You are not happy about a service you received a couple of days ago from a company and you have decided to complain about it. Write a letter to the company to complain about the poor service you received from its employee. In your letter express: - why you went to the shop/office - how the employees behaved to offend you - what you expect the company to do
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I recently wentRecently I went to your office to inquire about your residential air-conditioning repair servicethe air conditioner repair services that you offer at residential homes. However, your staff membersBut your staff members were not professional at allat all, to say the least. One of my air conditioners had not been workingfunctioning properly for the last couple of days. So, it was an emergency situation for me to get my AC fixed as soon as possible to survive in this terribly hot weather. HoweverBut, when I visited your office last week, I was kept waiting for a long time just to talk to someone. On top of that, when I was finally able to talk to one of your experts, he did not seem to be too interested in listening to my problems. To tell you the truth, I didn’t expect such disturbing behaviour from a company like yours, especially sinceespecially, when I drove about 45 minutes to arrive at your office. Anyway, I did not lodge a complaint, but I felt offended by such behaviour. Therefore, I would highly appreciate it if you could instruct all your AC repair experts toif you get all of your AC repair experts to value all of your visiting customers and solve their problems like true professionals. Yours faithfully, Rabid Menon
Why this response received Band 7.0
The complaint has a clear formal purpose and gives relevant, well-sequenced details about the urgent repair enquiry, the wait, and the employee's dismissive response. The main weakness is that the requested remedy remains broad and some expressions are exaggerated or awkward. The highest priority is to state a specific action the company should take while tightening collocations and sentence punctuation.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
All three bullet points are addressed in an appropriately formal complaint, but the expected remedy is expressed only in broad terms.
Request a concrete outcome, such as an apology, a prompt repair appointment, or staff training, and specify when a response is expected.
Coherence and Cohesion
The account progresses clearly from the reason for visiting to the offending conduct and the requested response, though several connectors are repetitive.
Organise the complaint into distinct paragraphs and vary or remove repeated opening linkers such as 'But' and 'On top of that'.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is sufficiently varied for a formal complaint, but phrases such as 'disturbing behaviour' and 'solve their problems like true professionals' lack precision.
Use more measured formal collocations, such as 'dismissive conduct', 'address customer concerns', and 'arrange an urgent repair'.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
The response uses a range of complex structures with generally clear control, although comma placement and the final conditional request are awkward.
Revise the closing request to a controlled form such as 'I would appreciate it if you ensured that your staff treated customers professionally'.
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IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You are not happy about a service you received a couple of days ago from a company and you have decided to complain about it. Write a letter to the company to complain about the poor service you received from its employee. In your letter express:
- why you went to the shop/office
- how the employees behaved to offend you
- what you expect the company to do
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.