Ignored, lied to, and ghosted
TLDR: Hired them for their publication package. The first chapter they returned was awful, they ignored my feedback for subsequent chapters, said my 100% guaranteed refund in our agreement was not actually 100% guaranteed, and have now stopped responding to my emails and live chats. Avoid working with them at all costs!
Hiring Ghost Writing Galaxy was the single worst mistake I've made in my writing career. I hired them for their publication package, which included editing and proofreading of my book, publication, 24/7 customer support and a 100% money-back guarantee, among others.
After some delay, I got my first chapter back from them, and I can say, without any hyperbole, it was the single worst thing I've ever read.
Lines would seem to repeat themselves twice throughout the chapter, as the characters or narrator would start talking about one thing before then restarting to talk about the same thing they were talking about a few paragraphs ago. Many details were also cut or simplified, and events would skip around from one place to another without any transition or explanation. At one point, an entirely new character was added, just for her to disappear when the chapter repeated itself again, and this is without mentioning the fact they wrote that my fantasy setting characters, in the mild of the nowhere, somehow just popped into a cafe to talk to each other about career prospects. The whole thing was unrecognisable as the work I paid them to edit.
After I was told they'd assembled a new team for me, the work did improve to an extent, but there were still issues. So I took the time to go over everything in my book again myself, make corrections, add additional explanations and minor scenes, and sent it back to them and asking them to use that in place of the previous manuscript. This was while also providing them with a lot of feedback about the characters, descriptions as well as a request to turn on the tracking feature in Microsoft Word, so I could more easily view their changes. The next chapter they gave me was still the old manuscript and had none of my feedback I sent implemented in their edits, with no explanation as to why.
After writing a wall of feedback on chapter 2, they tried to upsell me another package, that almost cost as much as my first package sold me, to add a beta reader to view my work.
When I repeated told them I was not interested and requested my guaranteed refund, as I had had enough at this point, they stopped responding. When I did get in contact with another person (I had to speak to the agent that sold me the initial package on Twitter to get them to respond) they told me that they don't offer refunds for a "change of mind". When I told them all the issues I had, they acknowledge them, did one final edit, and said if I wasn't happy, they'd refund me. I viewed it, said it still wasn't what I was after and asked for my refund again, and never received a response.
After going back to Twitter, I was then told to get a refund, I had to attend a Zoom call to get it. I wasn't happy I had to do something like that to get a refund, but I did agree and showed up on the date for the call. The man who I was supposed to speak to, however, did not. After scheduling a second Zoom call meeting, I was gaslit, and told once again they don't offer refunds for changes of mind. I, again, told him my issues with the service, and he promised the finance team would get back to me in 24 hours. No response.
I got into contact with the man again, asking about my refund, and for the third time, he told me they don't offer refunds for changes of mind. They had disregarded everything I had said. When I emailed back explaining the situation again, I was ghosted. Support would later email me to say my refund was still in review, but they too stopped responding after I asked them for an update weeks later.
With nobody responding to my emails, I tried their live chat on their website. To my surprise, I got in contact with their director of support, who I asked for help. He took my name and email and promised a reply by the end of the week. No response.
The last time I tried to get in contact with them through live chat, the moment they understood who I was, they stopped responding to me, and the live chat feature disabled shortly after. I know this, because I tried speaking to them on several different devices, and they only ever stopped responding after they found out who I was, as they were otherwise happy to sell me their services until then.
I have never had such a horrid experience with a company before, and I recommend that everyone who values their work that they seek out literally anyone else to help them with editing and publication, because anyone else has got to be better than this.
23 March 2023
Unprompted review