How does ACE work?

[bricabrac]

When my student set-up his ACE account last year, he had to pay $40 up front for the registration but received an immediate credit for his first transcript. After getting his ALEKS course recognized by ACE, he ordered the ACE transcript for TESC but did not quite get the payment by credit sequence right. A transcript was never sent to TESC, and ACE never informed him that it was a payment issue. He lost his free transcript, but since he was continuing to add to his ACE credits, he was only out the $15 for an additional transcript later. To this day, I am not sure how to preserve your "free" transcript if you are not requesting one till a much later date.

Hopefully someone else who has used the service recently will comment on this. I don't think they would charge for a transcript prior to use. By what you've said it seems the person was given a deadline to order a transcript or forfeit payment. Something about this scenario seems a bit off. Maybe there was an error made when setting up the account and ACE issued a time restricted credit?

Can recent users of the service please weigh in to offer guidance?

Thanks!