Academia-Research Exposed as a Scam

34 Responses to “Academia-Research Exposed as a Scam”

• iakul
  September 3rd, 2008 at 9:15 am

  Wow, something weird happened to my article 1) and 2) are supposed to be 4) and 5) and a couple of things have turned out weird after Triond has editted it. *goes to submit a fix*

• Lauren Axelrod
  September 3rd, 2008 at 11:24 am

  Very interesting article. I know where I won’t be posting. Great job iakul

• iakul
  September 3rd, 2008 at 11:39 am

  That was fast. The article’s been fixed. It’s been only a couple of hours after I submitted the fix.

  Thanks for the compliment, Lauren

• Jo Howard
  September 22nd, 2008 at 2:46 pm

  I had considered applying for Academia-Research, but when I sent them an inquiry about whether they have tax forms available for those living in the United States I decided not to apply. Their response not only had no punctuation, but no capitalization, either.

  From receiving that and reading this article, I can definitely say that a person should not waste their time with that site.

• batit
  September 26th, 2008 at 11:48 pm

  Beware of essaywriters.net as well.
  They have the same modus operandi. They do not pay their writers. They still owe me some money and have accused me of plagarism when clearly my references were noted and the supposed plagarized items were part of a block quotation.

• UND
  December 9th, 2008 at 11:24 pm

  1. Could you or your readers suggest as to what one should do if Academia-Research commissions and then reneges on payment under some pretext.

  2. Many people do not seem to be aware that Academia-Research pays writers less than 40% of what it charges from its ‘customers’.

  3. Although the company’s website boasts of paying $ 7 – $ 20 per page to writers – to snare them into signing up – in practice, I have never seen any assignment offering more than $ 10 per page in my three years experience with the company.

• scammed by AR
  December 24th, 2008 at 1:15 am

  I have worked for AR for a year, you are right on. I have actually earned almost 20k from them as I do this all the time but as of late…payments have been later and later. I have written 410 papers this year and amassed 80 of their “bonus” points only to be told 2 days before christmas that I was not getting my bonus because that is only for writers who “understand their problems”. I am so irate that I cant even think right now. I am trying to retain an attorney and I am filing complaints and reports with every internet agency I can come up with. Pleasse help, does any one have any advice? My childrens’ christmas is ruined thanks to AR.

• UND
  December 30th, 2008 at 6:10 am

  It would be a good idea if all such cheated writers could join to bring a class action suit against the company. The company seems to be able to get away with cheating writers because most freelancers it employs are non-US-residents. Can some one come up with ideas to make the company accountable and pay up?

• UND
  December 30th, 2008 at 6:16 am

  I have seen a post on your blog in which the writer recommends Academia-Research as one of nine sites freelance writers can consider for working. How do you reconcile the post with “Academia-research Exposed as a Scam”? I mean A-R can not both be a recommended destination for freelancers and a scam-site at the same time?

• iakul
  January 6th, 2009 at 2:19 am

  @ UND : I believe you are referring to the article “Nine Legitimate Writing Sites Which Pay” by Sydney Hazelton. Both of us are writers for Triond, and Writinghood is one of it’s partner sites.Being two different people, I would expect differences of opinion when it comes to assessing whether a site is legitimate. I have spoken to her about this before. While I can’t claim that my word is better than hers, what I can do is present evidence that Academia-Research is not trustworthy, which is what I have tried to do in this article. If you have any questions about Sydney Hazelton’s article, I think it would be best if you talk to her instead. I can’t really speak for her and/or edit her article.

• Wynne
  January 18th, 2009 at 9:54 am

  I worked as a writer for academia-research.com – they told me I had two complaints about my last two papers and then fined me.
  I contacted one of the customers to find out he paid 300.00 to the site for the paper – but I was only given 120.00 for writing it. Of course, once you subtract the fine of 96.50 – I’m only getting 23.50 for writing 20 pages. Nice profit for them, eh?

