Scribendi Reviews

Cons

None that I can think of.

Cons

some very difficult documents
new rating system is annoying

Cons

They expect too much from their editors in too little time. A lot of the papers are very poorly written ESL documents, and they expect their editors to turn them into perfect masterpieces in just a few hours. Many of these papers require way more time to complete than is provided. Furthermore, if the client needs to be contacted and the deadline is approaching, you have to submit the incomplete document to the customer anyway or else Scribendi's system will punish you for returning the document late. I felt this was very unfair and unprofessional.

Most of the time, you wind up working 10+ hours a day on something that should have only taken 6 otherwise. It makes the pay really not worth the hours you're working.

I shouldn't have tried to work with them full time because meeting monetary goals while maintaining high-quality work was pretty much impossible. In the end, it got the best of me. The successful editors at Scribendi seem to work part-time and already have years of editing experience. If you can't keep up with Scribendi's pace (or pass the majority of your QA checks, which are another story), you get the boot.

I also disliked that they didn't put a lot of effort into offering further or advanced training for their editors. I would have liked to have participated in a training webinar instead of taking their "training" sessions on their sister site, Inklyo (which were long, repetitive, and mostly unhelpful).

Cons

They contacted me 11 months after I'd submitted a resume. They were fine with my work when they were a little Mom&Pop shop, but then they applied for all these accreditations and my Editor number (#8) didn't look good. They were looking for a constant turnover of editors and, years after I'd been working for them, they introduced training. I aced the training, even finding typos that the "experts" had missed. Then they introduced a QA department that docked editors for such nonsense as "US writers don't use 'hence'; they use 'thus.' Only UK writers use 'hence." They kept picking at me and picking at me until I felt as if there was some chirpy little QA person watching over my shoulder. In short, I'd been there too long. Eventually they told me I no longer fit their business model, and I was dismissed.

Cons

The company does not support their editors. When clients complain, the order is reviewed by their full-time staff. No matter how high your score, no matter how well they esteem your editing, no matter how petty the client's complaints are (including that the client just didn't like a change you made, which they could just choose not to accept in their own revisions), the client is offered a redo or a refund. Frequently, the client requests a different editor for this. Again, no matter how high your review score or what praise was given to your work by the senior editors, if this request is made it will be granted, and you can lose your pay (and your time) for that order. Unfortunately, because all remote editors are contract workers, this is legit, and you have no recourse.

I understand that keeping clients happy is how they stay in business--it's part of how all companies stay in business. But there appears to be no point at which the company will stand by the work of their editors, and no point at which the client stops being right--no matter how petty, foolish, or unreasonable they are being in their requests and complaints. The worst part is that clients have figured this out, and they appear to know that complaining enough can get them free services.

Clients are not expected to take any measure of responsibility for their own work. You will see some truly abysmal writing in this job, and there appears to be no limit to the expectations placed on you to turn it into something worthy of highest regard (no matter how poorly conceived, constructed, and written it is when it comes to you). At the end of the day, there's only so much you can do without extensively researching and rewriting concepts from scratch (a no-no at Scribendi, and rightly so as that is not editing), but clients expect things to come back to them with no further review or writing necessary on their part, regardless of how dirt-poor the original was. In fact, client complaints often fall under the category of "I don't want to keep this change that the editor made," and rather than simply rejecting that change in the review process (a simple click of a button), they complain and demand a redo or a refund.

In short, do not expect clients to be reasonable and do not expect Scribendi to EVER take your side, even when they deem your work "excellent" or a client's complaints invalid.

Cons

You must be fast to earn a decent income. Unfortunately, many of the documents that you begin with barely past muster and require very careful attention and substantive edits. Until you reach a certain rating and/or average QA score, you'll be stuck with ESL and technical documents regardless of your credentials or background.

Cons

The pay is project-based and is usually absurdly low. Most projects are from ESL writers, and many take a very long time to complete. I tend to earn between $15-20/hour, but more difficult projects reduce that rate. Scribendi offers "karma," which is basically a $0.05-$1 boost to assignments that aren't getting picked up. Woohoo, an extra five cents?! It's insulting.

Cons

The team, at first, seems like they are willing to work with you, but they're not. They're all about money, and if you don't earn repeat business for them, you will be fired.

Cons

Thanks to Scribendi, hundreds of students who can barely write a sentence are getting advanced degrees because they have their papers rewritten by Scribendi editors. You can make a living wage if you can work 8-10 straight hours every day and, thus, do one-day turnaround jobs. But I am a caregiver, so I could not take any jobs that had to be returned in fewer than 5 days. As a result, the most I ever made for an edit was $8/hour, but I averaged $5/hour. For one two-page document that took me 30 minutes to edit, I made $3.25.

I was a teacher, so I liked to explain why an edit was necessary. In one of my Quality Assurance checks, I had points taken away for this and was told, "Don't explain how to fix it, just fix it." So the writer, in other words, learns nothing.

Many editors obviously pander for positive feedback, which is just sad.

Cons

The pay is low. Most of the jobs are ESL writers so they take much longer than expected, especially if they are highly technical. I average about 1 cent per word here. That is a terrible rate. Scribendi also has a policy where editors must do 10,000 words each calendar month to remain active. If you don't, your account is deactivated.

For the past six months or so, there has been little work available. With so many remote editors looking for jobs, you have to get online at all hours of the night to find a $10 order and hope that it isn't due in 6 hours. I also feel that the customer service department is more likely to side with the clients instead of the editors if the clients have questions or complaints. It's a difficult situation when your client doesn't speak English as his or her first language yet the quality of your editing is questioned and Scribendi forces you to redo the order (or not get paid at all) without even allowing you to address the client's concerns. I do not feel like a valued employee here; I feel like a number who can be easily replaced. The worst part is that Scribendi keeps about 50% of what they charge the client, so if I get $100 for an order, Scribendi also gets that amount. That is a large commission.

The turnaround times on orders are too short. I usually feel as though if I just had another hour, I could do a much better job. Scribendi allows customers to choose 8-hour, 12-hour, 24-hour, 48-hour, 72-hour or 1- or 2-week turnaround times, but the editors have a deadline that is shorter than that. For example, an 8-hour order shows up as only 6 hours remaining as soon as it's posted. While this is a great policy for client satisfaction because clients feel as though they get their work back early, it's terrible for editors who already are working second or third jobs or have family responsibilities. I have to pass up many orders because I know I won't have time to do them adequately because the deadline is too soon. I think Scribendi could avoid a lot of complaints by rewarding editors who turn things in early but not rushing the jobs across the board and trading quality for saving a few hours.