and conditions upon which you relied in choosing that company in the first place.

Agreed. But it still stands that a company would be better with them than without. While these guarantees may not necessarily be guarantees, for legitimate companies and independent contractors, having them is a way to (at the very least) communicate to clients that they are serious about the work they do.

Since Paypal no longer accepts payments for writing companies, I believe the company is no longer part of the issue. Although, the actual problem, which is, the clients who file refunds either directly with their writer or through other payment channels, still stands. In my case, I simply don't offer refunds to the client. There is no sense in offering refunds because, as an independent writer, I am in direct contact with the client at all times. So there is no chance of miscommunication nor failed paper deliveries. I do not sign on to work with clients who do not agree to my no refund policy. I am lucky that my reputation as a writer has preceded me in most student circles so they know that I will deliver what they need and they need not worry about refunds. If you allow a client to get a refund policy from you, then you can bet that they will use it. So it is better not to offer a refund policy at all.On the side of the writer, simply don't take orders you know you can't complete so you won't have to risk giving refunds to your clients.