Terms & Conditions

Alakademia ("we", "us") operates the language school at alakademia.com. We teach Spanish to Arabic speakers, and we teach in Arabic, English and Spanish.

By creating an account, buying credit, or enrolling in any course or session, you accept these Terms. If you do not accept them, do not enrol — and if you have already paid, write to us and we will return your money under section 9.

These Terms are published in Arabic, English and Spanish. The three versions are intended to say the same thing. If they ever disagree on a point that matters, the Arabic version governs, because most of our students read Arabic.

You need an account to enrol. You must give a real name and an email address you actually control, because we send enrolment confirmations, Zoom joining links and refund notices to that address, and because your course credit is held against it.

You must be at least 16 years old to hold an account in your own name. If you are younger, a parent or guardian must open and hold the account and is the person contracting with us.

• One account per student. Accounts are personal and may not be shared, sold or transferred.
• Keep your password to yourself. Anything done through your account is treated as done by you.
• Instructors and administrators are required to use two-factor authentication. You may enable it too, and we recommend it.
• Tell us at info@alakademia.com if you think someone else has reached your account.

Three different things, with three different cancellation rules. Which one you bought is shown on your order and on your account page.

• Self-paced courses — recorded lessons, quizzes, written and spoken assignments, available whenever you like once you are enrolled.
• Live group courses (cohorts) — a fixed group starting on a set date and meeting on a published schedule over live video. Places are limited and a seat is held for you once you are enrolled.
• One-to-one live sessions — a single lesson with one instructor at a time you book yourself.

Placement assessment is free. It has a written part and, for some levels, a spoken part with an instructor.

We place students on the Common European Framework (CEFR) and use thirteen bands, from A0 through C2+. A0 means you are starting from nothing, which is a real placement and not a failure.

The written placement quiz can only return A1, A2, B1 or B2 — that is what it is designed to measure. Every other band, including A0, the plus-variants and C1 and above, is reached through a spoken assessment with an instructor or by finishing a course that awards that level.

Some courses and live sessions require a minimum level before you can enrol. If a course is closed to you, take the placement assessment or ask us; we would rather move you than sell you a class you cannot follow.

All prices are shown in Saudi Riyals (SAR) and are the full amount you pay.

We are not registered for VAT, so no VAT is charged and no VAT invoice is issued. If that changes we will say so here before it takes effect. Any charge your own bank adds for sending money to us is yours, not ours, and we cannot see or refund it.

We may change prices at any time. A change never affects a course you have already paid for.

We do not currently take card payments. Payment works in two steps, and it is worth understanding both before you start.

• Step one — you transfer the amount to our Saudi bank account. Ask us at info@alakademia.com for the account details and the reference to quote.
• Step two — when the transfer arrives we add that amount to your account as course credit, matched to your registered email address. You then spend that credit to enrol.

Use the same email address for your transfer reference as the one on your account. If they do not match we cannot tell whose money it is, and crediting it will take longer.

We add credit by hand, during working days. Allow for the time your bank takes to move the money plus up to one working day at our end. If your credit has not appeared two working days after your bank says it was sent, write to us with the transfer reference.

Card payment through a Spanish payment institution is being arranged and will be offered later. Until it is live, bank transfer is the only way to pay.

Course credit is a record that you have paid us in advance. It is not money, not a gift card, not a payment instrument, and it cannot be sent to another person.

• Credit is held per currency. Credit paid in SAR is spent on SAR prices.
• Credit is spent oldest first, so the balance that expires soonest is always used first.
• Credit is valid for twelve months from the day we add it. We email you before any of it is due to lapse.
• You can ask for unspent credit back at any time, and we return it by bank transfer to an account in your name. Section 9 says how.
• If we refund an enrolment that you paid for with credit, the credit goes back to your balance and keeps its original expiry date. You are not charged for the round trip.

You are enrolled when your order completes, and access opens immediately. For a live course, your seat is held from that moment.

Live classes run on Zoom. We send the joining link to your registered email and it also appears on your account page. Do not pass the link on — a seat is for one student.