• tequila
  January 21st, 2009 at 6:08 am

  i worked for AR for four years. I recently deactivated my account. Enough is enough! I had three payment problems with them last yr. because of SWREG. They did not returned my $950 but they posted that the payment problems were resolved already. Xmas is coming last dec. 2008 I was so happy thinking that I will be receiving $750 plus my bonus, on the other hand, I received $150 fine for plagiarism that they fabricated. I faught and defended myself that I did not plagiarized and sent them two plagiarism reports from two of the most reputable plagiarism testers. They did not listen. My works were written from scratch and well-referenced. Recently, I received another fine notification coz of bad quality for the same order, I was surprised becoz for that particular order the client gave me a good feedback. For one week, I did not reply to any of their messages, until I decided to deactivate my account. One more thing, AR is very strict in implementing their policies to their writers but they are violating these policies themselves just to please the clients. For example, asking you to revise an order that was submitted three months ago. Threatening you of implementing fines if you will not revise the paper. They pay their writers, but durng the peak season they will intend to delay payments or deduct fines to their writers. Talking about quality, what is their standard for quality? Their staff can’t even spell “brief” correctly. Alex and Victoria are mean! and I really hate them!

• jay
  February 21st, 2009 at 8:59 am

  I naively completed the application process with AR and never heard back from them. I sent a few nasty emails and finally received a grammatically incorrect response that addressed none of my concerns, apparently the idiots and morons running the scam on AR can neither read nor write in English.

• Paul
  March 9th, 2009 at 9:01 am

  I am a writer working with AR for over 3 years now, and I have to comment that this company works really efficiently and earnestly. I would not like to back stab the company that I work for. I am not defending them either! But, as no one is perfect, I would like to enlighten most of you who are considering a career with AR to decide and judge for yourself. Not everything that you read, you should believe in! My personal experience with them has been till today very good, though sometimes there seems to be a problem with the payment which tends to be delayed, but I still receive the full sum that I expected. Sometimes I get disappointed, but I look at the positive side of it.

  There also tends to be some clashes between the Quality Dept and myself, because they told me already 2 times that I had wrongly done the paper, I was fined but still it was not $100 as some of you say! It was $20 for the fact that I did not use the proper format and the references were missing. I was at fault, I admit it.

  There were several occasions that I had some problems with the assignment, the administration members have always attended to me without keeping any grudges against my statistics. To be honest enough, sometimes it is difficult for me to be on time, I always ask for extensions which the admin start with their favorite sentence: please contact the customer for the extensions. I have always considered the quality of the paper and the deadline to be my priority and then the money that we get out of it. If I was blinded by the greed of only acquiring money, I would have chosen another profession, but I preferred to have someone appreciate my talent which in turn brings me my earning.

  My advice to all the future candidates who would like to apply to a position as a writer would be that punctuality and quality are the two most important step stones of AR.

• iakul
  March 9th, 2009 at 11:27 am

  I do agree with you that everyone shouldn’t believe in everything they read, Paul. However given the command of the English language that you exhibit in your comment, you are just shooting yourself in the foot and setting yourself up with that statement. How do you expect people to look at your comment and believe that what you are telling is the truth when you say that “punctuality and quality are the two most important step stones of AR” and yet have used you as a writer for 3 years?

• ND
  March 11th, 2009 at 12:26 am

  i am considering becoming a member of AR but i it seems to be a not so lucrative option based on the cooments posted here. i was wondering if any of you could suggest other options where i can get paid for freelancing. I am new at this and would like to know if it is ok to give them personal information along with bank account details because i cannot afford to be swindled. thanks

• Scott
  March 14th, 2009 at 11:51 am

  I’m of the same position as Paul, although I can’t say that I’ve been with AR for that long. In my case, maybe a year or so at the most.

  Generally, I’m happy with the way things are going. I only choose the essays which have topics that interest me, complete them on time and to a quality level that’s on par with the pay. There are some delays in payment, but I found that once I switched my payment method to Paypal, it was much better. When I started with them I used Remote check, which was often a few days behind. Anyway, even if my pay is held up one or two days, I’m not the kind of guy to lose sleep over it. As long as the amount they pay is equal to the amount I calculate before hand, I’m content.

