Well Mr. Peter Richardson has done it again. He thinks that he is going to get away with owing me over $2000 USD!



I am so sad and stupid! Yes, I worked hard and dedicated weeks to working on his projects that were already past due date or already messed up in some way. Some of his clients were just rude, but I did them all. I was late on one paper, but that was because he had already held back payments and it was a very long and involved paper. Plus I got sick. When I got sick he was very mad at me. He made two small payments earlier on, both after me asking and pleading with him, like a beggar. He tricks researchers into thinking that everything is okay for payment and then he'll say, oh I have to check with the client and now you have to wait until next month.

Then he sent me a letter that he had sent to Helen - not me:

Dear Helen,

You did not take my warning seriously, so you're forcing us to do this.

This is what happens to researchers who bid and were assigned to a project and then did not complete it.

Obviously, we've heard all the excuses in the book for not completing a project: sudden illness; urgent surgery; accidents; natural disasters; loss of electrical power; personal or family problems; death in the family; substance abuse problems; death of the researcher (someone actually had his father email us to inform us they had died) etc. And some people have chosen not to reply to our emails. Believe you me, in almost a decade in this profession, we have seen it all.

This can be a problem you see, because when you do not deliver a project you expose us to the client. This means that this client, YOUR client, will not only want a refund, but they will also not require our services in the future, and they will make sure their friends choose another service as well, as opposed to actually referring us more business.

On average, that means that for every project you do not complete, you lose us about 15-20 times your fee as a researcher over time. As you can see, this is a problem for our clients and it interrupts our normal way of doing business.

That's why we always warn researchers by email and on the website that we expect our researchers to be responsible and professional in all their dealings with us and our clients. All researchers are warned in the Terms Of Work when they sign up, on the Frequently Asked Questions page, in every bid they make and in every email informing them of their assignment to a project. This is warning enough.

So, what do we do when a researcher just won't reply? There are many steps to ensuring we get back at them, and they are all legal.

First, their account is suspended, and all their payments for all projects are forfeited. Then, if they have ever been paid, we contact their bank and explain what is going on, and we ask that our fee for previous projects is returned. This is a valid request, but the bank cannot do that without their client's permission (i.e. the researcher), which they almost never give.

Nevertheless, this does cause a problem for researchers, because of new Anti-Money Laundering laws, which require that the researcher should have notified both the bank and the tax authorities in the country for their occupation as a researcher. Once notified, European, American and Australian banks have to report to the tax authorities their client's business dealings and account transactions, to make sure they are legal. If not, they are investigated by the tax authorities.

Then, the client's information from their profile and their CV is published on the web, along with their sample work. Even if you have recently changed the information on your profile, we have a history of all the information past and present, as well as the information we collect every time we make payments to a researcher, like their real address and full name.

So, after all this information is published, we explain on the webpage what happened and how this researcher was being negligent, irresponsible and fraudulent in their dealings with us. That acts as our way of anti-reference. Big companies that have Human Resources department find this information very easily, because this is one of the first checks they make. Even smaller employeers now Google the names, email, addresses and phone numbers of their employees to see what they can dig up. Most just find a personal blog of their candidates or a MySpace page, but imagine how a future employer will react when they realise that their candidate employee has made so unprofessional dealings in the past. We've actually had future employers of some of our bad researchers contact us to confirm the story and get more information, in order to have valid reason not to hire someone. About a third of our researchers who did not deliver their work to us have been denied a job elsewhere, that we know of.

The sample work can be identified by others who may have a connection to the researcher with or without their knowledge, in which case we give them information about his dealings. Sometimes some of these works have been submitted by the researcher to their university. As most universities now in the Western world use TurnItIn.com as way of identifying plagiarism, we submit the work to TurnItIn and see if it matches with any work ever submitted in the world. If we find a match, then the student who had sent it before is questionned about the originality of the document. It is then in the university's discretion to annul just the paper, or the whole unit or even the degree that this paper was submitted for. And someone won't be very happy about that.

By this point, most researchers are willing to settle and they do come forward and we settle our differences in a civilised manner. We do not sympathise with their attitude so far, but we are a business and we have our interests to protect, so we give them two weeks to pay us 15-20 times their fee for their incomplete projects, plus interest of 5% p.a.

Those who still do not contact us are passed on to our collections department. This is an outsourced department that is operated by our legal advisers. They are an international law firm with offices around the world and they are paid once they collect. They get to keep 20% of whatever they collect, but when they take over the researcher will not be asked less than 25-30 times their fee, in order for us to cover this expense. And yes, they have a firm they work with that is located in Colombia, too.

If the researcher still does not pay, the lawyers file a claim with the appropriate Court. In the UK, for claims of a few thousand pounds, it's the Small Claims Courts, in other countries it's a Court of the Peace or a Magistrate's Court. In any case, all countries have these courts which quickly handle such cases. And when the courts are involved there no more lame excuses, because no matter what your excuse was, you still had an obligation to finish your work or you have to pay for not doing so. Feelings and business are two separate things.

Of course, when a case reaches its court date, the researcher is required to pay not only pay 30 times of what they would be paid if they had originally completed the project, but they also pay all legal costs, which means our legal representation, their legal representation and the court's fee.

And all this is just from our end of the deal. Then, there's also the client. Someone who has paid to have all their projects with us is no doubt someone who does have the financial capacity to pay for the things they want. Imagine now, if you will, someone who is really angry at the researcher who did not complete their project. We have the right to inform the client of the researcher's information, so they can take action as well.

We go after all the researchers who are not honest with us, but there was also this one time recently that a client asked for the researcher's information in order to go after him. We did not know if he meant to after him legally or just seek revenge, because this was the son of a powerful person in the Gulf region (yes, we have some VIP clients), but we did offer the researcher's information since the client had a valid claim against them. So, you see, not completing just one project CAN get you into a lot of trouble.

We've been through this procedure many times, and we know exactly what it takes to ensure that our clients are happy with what they receive. You see, we've been doing this for many years, and the only thing we ask is simply that the researchers complete the work that they themselves were asked to be assigned to them.

If, in the process, they think that they cannot do the work, all they have to do is try harder. This will save them from a lot more trouble, pain and lost professional opportunities down the road. I am certain you can see that now.

Peter Richardson

This case is not old. It actually took place in late 2006. The case went to court and now the researcher wished they had just given the project proper attention. There have been other such cases as well.

I'm sending this email now because it's a recent case and in just a few months the researcher was forced to get a loan to pay up for our lost business.

Now, obviously, we don't want this to happen to anyone, but you see we are a company, and we are kept alive by making a profit, not by losing clients and money. If a researcher is becoming an obstacle to the profitability of the business, we have to deal with them personally.

We don't particularly enjoy it, it's not our number one option, but it just has to happen.

Why? Because when a client is breathing down our neck to get their project, you have to understand this it is actually your neck on the line.

When a researcher is assigned to a project, they are forming a contract with us, just like any other contract. And if they do not complete their end of the contract, there are severe consequences.

End of Peter Richardson's letter.

Well, that pretty much sums it up. Anyone out there have problems with Peter Richardson?

Tell me. I did complete that paper by the way, I had already turned in a 75% done draft when he sent this letter to me, to scare me!

haha!