Unprofessional results and unacceptable behavior
I was in the final stages of getting my paper accepted in a UK based scientific journal, and I needed a quick but flawless copy editing and proof reading, using British English. PaperTrue offered me a reasonable price and 48hrs delivery time, promising that a native speaker will deal with it. I got the paper on time, but I saw that some things were not changed, albeit being obviously far from perfect. Although the editor said "I have also enhanced the diction, clarity, and coherence of the document", only incremental changes were made, like adding "the" here and there, and other numerous small changes. I just could not believe that all my tenses were right and all sentences structured properly. The most striking error was that the editor, in a comment, changed Serbia to Siberia. This was a red flag for me: an editor's job was to make things perfect, how to trust the other changes if such a mistake was made? And how was it possible that a Briton doesnt' distinguish Serbia and Siberia? Having very little time before the journal deadline, I urged PaperTrue to revise the paper, since the job was far from perfect. PaperTrue asked me to mark any parts I am not satisfied with. Jesus! If I knew where all the errors were, I wouldn't need them! I soon got another version from them, from a "senior editor", but the second version was quite sloppy. The second editor did not do a revision of their previous job, but did a completely new editing job, on my original document. This second job did not touch a lot of things that the first editor suggested for change, leaving many things as I wrote them! When I compared the two edits, I found many inconsistencies, such as one editor suggesting "An ...", and the other suggesting "The...". The first editor changed my double quotation marks to single ones, and the other left the double ones. I found many discrepancies between their two works, which was strange and worrisome. Now who to trust? Also, the new version did not adapt my text to British English, as I requested. So I asked them to help me and make their mind about which version I should send. Their response was "The revised document delivered to you recently has been edited by our native English experts and is ready for submission." This was a lie, since that version left many errors unchanged, and was more close to American English. Since I ran out of time, I had to make the final version on my own, comparing the two versions I got from PaperTrue, and judging which alterations to accept. This made me break the journal's deadline and I had to deal with this instead working on other things, and instead of sleeping that night. Being quite mad at PaperTrue, I asked them to send me the 7 digit authentication pass code for TrustPilot, but they ignored my requests. Then they offered me 50% refund. They were pleasant, but not at least cooperative. They tried to explain me that leaving a bad review would be "bad for their employees' morale". Can you believe the nerve? At one point I even chatted with their representative, when another representative phoned me, and tried to deal with me. The other person, that I chatted with, did not even know that another person from their team was calling me at the same time! Obviously bad coordination and rookie behavior. Then they asked me to accept 100% refund. I did get the refund, but that could not help me with my situation. To this day they ignored my requests for the TrustPilot verification code, although I sent them a few messages asking for it. I relied on PaperTrue, and they did not deliver accordingly. Even worse, they did not fix their mistake, and made the situation even worse for me. I am sorry to say that I cannot recommend PaperTrue for copy-editing academic papers. P.S. After leaving my comment on trustpilot, papertrue challenged my review, by stating "We do not have this customer on our records." Fortunately, I kept the conversation and the receipt, so I was able to prove that I was really their customer.