  Fines, warnings, etc, I’ve had my share. But the nice thing is that warnings disappear after a few orders and the fines are usually reasonable (once I was fined 10% for not using the right format, however, the total pay for the order was $54, so 10% isn’t all that earth shattering, one less Big Mac I suppose). Although, the guy who referred me to AR told me that if you get busted for plagiarism, the fine is rather large, which to me is expected since plagiarism would be really embarrassing for them and the students – if caught that is.

  The Admin people, I’d have to say not native speakers, but I don’t care so long as I get paid for my effort. Located in the US or India, doesn’t matter to me. Times are tough now and I need some extra money. I should add though that the grammar of the Administrators is often shockingly better than that of clients. Go figure.

  While on that note, my biggest problem with working for AR, doesn’t actually come directly from the company, but rather clients. Some of these kids have no idea what they want and when you ask for clarification you sometimes have to wait a long time for a response. When they do reply, I often can’t understand what they’re talking about or they give very little guidance. It’s like pulling teeth sometimes.

  Anyway, my advice to anyone thinking about AR – try it, but I definitely would not want to try to make a living off of it. I tried that at first and found that it was unmanageable. Sometimes, you’ll get a client who sets a revision 3 or 4 times, which just messes you up for all the other orders you have going on. This leads to late and “low quality” fines because you’re constantly under the gun. If you do it that way, it’s a horrible snowball effect. Now, I just use AR to supplement my day job and I have no serious complaints.

  Last thing, Iakul, I don’t know what posts you’ve been reading, but this thread is by no means a beauty pageant of English grammar, whether the position is for or against AR. Maybe some of us simply save our best effort for our paid writing.

• iakul
  March 14th, 2009 at 1:10 pm

  Thank you Scott for your comment. I do appreciate feedback form the other side of the camp. And I do expect writers to make the occasional typo and mistake in an informal setting such as this. However, it’s a long stretch to “say some of us simply save our best effort for our paid writing” when the comment I was referring to has numerous grammar mistakes and misuses several words and yet still claims “punctuality and quality are the two most important step stones of AR”. Like using the words “important step stones” instead of “cornerstone”, for instance. It actually takes a lot of effort for someone proficient in English to come up with a comment like that, considerably more than the effort expended on an article suitable for “a beauty pageant of English grammar”

• iakul
  May 5th, 2009 at 9:03 am

  Thank you Donk for your comment. However, you seem to have misinterpreted and taken both my article and my previous comments out of context.

  1) My previous 2 comments pointed out that Paul’s comment with the phrase “punctuality and quality are the two most important step stones of AR” lacks credibility since on the one hand it’s saying AR values punctuality and quality and on the other hand, the comment itself shows a very poor grasp of English.

  2) It’s not AR employing writers who do not have perfect English that I’m having an issue with. It’s them telling both writers AND customers that they only employ good writers but going ahead and employing anyone who comes along.

  3) It’s true paper mills aren’t exactly legit, but even compared to their competitors, AR is especially shady.Funny you should pick Essaywriters.net to compare it to, given their shared history. AR was started by someone who left Essaywriters.net, and while it’s just slightly better than Essaywriters.net in terms of trustworthiness, that doesn’t say much, given the state of Essaywiters.net

  4) It’s one thing to not be a squeaky-clean legit company with a legit and easily accessible US office. It’s another thing altogether if you tell your writers your office is in a place where it isn’t and a bunch of other lies to attempt to appear to be a legit company. While you appear to be one of the writers who know what they are signing up for, it might surprise you that quite a number of writers writing for AR actually believe that they are working for a legit company (At least for the first few months)

  5) Good to hear that somehow, you have not had any major non-payment issues or fines. The fact still remains that there are a fair number of writers who have given up on expecting payment.

