You booked a two-week holiday to Sydney with a tour agency. You were unhappy because the flight was delayed, the hotel was noisy, and there were other problems. Write to the tour agency. In your letter: - give details of the problems with the holiday - complain about the holiday - request compensation or a refund
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I bookedtook a tour package you offered and travelled to Sydney on 2525th July. I was looking forward to an exciting tour but was disappointed with the quality of service your company providedservice your company has provided. I am hoping that you would refund half of the amount I paid as compensation as your company failed to keep promises. Regarding the package I bookedIn relation to the package I opted for, I booked a holiday package to Sydney and it was a two-week tour packagea fortnight tour package. I paid $1600 in cash and was promised a top-class return flighttop class two-way fight, three-star hotel accommodation, tour guide, transportation and meals. I was promised a dream vacation but everything went wrong. Not only the flight was delayed for four hours but the hotel, which was arranged for us, was below standard with low-quality service and noise issues round the clock. The bus tour was also cancelled for no apparent reason. Moreover, the meals were of poor qualitythe meals were tasteless and I had to pay for the meals despite the meal-inclusive packagemeal inclusive package I opted in. This is unacceptable. BecauseAs a solution, and since your company failed to honour the commitmentsdid not respect the commitments it made to us, I expect a 50% refund from your company for all the charges I paidcharges that I had paid in advance. If I do not hear from you withinhear from in within the next seven days, I will file a formal complaint withto the Consumer Rights Authority against your company with regardregards to false claims. I hope to receive a prompt response to my complainthave prompt action on my complaint and expect a refund soon. Yours faithfully, Mubashir Noorani
Why this response received Band 7.0
The complaint is persuasive because it gives specific evidence about the delayed flight, poor hotel, cancelled tour, meals, and requested refund while maintaining a suitably firm tone. The main limitation is recurring language inaccuracy, including faulty clause patterns and awkward collocations, alongside a single-block presentation. Prioritise a careful grammar and wording edit, then group the background, complaints, and remedy into separate paragraphs.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter fully develops the problems, conveys a clear complaint, and makes a specific, appropriately firm request for compensation.
Retain the strong factual support while making the final requested outcome and response deadline even more concise.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas follow a clear sequence from booking details through the service failures to the requested remedy, although some opening information is repetitive.
Use separate paragraphs for the booking context, the problems, and the compensation request, and remove repeated references to the tour package.
Lexical Resource
The response uses a sufficiently varied formal complaint vocabulary, but errors such as ‘two-way fight’, ‘meal inclusive package’, and ‘prompt action on my complaint’ reduce precision.
Proofread for word choice and collocation, using expressions such as ‘return flights’, ‘meal-inclusive package’, and ‘prompt action regarding my complaint’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A mix of simple and complex sentences communicates the message clearly, but grammatical slips recur in inversion, prepositions, and clause construction.
Correct structures such as ‘Not only was the flight delayed’ and ‘If I do not hear from you’ to improve grammatical control.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You booked a two-week holiday to Sydney with a tour agency. You were unhappy because the flight was delayed, the hotel was noisy, and there were other problems. Write to the tour agency. In your letter:
- give details of the problems with the holiday
- complain about the holiday
- request compensation or a refund
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.