Alex, it would be enlightening if you'd answer a question or two - ones that bothered me about the original advert.
Would you award a certificate if:
1.An essay submitted to you was full of mistakes - e.g. glaring historical errors re. the known history of tarot, and/or very badly written and showing inadequate knowledge of the general accepted meanings of the cards?
2. All the essays looked as though they'd been lifted from the Internet?
Also:
3. How many times have you refused to award a certificate, and do you refund the money when/if this happens?
As Gregory mentioned earlier, you did seem to be more concerned with sexual ethics than with content.
Pen
Hello Pen
On our website found in my Profile
we list the reasons for refusal to dispense a certificate, which are:
A dissertation will be rejected if the content is plagiarised.
A dissertation will be rejected if the ethical standards endorsed by the writer risk bringing our awards & diplomas into disrepute.
A dissertation will be rejected if the writer demonstrates contempt, disrespect or ignorance of their chosen subject.
We have refused to award a certificates mainly for plagiarism. over the last five years we have received quite a number dissertations that have been lifted from various websites, especially Wikipedia. Any dubious material is dropped into Google and a search is made. Normally it is the ebay buyers who misunderstand the seriousness that we apply to our work, which has been pointed out by Gregory so I think is probably a good point that ebay is not the greatest venue for advertising. A refund is always immediately issued and the opportunity to rework the dissertation is offered. It is only in serious cases of unethical behaviour which would bring our awards into disrepute that we would disqualify an applicant. Although it looks as though the sexual element was over emphasised when the essay from this forum was rejected it was of such a serious nature regarding safety of clients and the trust that is placed in a practitioner that any other problem with the essay became insignificant.
In the case of very serious historical inaccuracies citations may be asked for if I am unable to verify an individuals information. There is no accepted dogma when writing about the Tarot but discussing the Golden Dawn's Occult approach or some of the influences of Wicca or freemasonry is always impressive. In the case of the essay that was sent to me I remember that the origin of the tarot was suggested to be Dubai. This would have been within an acceptable distance of the Babylon empire and the trade routes taken by nomads at the time so I would have overlooked this.
If they disagree with accepted meanings of the cards I will accept this if the reasons for doing so are discussed extensively. But both interpretation and beliefs about the history of the Tarot may be affected by religious beliefs, own culture or personal research and the reasons for such contradicting accepted history will normally be discussed intelligently.
We avoid allot of these problems by asking the writer to include as much of their own thoughts, criticisms, and philosophies as possible. By writing in such a style a writer will normally give up writing if they are not familiar with the cards and plagiarism becomes more difficult to sustain as 'I' statement's, such as "I believe" or in my experience" need to be inserted to fulfill the criteria.
A dissertation will not be rejected if it is badly written. Grammar and spelling are not important to receiving a certificate. We receive many essays in broken English from Indian university graduates and also from people who know their craft in the UK and USA but have difficulty putting a sentence together. I am confident that these pieces of work are authentic and feel great satisfaction in sending them a certificate. However if there are quotes on the assessment certificate then the spelling will be corrected.
But the most important thing will always be the ethics regarding care for clients.
Actually, I decided to do a certificate course on ebay for Tarot as an experiment and was required to do nothing except send the provider three letters of recommendation from three satisfied clients. Which basically means I could be financially exploiting them, sexually abusing them and drinking their blood which would be acceptable to this provider as long as the clients were happy. I spent £10 but didn't get the certificate because I couldn't be arsed to get anyone to write the letters for me through sheer embarrassment at the crap requirements.
I didn't get a refund.
I hope this answers your questions.
Thanks
Alex