academia-research reward points

I have been accruing a lot of these "reward points" on AR. when I ask admin about them, they say that the points are used to assign preference in giving orders (I already skip the bidding system by going Premium) and to move writers to Premium (I already am).

so, are they useless to me? probably. but, I've seen people complaining elsewhere that reward points were used, or withheld from being used, relative to bonus pay.

so, I was wondering-- has anyone with direct experience writing for AR, who has received reward points from them, ever gotten any extra pay for them? or are the points just for prestige?

thanks in advance for keeping the polemics in check for once (yeah right...)

My friend asked AR the same question in relation to the reward points and was initially told that reward points would equal more pay, however they have never received any extra remuneration, and, like you my friend is a premium writer and has been for over 2 years. It would appear that the reward points are useless

Academia-Research on rewards:

"-The best writers of year will be rewarded! There will be special bonuses for the writers who achieved maximum number of rewards this year. Once the financial year is closed we will go through each writer's profile, and those of you who received 15 rewards or greater will get bonus for their hard work and great cooperation with us. Please note that the bonuses will be added after New Year, once all the operations will be covered and closed."

Financially, rewards are supposed to translate into 1) higher CPP when the customer who gave you the reward comes back for a second order and requests you as the writer; 2) end of year bonuses; and 3) bonus extra pay for the order which you were given a reward on.

Apart from this one time, however, ... nothing.

"Dear xxx
We are happy to inform you that you have been granted a bonus due to the fact that you have reward, the bonus you have been given is $44.00. This is just a small sign of our appreciation of your hard work and dedication; we hope that this token will encourage you to keep up the hard work.
Regards,
Administration"

How many orders does AR get during the peak season and how does one become "premium"? Their admin controlled bidding system (it is admin controlled, right) seemed to suck when I applied from them in the off-season two years ago.

I'll be keeping my expectations low, but it's vaguely reassuring that sometimes they give cash incentives, rather than this other BS.

during peak season, there are more than enough orders to go around. the bidding system does suck, but you can just snatch orders with no lag-time, once you're premium. I got to premium by getting 10 reward points and asking admin when I would be made premium-- the next day, I was. you get reward points when a customer is happy with your order, but you have to draw admin's attention to it-- they don't do surveys.

I'd be a lot more motivated to take orders for AR if reward points had an established cash value. it's potentially a good performance incentive, but they're under-utilizing it.

my friend got more than 15 reward points but still no bonus.

as for the returning customer thing... my friend has had SEVERAL such orders and never once had any bonus or price per page increase, in fact, on one occasion, the returning customer had been told by admin that because they were a returning customer they could have the paper written for $5 per page when previously they had paid $9 per page. My friend refused the order, especially as it was a 40 page disertation piece, and the customer complained. Admin begged my friend to write the piece which she eventually did when the price per page was increased to $11 per page.

Yes - there was often a tremendous disparity between supposed "policy" and actual practice ...

Sounds like ******** to me :)

so it appears to be.

here is the party line:

"Dear Writer!

The reward points are not useless to you - there is also a first class writer status that gets higher CPP then the premium. And they do matter if you want to get there. Regular writers get lower CPP then the premiums, so your rewards are already embedded in the CPP you see.

Sincerely
Vinny"

I don't believe any of it, from the first sentence.