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 25th July. I was looking forward to an exciting tour but was disappointed with the quality of service your company providedhas provided. I hope that you will refundam hoping that you would refund half of the amount I paid as compensation as your company failed to keep its promisesfailed to keep promises. I bookedIn relation to the package I opted for, I booked a holiday package to Sydney and it was a fortnight-long toura fortnight tour package. I paid $1600 in cash and was promised a top-classtop class round-trip flighttwo-way fight, three-star hotel accommodation, tour guide, transportation and meals. I was promised a dream vacation but everything went wrong. Not only was the flight delayed for four hours, butNot only the flight was delayed for four hours but the hotel, which was arranged for us, was substandardbelow standard with low-quality service and constant noisenoise issues round the clock. The bus tour was also cancelled for no apparent reason. Moreover, the meals were tasteless, and I had to pay for themthe meals were tasteless and I had to pay for the meals despite the meal-inclusive package I opted formeal inclusive package I opted in. This is unacceptable. SinceAs a solution, and since your company did not honour its commitments to usdid not respect the commitments it made to us, I expect a 50% refund from your company of the charges I paid in advancefor all the charges that I had paid in advance. If I do not hear from youin within the next seven days, I will file a formal complaint withto the Consumer Rights Authority against your company with regards 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 purposeful and convincing, with specific service failures and an unambiguous request for a partial refund. Its impact is reduced by the single-block organisation and several noticeable language slips, including faulty inversion, a missing object, and awkward collocations. Prioritise paragraphing the complaint by function and editing complex sentences for grammatical accuracy and idiomatic phrasing.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The letter fully covers the holiday problems, expresses dissatisfaction forcefully, and makes a specific, justified compensation request in an appropriate formal register.
Streamline repeated background about booking the package so the complaint focuses even more directly on the promised services and failures.
Coherence and Cohesion
The content progresses logically from booking details to problems and the requested remedy, but the lack of paragraph breaks and some repetition weaken organisation.
Separate the opening purpose, service failures, and refund demand into distinct paragraphs and reduce repeated uses of "package" and "company".
Lexical Resource
The response shows good range for a formal complaint, but errors such as "two-way fight" and "the package I opted in" reduce lexical precision.
Proofread key complaint vocabulary and use accurate collocations such as "return flight" and "the package I opted for".
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of complex structures is attempted successfully, though several errors remain noticeable without preventing understanding.
Correct structures such as "Not only was the flight delayed" and "If I do not hear from you", and review article and preposition choices.
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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.