Freelancercareers.com: Review From The Writers Perspective

Unlike popular opinion out there that freelancercareers.com does not pay its writer, the truth is that they DO PAY; however, it is an academic writing portal that you should definitely stay away from if you were thinking to make it your primary source of income!

Having worked about five months there, I have realized three things:

• the motto of this site is to slap unjustified fines on writers;
• their Quality Assurance Department (QAD) is in serious need of brainy proofreaders;
• No matter how correct you are, the QAD will support clients and penalize you.

To all the new and experienced academic writers out there, think thrice before signing up on this site. Read our detailed Freelancercareers.com review with evidence below.

CRITICISMS:

Problem 01: Misleading Statistics Info

When you visit their home page, they show you a brief info about their company and on the left side, you are shown a brief info about the number of assignments available, highest cost of those assignments and the number of registered writers…It is easy to fall into their trap seeing those numbers…

Once you see the real number of assignments available, they are not even worth the time, forget about getting any decent pay!

On 20th July evening, the left hand bar on the home page showed this stat:

(click image to enlarge)

Check out the total order cost, available orders, most expensive order…Now see the reality…Below is the insider screen shot of the truth:

In reality, there were only 28 orders available and the highest available order was $506.04 as you can see…

Often I have seen that the company misleads its prospective writers this way…And if one compares the number of orders available (28) to the number of active registered writers (7521), tell me honestly, do you think there is much scope of earning any substantial amount of money here?

They are clearly overstaffed at any point of time.

Problem 02: Misleading Affiliations

Before I had signed up on freelancercareers.com, I was working with essaywriters.net but stopped once they didn’t pay me my money. Stupid that I was, I thought freelancercareers.com would be different.

I passed their test and started working with them. After completing about 5 assignments within 5 days, I noticed something…the web layout of both the sites seemed similar!!!

I emailed the support system asking whether freelancercareers.com is associated in any way with essaywriters.net…They denied…kept on denying…while my intuition said something else. I clicked every link on the site to find some evidence and viola! See the screen shot below…

Check the web browser and what I have marked in red.

Not only essaywriters.net, freelancercareers.com also owns superiorpapers.com, bestessays.com and rushessays.com…at least that’s what I found out when I contacted each of the sites for applying as an academic writer and they directed me to freelancercareers.com.

Moreover, twice I received phone call from freelancercareers.com and their support representative mentioned she was calling from superiorpapers.com regarding an assignment…

Just imagine how much trouble the company takes in hiding its sister sites and such untrained support people bust the bubble…LOL!

Problem 03: They Pay On Time but Their Automated Payment System Sucks!!!

They will not tell you this when you sign up and neither will you see this in their website guide or FAQ. You will know this once you experience this yourself, like I did.

Freelancercareers.com has an inbuilt useless system that keeps track of earnings. The payments are sent every 15 days. For assignment completed between 01-15 of any month are paid on the 16th of next month and for assignments completed between 15-30 of any month are paid on the 01st of next month…There is no problem here once you are regular with assignments but the problem arises when the client request for revision.

For instance, you submit an assignment on 10th July, the client downloads it and the earning is reflected in your account. According to the info above, you will receive payment for this on 16th August. Now, suppose, the client sends back the paper requesting a genuine revision on 15th July with a new deadline of 20th July, what happens? The assignment earning is removed from your balance amount, which means you won’t get paid for this assignment on 16th August but on 01st September.

When I work for freelancercareers.com, I try to ensure that the assignments are not sent back for revision but sometimes you come across irritating clients who are dissatisfied with everything you write…even if you want to shout ‘why the hell don’t you do your paper yourself?’ you have to keep your cool and basically, go with the flow. This is a serious disadvantage here.

Problem 04: They Have Devised Every Reason Possible to Apply Fines

…and they have this automated system that applies these fines. Four or five times, they applied fines on my account citing low quality paper and reference mistakes. I knew they were wrong so I contested and they had to remove all the fines but still they don’t learn…they keep on trying…well, two can play this game!

Below is a screen shot of the various kinds of fines applied, followed by my solutions; always remember that you won’t get to see this while you are applying, the hell breaks loose later!

They define fines as:

They explain fines as:

How can you deal with them?

[1] Order Deadline Over – if you cannot submit the order on time, ask the clients’ to “update” the time and not “extend” the deadline. If you ask for repeated extensions, fine is applied. If the client does not respond to your messages, message the support system to put the order on HOLD. Even if fine is applied later, you will have evidence of your communication to the client and the support system, and they have to remove the fine.

[2] Revision Deadline Over – usually the revision time is 24 hours, less in some cases. Meeting revision deadlines are sometimes impossible because of two reasons: different time zones and extent of revision (a dissertation can’t be revised in 24 hours!). In this case, follow the same tactic as in [1].

[3] Cancellation – the QAD draws pleasure in applying fines for submitting low quality paper. If you know the paper is not of low quality, bombard them with your reasons. The more reasons you give, they will have no option but to remove the fine. Remember that their proofreader is not worthy of their job. Why?

On one particular assignment, I had copy-pasted three paragraphs written by me at different places in the same assignment…the proofreader didn’t detect it…Amazing! The paper was through and I got paid. My small experiment paid off and proved that their proofreaders are utterly useless and lacks common sense.

This is the reason why writers are often charged with low quality paper. Don’t fall into their trap when you know there is no fault from your side. Other reasons like “writer disappeared” and “writer plagiarized” never applied to me so I didn’t face any issues.

