The short answer
Read three things in any guarantee: the trigger (how many points), the remedy (refund or just repeat access), and the conditions (what your student must complete to qualify). Ours is a 4-point improvement guarantee for most students, and if we don't get there we give money back. Major course providers offer real guarantees too, but the remedy is often continued access rather than money back, and the completion conditions do real work.
Guarantees sound binary — either there is one or there isn’t. In practice every guarantee is three separate promises, and they vary independently.
The three parts to read
The trigger. How many points must the score fail to improve before the guarantee activates? “Score improvement” alone can mean one point.
The remedy. This is where guarantees differ most. Money back is one answer. Free continued access or a course repeat is a very different answer — it compensates a family whose time was wasted with more of what wasted it. Neither is dishonest, but they are not the same promise, and the fine print decides which you’re holding.
The conditions. Most guarantees require completed coursework — every session attended, every practice test taken — to qualify. Reasonable on its face, and also the mechanism by which many claims quietly fail: the student who stopped engaging is both the most likely to need the guarantee and the least likely to qualify for it.
Where we land
We guarantee a 4-point improvement for most students who complete the program we recommend, and if we don’t get there, we give money back.
Both halves of that are deliberate. Four points because it’s a gain that changes real outcomes, and money back rather than more free access because repeat access to a program that didn’t work is not compensation. The specific terms, and whether the guarantee fits your student’s situation, are the kind of thing worth walking through properly, so your ACT Planning Advisor goes over them with you in the consultation rather than in fine print on a web page.
Kaplan and PrepScholar both offer score-improvement guarantees on most paid products, with terms that vary by product — eligibility, refund versus extension, completion criteria. Both are real. Read the three parts above on any of them, including ours, and you’ll know exactly what you’re buying.
