Greetings,

I am a full time freelance writer and have been for about 3 years now. I occasionally put together power point presentations (ppt) for clients. Back in June, a client that I have completed projects for in the past called me frantically because she needed a ppt within a day for a presentation. I was pretty busy but I always try to help out returning customers and so i agreed to take the job. She sent me the information. It was nothing major, just some statistics that i needed to interpret for her and make it look pretty. 10 slides in all. I was a little suprised when I saw the material b/c it wasn't for her work but for school - it looked to be for a class b/c part of what she sent me had email correspondence from a couple of other persons talking about their professor.

She said she'd call me back with the payment info and i said no problem. She called back later, begged me to send the complete project and promised she would pay me the next day. she was out of town for business and wanted to pay by paypal and didn't know her account information. yah i know... lame... but i'm trusting and have never had a problem getting payment from her. i sent her the project and went back to work on other things.

long story short, once i sent her the project she disappeared from the face of the earth. i talked to her once about a week after the project, she promised to take care of payment later that night and didn't. now, she won't return my calls or emails. it's been almost 2 months. clearly, she decided to rip me off.

after thinking about this on an off for a few weeks, I contacted the people that were in the emails she had sent me for the project. They confirmed that they were students working on a group project with my client, that she had been responsible for putting together the ppt for their group presentation. i sent them the ppt that I completed for her and it seems she passed off my work as her own for my class.

so yah, she ripped me off but she was dumb enough to include student contact information that enabled me to learn the class, the professor and the school. she was dishonest enough to not only decide to not pay me but also to turn in exactly what i did for her to her classmates.

so what should i do? contacting her professor will require minimal effort and i'm probably going to do exactly that. i'm a little worried that turning her in might also get her group members in trouble, but i would certainly stress that they appear to have had no knowledge that the work she gave them wasn't her own. I suppose that part of me also hopes that maybe she didn't intend to rip me off and cheat but that something happened to make her act so... ie, this was a one time thing rather than a part of a cycle. of course, i dislike being taken advantage of and the thought of contacting her prof. to commence an ethical inquiry is certainly tempting. it makes me wonder if the other projects that i completed for her were similarly used to fulfill coursework.

anyway, this is too long already. opinions would be appreciated. this situation might act as a cautionary tale for other writers as well. if you are working directly with a client, always get payment first.

i suggest you warn her first through email and her groupmates. give her ample time--about a week at the very least.

I agree with essayer - ask her groupmates if they could provide you with her alternative contact information. Then again email her at all email addresses you may have and leave the final voice message. If that doesn't help, wait a week and then contact the professor.

thank you for your comments. as fate would have it, the client contacted me late last night. after 6 weeks of silence i was surprised to say the least. my guess is the groupmates contacted her.

still no payment but she promised to do so today or tomorrow, so we'll see.

Maybe she's a member of this forum ;). Anyway, Good luck.

That's a good way for EssayTown and "Russian Threesome" (EssayTown,EssayFraud and Essayscam) to 'punish' those customers who complain. I wonder if they all do like a "professor" writer, Lavinia, did---blackmail the customer!

So, write your own paper!! If you cheat with EssayTown (1)you will lose your money (2)your professor will be the first to find out!

I still wonder what you do here and I won't be surprised you'll be banned soon (you participate as a member in discussions and at the same time accuse this site of being a member of "threesome"). The moderators must be really patient..

Major, if you look at the other thread, jackazz is now accusing Lavinia of working for EssayTown! Hilarious!

Hey, jackazz, are you now going to claim that Barclay Littlewood (a barrister who successfully sued the Pakistani crooks at EssayRelief.com) of UKEssays.com is also a "fraudulent blackmailer" because of the following page?

http://www.ukessays.com/194162.php

You, sir, are the king of idiots. No wonder why your essay mills can't compete, even WITH the use of blatant fraud.

jack, i would try to respond to your accusations, but your posts are so ridiculous there is really no point. Neutral readers will understand you for the flake that you are.

I am a writer, I am not a ghostwriter. There is a clear difference. I don't produce work so that others can claim it for their own. If i wanted to do that, I would go ghostwrite celebrity autobiographies because that would be more lucrative.

The client's refusal to pay led me to suspect that she was using my work to cheat, that is all. I am not blackmailing her. Since finding out that she was using my work to cheat, I have considered turning her in, not as revenge, but because I don't write to help others cheat. If this was a project that just involved her, I think the decision would be easy for me. As it stands, my decision to act could also impact her group mates, which bothers me.

To be quite honest, as I've been thinking about this lately, I'm probably not going to accept payment and just write this off as a learning experience. The whole situation is simply uncomfortable and weird. Part of me thinks that even if she did pay, i'd always have a risk of her reversing the payment at some random point in the future.

I hope other writers at least learn from my clear mistake and always secure payment before delivering work.