• DONK
  May 6th, 2009 at 3:03 pm

  that’s cool, iakul. I know that AR was started by former EW managers; that’s what drew me to them in the first place– someone else obviously couldn’t stand it at EW anymore, and had to leave. although supposedly, now EW is under new management.

  it may be that I’ll be eating my own words, too– AR might just be suckering me in until they can withhold a really big payment. this fear is at the back of my mind most of the time, in fact.

  but I still have an issue with your complaining about AR misrepresenting itself, and again, it’s because of the industry. every single term-paper mill I have ever worked for has misrepresented itself in some capacity. why pick out AR, when there are much better targets? I interviewed at a mill a few years ago that paid a flat rate of $4 per page, for all work, even next-day rushes. why not them? EW is pit of vipers, as you seem to know; why not them? at least AR tries, pays on time, and sometimes they even work things out, remove penalties, support the writer over the customer, etc.– behaviors that would never fly at a lot of their compo. so, my issue is mainly, when you have so many fish in a barrel to shoot at, why aim for AR? they all hire hacks. I think maybe you have a personal axe to grind, and so I just wanted to defend them a little bit.

  no offense. we hacks need to stick together. if we formed a union, they wouldn’t be able to treat us like this. but as it is, we’re scattered across the globe… the new “global proletariat,” exploited to the nth degree…

• Theodore Greenberg
  May 21st, 2009 at 5:41 pm

  Hi iakul,

  I just finished working for Academia-Research

  Phew I finished this and I feel better!

  First my English sucks, was born in LA LA City School District High School graduate San Diego State University BS 1979 Technion Institute MSc 1999
  I took an early retirement in 2001 and a certification Microsoft MCSE 2000

  I tried to pickup mostly scientific work, I did a few IT things and and a legal equity essay.I read the listings daily some really wacko stuff and the page charges were nominal to fair. But like any business they have seasonal issues and their idea of what plagarism is and mine are quite different. I make no qualms to my students about cut past of open-source information, deliver a product. They used the plagarism late payments and alot of trivial repairs to make me more than happy for getting that dreaded 3rd warning. They sat me on 2 warnings for a long time.

  My big question was this material real!! Were they manufacturing assignments to fill their Available order board and make there boards full. It seemed like technicians were writing these assignments. I got compliment letters twice for the 14 orders I did .

  When I went to school we knew our professors, you did work they knew if it was yours or not. My wife took an ethical exception from day 1 when I started the job. She flipped when I woke and got that first plagarism notice. This is why I studied Science because knowledge and information is open source and we use the internet to dispense knowledge. Of course when my original work appears on someone else’s site I don’t like it. I never felt bad helping student’s for pay and I always asked them to be sure they understood what I wrote them, I tried to get the customers to participate in the paper being written. I feel I have been cheated for the long work I put in to produce these papers and I am looking to form an academia settlement group who want to take recourse on them

• Ahmed
  June 6th, 2009 at 4:20 am

  It’s very naive when they respond you in grammatically wrong enghlish, only to tell you that ur grammar is incorrect. HahaHaHa…These people sucK…

• Sandy Openshaw
  August 3rd, 2009 at 7:24 am

  Hi there,

  I recently found AR and was excited at the prospect of being able to legitimately work from home doing what I love. After reading these posts I am no longer sure if I have made the right decision. Are there ANY legimitate writing sites on the internet? If you know of any please let me know on sandy@solmatrix.co.za. I really want to be able to write from home and make some extra money.
  Regards
  Sandy

• dhart2
  August 12th, 2009 at 9:54 pm

  People can say what the want about academia but I have worked with them for about 3 years now. I agree that some of the customers have no idea what they want.

  My only complaint is that they do not pay on time. They used to pay on the 10th and 25th like their webpage states, but they usually pay after the 10th and the 25th because of their billing company.

  I have not only written with them, but I have emailed and I get on the phone if they haven’t emailed. The number on their website is legit…it just takes awhile to get in.

  So, you can say what you want but they ARE legit…I’ve done over 200 papers for them and I have been paid…

• shirley
  August 12th, 2009 at 11:36 pm

  Hi. I work for AR for a year now..my complaint is not the delay of payment but rather the RUDE, UNPROFESSIONAL manner by which the admin team treats the writers. Most of the time, I was made to feel that I am sub-human, and those people who runs AR are superhumans.. weird. Can someone be kind enough to share information on sites/companies that hire freelance online writers? I really need a job from home, as I have my kids to attend to. email me at sg_lao8@yahoo.com Thank you very much!

