You travelled by a long-distance bus recently and your suitcase was damaged. Write a letter to the bus company. In your letter: - inform the bus company of when and to where you travelled - describe your suitcase and what happened to it - explain why the company should pay for a new suitcase
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I am Ethan Deen, a regularEthan Deen a regular passenger on your busescommuter of your bus. Recently I took your bus to reach Boston and to my surprise, your staff's mishandling of my luggage caused severe damage to it. I am writing to claim compensation for the damage to my suitcaseclaim compensation for the property damage during a journey with your companywhile travelling on a bus from your company. I travelled from Washington, D.C. to Boston on bus #301 on April 21, 2025. The bus left the Greyhound Station at 9:30 am. Before the trip, I handed over my luggage to the conductor, who helped me placehelped me to place my suitcase in the luggage compartment, which was almost empty at that time. After I arrived at the Boston Bus Station, the person in charge opened the compartment and I noticed that my brand-new Gucci suitcasebrand new Gucci suitcase was crushed under the weight ofsmashed under the pressure of the weight of several other pieces of luggageseveral other luggage. My suitcase was firm and very beautiful with its modern design. However, it obviously was not designedhasn’t been designed to withstand such weightresist such a weight on it. I am very upsetdepressed because I can no longer use this suitcase. Its handle was bentIts handle bent and two wheels becamegot detached. Since the damage was caused by the careless actions of your employee, I would like to claim compensation ofclaim my compensation of $250, which was the original price of my suitcase. Please deliverPlease, deliver a cheque to the address written aboveaddress, written above. Yours faithfullyFaithfully yours, Ethan Deen
Why this response received Band 7.0
The letter gives a detailed journey record, clearly describes the suitcase and damage, and persuasively links the compensation request to staff mishandling. Its main weakness is language and layout: all information appears in one block, while expressions such as "several other luggage," "claim my compensation," and "deliver a cheque" sound inaccurate; prioritise separate journey, damage, and remedy paragraphs with natural formal complaint wording.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
Every bullet point is fully addressed with the route, date, bus number, suitcase description, damage details, responsibility, and replacement value.
Make the remedy precisely match the task by requesting either a new equivalent suitcase or reimbursement of the stated purchase price.
Coherence and Cohesion
The account moves chronologically from the journey to discovery of the damage and the compensation claim, but the single paragraph limits readability.
Divide the letter into journey details, condition and damage, and requested compensation, trimming repeated references to the suitcase.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a good range of complaint and travel vocabulary, though several collocations and uncountable-noun forms are inaccurate.
Use phrases such as "a regular passenger," "other pieces of luggage," "request reimbursement," and "send a cheque."
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
Varied sentence structures convey the sequence clearly, but article, agreement, tense, participle, and punctuation errors recur.
Correct forms such as "its handle was bent," "two wheels were detached," and remove unnecessary commas around short modifiers.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You travelled by a long-distance bus recently and your suitcase was damaged. Write a letter to the bus company. In your letter:
- inform the bus company of when and to where you travelled
- describe your suitcase and what happened to it
- explain why the company should pay for a new suitcase
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.