• Attendance is recorded automatically when you join a live class. We use it to certify completion and to notice when a student has stopped attending.
• Sessions may be recorded so students who missed one can catch up. If a session is being recorded you will be told at the start of it.
• We may move a session, change the instructor, or in rare cases cancel one. If we cancel a live class and cannot offer you a replacement, we refund that class in full.
• If too few students enrol, we may cancel a live course before it starts and refund everyone in full.

This is the section people actually need, so it is written as plainly as we can manage.

• Live group course — you may cancel and get a full refund up to 24 hours after your first live session. Attend the first class; if it is not what you wanted, tell us within a day and you get everything back. After that point the course is not refundable, because your seat has been held and the group has started.
• One-to-one session — you may cancel and get a full refund up to 24 hours before the session starts. Inside 24 hours the instructor's time is already committed, so it is not refundable.
• Self-paced course — refundable while you have not yet opened any lesson. Once you start the material, it is not refundable.
• Unspent credit — refundable at any time, with no reason needed and no deadline.

To cancel, use the cancel control on your account page where one is offered, or write to info@alakademia.com from your registered email address saying what you want to cancel. We will confirm in writing.

We return money the way it reached us: to a bank account in your name, or back to your credit balance if you ask for that instead. Bank refunds are sent within 14 days of us agreeing the refund; how long your own bank then takes is out of our hands.

Beyond these rules we can still refund you if something has gone wrong. If you think it has, tell us — a rule written on this page is a floor, not a ceiling.

Everything we teach with — video, audio, slides, worksheets, quizzes, and the recordings of live classes — belongs to us or to the people we licensed it from.

While you are enrolled you may use it to learn: watch it, download what the platform offers for download, and keep your own notes. That is a personal, non-transferable permission and it ends when your enrolment does.

• Do not republish, resell, or upload our material anywhere else.
• Do not record, screen-capture or re-stream a live class. Other students are in that room.
• Do not share your account or your Zoom links.

Work you produce — your assignments, your voice recordings, your written answers — stays yours. You give us permission to store it, mark it, and show it to your instructor, which is what makes teaching possible.

Our classrooms are shared by students from several countries who are learning in a language none of them started with. Treat instructors and other students with respect. Harassment, abuse, and discriminatory language get an account suspended, and a suspension for this reason is not refunded.

Finishing a course to its stated requirements earns a certificate, issued through the platform and downloadable from your account. A certificate records that you completed our course. It is not a state qualification and we do not represent it as one.

We work to keep the platform available, but we do not promise it is never down. Maintenance, a failure at a supplier, or a problem at your end can all interrupt access.

If an interruption we are responsible for costs you a live class, we treat that class as one we cancelled and section 8 applies.

You may close your account at any time by writing to us. Any unspent credit is returned to you under section 9.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks section 10 or section 11, or that we have solid reason to believe is being used fraudulently. Where the reason is not your fault we refund what you have not used.

We are responsible for delivering the teaching you paid for, to a reasonable standard. If we fail to, you get your money back under section 9.

We are not responsible for how much Spanish you end up learning. That depends on your work as much as ours, and nobody can honestly promise a result.

Except where the law does not allow us to limit it, our total liability to you for anything connected with these Terms is capped at what you paid us in the twelve months before the problem arose. Nothing here limits our liability for death, personal injury, or fraud.

We may change these Terms. If a change materially affects you, we email every registered student at least 14 days before it takes effect, and the date at the top of this page changes.

A change never applies retroactively to a course you have already paid for. Those keep the Terms that were in force when you enrolled.

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and disputes go to the Saudi courts. We say this because our students are overwhelmingly in Saudi Arabia and payment reaches us through a Saudi bank account.

This will change when the Spanish company is established, and we will not make that change quietly: the governing law clause will be updated here and every registered student will be told by email before it takes effect.

If you are a consumer resident in the European Union, nothing in these Terms takes away rights your local consumer law gives you and that cannot be signed away.

Email info@alakademia.com. It is the fastest route and it is read by a person. Tell us your registered email address and, if it is about an order, the order number.