• Syn
  August 16th, 2009 at 9:43 pm

  Hi,
  I was also planning on joining Academia, but I’m having second thoughts after reading this article and comments.
  Erm, I was actually trying this (freelance writing online) out for the first time and clearly these comments have not given me any assurance that working with Academia is going to be worth my time.
  And since I’m very new to this doing stuff online, I can’t comment on whether they are a scam or not. But for those who desire to work from home, I have been doing a bit of researching of my own. And you might want to check http://www.about.com and type in freelance writing jobs or just abut anything related to that subject. I’m not guaranteeing it will answer your prayers, but it might give you some ideas.

  Hope it helps
  Cheers

• tonijane
  August 24th, 2009 at 10:50 pm

  Hi. I saw that it’s my mylot post, and to be honest, I felt bad. You did apologize but I still find it offensive.

  I worked in AR for a year, and I have been paid every month, without delays. My account is still active but I haven’t found time to work again. Or maybe I would no longer work there after reading all those comments.

  As for essaywriters.net, I was afraid when I saw posts saying that it was a scam. I have $400 yet to be paid. I waited and after 7 working days, it was credited to my bank account. Right now, I haven’t accepted any order because of my hectic schedule.

• iakul
  August 26th, 2009 at 9:57 am

  The editors at Triond have edited my article, taking out my first point, after tonijane raised obejections to her post on MyLot, a public forum, being linked to.

  So for those of you obervant enough to notice and wonder why the line “So now they are not only lying to writers they hire about hiring standards, they are also lying to customers.” reads like that, it’s because there used to be another 1st point in front, detailing the requirements that Academia research supposedly impose on writers who apply and providing proof that Academia research just posts those requirements to convince writers that they have gotten a prestigious job. and will hire just about anyone who applies.

• Amanda
  September 2nd, 2009 at 1:09 pm

  Hi,
  There are so much of discussion on how Admin (in A-R) and Support (Essaywriters.net) staffs respond. How good they are with grammer, punctuation, bla bla and may be this comment will also be judged by the so called writing experts here.
  This is my fourth year with Academia-research and more than three years with Essaywriters.net. Like any working organisation, these two have their problems and issues. I have written almost 3000 pages. I had experienced payment delays 3-4 times in last four years of my work which I feel is acceptable. The communication and response has been timely and we have been informed about the payment delays in advance.
  I do not think any company in the market place has not fabricated in its marketing or communication strategies. These two companies are not exception. People like to talk about bad issues and blogging etc has provided a platform to reach thousands of people.
  Now do not blame me to be advocate of any of these company. I am working with both and I do not have that bad experience in any area of payment, communication or revision that I would terminate my account/relationship with them.
  warm regards

• Lien
  September 5th, 2009 at 3:08 pm

  Who am I suppose to believe with all these comments? I’m planning to sign up for AR and now I’m having a second thought about it. HAIST…!

• bushuru
  September 8th, 2009 at 6:41 am

  i just signed up for AR today and i haven’t even had a response but with these comments implying the nasty experience, am rethinking. i cant risk a whole months….

• Karimi
  October 30th, 2009 at 7:10 am

  Ahem… am now rethinking… I really want to work online, but I’d hate a nasty experience. At least I don’t want to waste my time. Somebody kindly help this lady in Kenya! Which is the legit company to work with? I choose to rule out Academia research – which was my good option until I bumped on this article on google. Kind one, you might need this: gadsyder@yahoo.com
  Thanks

• James
  November 3rd, 2009 at 6:59 am

  Karimi did you fine a legitimate firm?Please let me know the name…

• Subhakar
  November 18th, 2009 at 3:12 am

  Thank you for this information. I was looking for a good site to write articles and stumbled on this one. So I wanted to check if the site is paying or not. The site does not talk anything about minimum payout or payout time in the FAQ and the site is not much informative. I think I will not join this site. Thank you once again and keep posting …

Leave a Reply