[4] Low Quality – First, read the different definitions of low quality in the screen shot. From the five reasons listed there, I faced problem only with reason one: “inability to follow instructions”.

A paper I completed and got paid for in May was charged a $50 fine few days back. Why? Apparently, the client/student received below pass grades. Politely, I asked the support to send me the teacher’s feedback given to the student. The teacher had written that even though the arguments in the essay were strong and relevant, the student didn’t apply essays/concepts from the term module.

I checked the order page to see if I had missed reading any essays/concepts uploaded by the client/student. I did not. To make a long story short, the client/student had not uploaded all the essays from his term module and therefore, the below pass grades.

Well, guess who suffered? ME!! I couldn’t get this simple explanation pass their dumb minds that it was not my fault…

I can only advise to handle such situations carefully.

[5] Plagiarism – This is one aspect where it is justified to apply fines!!!

[6] Partially Refunded Order & Refund – Read point [4], it’s the same.

[7] Late Reassign Request – Once you accept an order, you are given 15 minutes to refuse it. If you feel the need to request reassignment of order/s, do so before half of the deadline is over and you won’t be penalized. If you request reassignment at the last moment, the whole project fees will be deducted from your account.

[8] Others – Try not violating any of the rules in this section. Whatever the case maybe, never be rude with the client or disappear or ask for repeated extensions. Doing so will be in your favor only.

Problem 05: Non-Disclosure of Company Details

I read online that freelancercareers.com, essaywriters.net and other sister companies are owned by a Russian entrepreneur and this guy has been in this business for the last 15 years. Oh boy, he must be an unnamed millionaire!!!

Also, the company, registered under Universal Research, doesn’t take pride in owning their presence online. This further questions their authenticity. I mean, if you are legitimate, why don’t the owners come forward?

Upon further research, I found various numerous complaints about the company are registered at Better Business Bureau. Further, the Universal Research is a bogus company name that not only indulges in academic work but also TV gadget promotions and pornography.

Problem 06: Payment Receiving Problems

Presently, freelancercareers.com pays through PayPal, MoneyBookers, AlertPay and Wire Transfer. I have used only PayPal and MoneyBookers so far. There were no problems with payment processing in PayPal but the second time I received payment from freelancercareers.com in MoneyBookers, they stopped my withdrawals. They emailed me to re-verify my account by sending an account statement, especially the last transaction sent from freelancercareers.com. See the screen shot:

The transaction marked in ‘red’ is the one from freelancercareers.com. Perhaps, MoneyBookers had some doubts regarding the sender of the payment. If you face a similar situation, its better you submit full verification details and get the account limits withdrawn.

Problem 07: Cost per Page is LOW 95% of the Time

The remaining 5% gives at least a better cost per page (min 275 words, double-spaced per page), ranging between $8 and $14 per page. Further, their inbuilt system is such that they pay more when the deadline is closing near.

Often I have seen 2-3 page assignments paying $40 per page and the deadline is like 2-3 hours. But don’t jump at seeing the page count because the project is so tough that you need 3-4 days to complete them. This kind of system is nothing but a lure. Out of greed, a writer might take them but failure to adhere the deadline results in penalty.

Finally, your chance of getting projects with better per page cost is very slim given the high number of writers available. As a result, you are mostly in the 95% category where you are paid between $2 and $8 per page.

NOTE: When you take higher paying projects, be assured that one day or the other, you are going to receive a low quality paper feedback. That’s their way to scam writers out of their hard earned money.

I will tell you two tricks I devised to turn back the ball into their court. Of course, before applying these, you have to be sure that there are no faults in the paper from your side. The tricks are:

[1] Apply this trick when the QAD is acting smart and there is no problem with the client. Subtly insinuate that you are going to publish the paper online in few hours if the issue is not resolved. Yes, you will risk your earnings on this paper but it’s worth it. Knowing this the QAD has to give in because they know that if you publish the paper online and at the same time, the client/student submits the paper in his school/university and the teacher finds out, the student’s career will be in trouble.

[2] Apply this trick when both the QAD and the client is trying to rub you on the wrong side.But for this trick you need to know where the client/student is studying. How do you find that? Check the assignment instructions! You can clearly state that if the issue is not resolved in few hours, you are going to call the school/university and report the client/student. This will silence both the QAD and the client/student.

I know both the tricks sound like manipulation but what else can we writers do if we are denied our hard earned earnings??? Once again, I will state – apply the above tricks only if you are damn sure there is nothing wrong with the assignment from your side.

Problem 08: Quitting / Account Closing

If you are already a member there and thinking of quitting or closing freelancercareers.com account, do so after there are no pending payments in your account. If there are, they will withhold them for 90 days mandatory period, during which all your assignments will undergo a rechecking (again a way to apply fines!).

You have to be patient here. Make sure you receive all your earnings and while you are waiting, log in occasionally to randomly check orders…they will know you are still ‘active’ in their system.

APPRECIATION:

There is not much to appreciate, except these three:

[1] They pay on time, always. At least, I have never faced any kind of payment delays.
[2] Their plagiarism rules are strict in a good way.
[3] There are no membership fees.

In the end, I can only hope that you will take note of the above review positively and make an informed decision about joining this company. This review may seem negative to those who are still trying to find a legitimate way of making money online but don’t be dissuaded, there are other legitimate companies out there!!!

If you have experienced other issues with freelancercareers.com or any of their sister sites, kindly share your experience below