Refunds

Refunds and the pass-or-refund guarantee.

Version 1.5Last updated 11 October 2026 Forms part of the terms of service, section 7

Two separate things are described on this page and they are easy to confuse. The first is an ordinary refund window that needs no reason. The second is a guarantee tied to actually sitting the certification exam, and it has conditions. Both are written out in full, including the parts that are inconvenient for us, because a guarantee whose conditions only appear after you claim is not a guarantee.

1. The 48-hour refund window

If the product is not what you expected, write to contact@grindstoneprep.com within 48 hours of your purchase and we refund you in full. You do not have to give a reason and you will not be asked for one. That is enough time to sign in, read the questions and the explanations, and decide whether this is worth what you paid for it.

The one condition, and it is about how much of the product you have consumed rather than about your reason: your account has not revealed the answer or the explanation for more than 10 questions in total, across any mode, and has not completed a full timed session. Reading the free sample does not count against either number.

Being plain about what changed here, because it matters to you rather than to us: untimed study now counts. An earlier version of this policy counted only completed timed exam-mode sessions, which meant the whole bank could be read in study mode and refunded afterwards. Revealed answers and explanations count wherever you reveal them.

If you are buying from the EU or the UK

Consumer law where you live may give you rights that go beyond the 48-hour window on this page — in many cases a statutory right to withdraw from a distance contract within 14 days. Nothing on this page is intended to reduce a statutory right you have. Your purchase is made through our merchant of record, which is the seller of record for the transaction; its own buyer terms govern how a statutory withdrawal request is handled, and it is able to issue a refund in cases where our policy on its own would not. If you believe you have a statutory right to a refund and have not been given one, write to us and say so. We would rather settle that than argue about whose policy applies.

2. The pass-or-refund guarantee

Separately from the 48-hour window above, and not limited by it — a claim under this guarantee is in time even if you sit the exam months after that window has closed: if you study with our product and sit the corresponding certification exam and do not pass it, we refund what you paid for that exam. For a product that covers one exam that is its whole price; for a bundle it is the bundle price divided by the number of exams the bundle covers. The exact amounts are in section 4 below.

3. The guarantee’s conditions, in full

All of the following must be true. There are no others; this list is the whole thing.

1. You bought the product directly from us, and it was your own purchase.
2. You sat the corresponding certification examination and did not pass it.
3. You sat it during your access term, or within 30 days after it ended.
4. Before sitting it, you had answered every question in the bank at least once, and scored 80% or better on your most recent full practice session. We do not keep a record of your answers or scores ourselves, so if you claim under this guarantee we may ask you to show both — for example with a screenshot of your results screen taken before you sit the exam — but they are the substance of “you studied with our product” and they are not waived.
5. You submit the claim within 30 days of receiving your examination result.
6. You send us the result notification the certification body issued to you, showing which examination you sat, the date, and the outcome. You may redact your candidate identifier and anything else not needed to establish those three facts. Do not send us anything the certification body’s rules forbid you to disclose. If their rules stop you sharing the document at all, tell us and we will agree another way to establish it.
7. You have not claimed under this guarantee before for the same examination.
8. Your account is in good standing and you have not breached the acceptable-use section of the terms.

4. What you get back, and what you do not

You get: a refund for the examination you sat, worked out like this. Every single-exam product currently on sale costs the same, so that is the full $19.99. A bundle is different: a guarantee claim on one exam returns the bundle price divided by the number of exams the bundle covers, unless we choose to refund more — Fortinet NSE track bundle is $49.99 across three exams; All-access is $59.99 across four exams.

You do not get: a refund of any other product you bought, the fee you paid the certification body to sit the exam, travel, time, or anything else. Your access to the product ends when a guarantee refund is issued.

5. How to claim

Write to contact@grindstoneprep.com with the subject line Guarantee claim, attach the result notification, and say which product it relates to. We aim to answer within 5 business days. If we need something else from you we will say exactly what and why, once, rather than in a sequence of separate messages.

6. Who pays the refund, and how long it takes

Payments for this product are processed by our merchant of record, which is the seller of record for your purchase. Refunds are issued by them, back to the original payment method. That normally appears within 10 business days, though the exact timing is your bank’s rather than ours, and international card refunds are sometimes slower than domestic ones.

You do not need to deal with the merchant of record yourself. Write to us and we start it.

7. Two other situations

If we withdraw the product during your access term

If we stop selling or serving a product you have bought, mid-term, and cannot offer you a reasonable equivalent, we refund the unused part of your term pro rata. You do not have to ask.

If we change the terms in a way that reduces what you bought

Tell us within 30 days that you object, and we refund the unused part of your term. This is set out in section 13 of the terms.

The full legal text these summarize is section 7 of the terms of service. Where this page and the terms differ, the terms are what governs — and if you find a place where they differ, please tell us, because that is a mistake on our side rather than a trap.