Would you use an essay writing service?

[cargon]

A discussion at work today brought up the subject of essay writing services - people were quite split on whether they would ever use one, and if this was right or wrong.

So....

Would you ever use an essay writing service for your assignments or dissertation (or have you in done so in the past) and submit this as your own work?

Would you use the service, but only use the work they provide as a guide to help you write your own essay / dissertation?

Quite interested if anyone did use one, and submitted the work as their own, if your college / university found out?

I work as an assessor and get lots of work submitted where people have just copied and pasted their answers from websites (and it drives me insane!). It's usually easy to spot and easy to check, but essay writing services are often custom services, which are a different ball game.