Questions people actually ask

Study the plan and sit the official test. Your plan carries a guaranteed band, set for you when your plan begins. If the overall band on your official IELTS result comes in below your guaranteed band, you can claim a refund. How it is set, and the conditions in full, are in the guarantee terms.

The overall band printed on your official Test Report Form, against your guaranteed band — one number, set for you when your plan begins and shown on your dashboard. Not any single skill. Result at or above your guaranteed band and the guarantee has done its job; below it, and you can claim. Exactly how the number is set is in the guarantee terms.

The 3-month plan only, one claim per person. The monthly subscription has no fixed term, so there is no defensible period to measure over, and it is not covered. If you move from monthly to the 3-month plan the guarantee comes with it — it starts at the upgrade, not at your original purchase, and measures from a starting assessment taken at that point. This is stated on the pricing page next to the price, not only here.

Five things, all of which your account records as you go:

• Take the starting assessment — all four skills — before your plan begins. It is the baseline the guarantee measures from, so without it there is nothing to compare against. There is no deadline beyond that.
• Complete daily lessons on at least 60% of your plan's days.
• Sit the Checkpoint mock and the Rehearsal mock.
• Sit the official IELTS within 30 days of your plan ending.
• Claim within 30 days of receiving your result.

You never have to work these out yourself. The claim screen shows you where you stand against each one, with your own numbers, before it asks you for anything.

85% of what you actually paid, returned to the original payment method. We retain 15% for administration and bank charges — card processing fees are not returned to us when we refund you. The deduction is worked out from the amount charged to you, never from a list price. Access ends when the refund is issued. This is why we say “improve or claim a refund” and never “money back”: the refund is not the full amount, and saying otherwise would be a false claim.

Your official Test Report Form, or a verifiable online result, showing the test date and your band scores. The name on it must match the account. We reply within 14 days. A human reviews every claim — this is the one part of BandAI that is not automated, on purpose.

Monthly subscriptions, and add-ons — including an extra month added to the end of a 3-month plan, which is a separate one-off purchase, is not refundable, and does not move the guarantee's deadline. Institutional purchases, which have their own agreement. Accounts that are shared, resold or automated. A test you sat before your starting assessment. And claims where the study requirement above was not met.

Email us anyway. The window is what the terms allow, but a person reads the post, and we would rather hear from you than have you assume the answer is no.

You keep everything until the end of the period you have already paid for, and it does not renew after that. There is no part-month refund, and nothing is cut off the moment you cancel. Your settings page shows the exact date access ends.

It does not auto-renew and nothing is charged. Your account stays — your scores, your history and your band record are all still there — and the paid features stop. If your guarantee claim window is still open, it stays open: the plan ending does not end your right to claim.

The full starting assessment across all four skills, and your real bands from it — that is not a teaser, it is the whole diagnostic, and the bands are yours to keep whether you buy anything or not. Daily lessons, practice, mock tests and vocabulary come with a paid plan, as does AI marking of your writing and speaking beyond the assessment, because every one of those costs us money to produce.

Two things worth knowing before you decide. Your speaking is marked from a transcript of what you said — so pronunciation is not scored here, and the real test does score it. And listening is our thinnest area: one bank of sections and no listening mock test, although listening is part of the starting assessment your guaranteed band is measured from.

No. Your writing and speaking are marked by AI, against the official published band descriptors — the same tables an examiner uses. The only place a human is involved is reviewing a guarantee claim. We would rather tell you that plainly than let you assume a teacher is reading your essays.

It is an indication, not an official score, and only an official test gives you an official band. Reading and listening are marked against an answer key, so they are as accurate as the questions are representative. Writing is marked against the published descriptors. Speaking is marked from a transcript on three of the four official criteria — pronunciation is the fourth, and we do not score it, because a transcript cannot show it.

You set that yourself when you start, and the daily lesson is built to fit the time you chose rather than the other way round. The guarantee asks for lessons on 60% of your plan's days — six days in seven is comfortably above it, and missing a day does not undo anything.

Yes — by email, and a person replies. There is deliberately no chat bot: a bot could tell you something wrong about your guarantee or your billing, and we would rather answer slowly and correctly. Contact us.

Your answers, recordings and scores are stored against your account so the plan can adapt to them — that is the entire mechanism, and without them the product does nothing. Your work is sent to the AI providers that mark it. We do not sell your data. If you claim on the guarantee, you send us an identity document; the retention and deletion policy for that is covered in the privacy policy.

Email us and we will do it. There is no self-service delete button yet — saying so is more useful than implying there is one.