You have bought a new mobile phone and in a few days of purchase, it has stopped working. You spoke to the company representative a week ago but it has still not been repaired. Write a letter to the company. In your letter: - introduce yourself - explain the situation - say what action you would like the company to take
Sample Response
Dear Sir or Madam, I purchased a smartphone a month ago from your store in the Abbey Avenue Complex and was very thrilled to own this particular model. Unfortunately, after only a few days, the phone stopped working and even after making a warranty claimclaiming the warranty, I have not received any response from the storeheard anything from the store. I am hopehoping that you will replace the faulty phone with a new one. To provide the order detailsIn relation to the specifics of the order, I purchased a Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra smartphone with 512 GB capacitya Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra, 512 GB RAM and smartphone from the Abbey Avenue Complex showroom on 909th June. The phone worked as expected during the first two weeks and then suddenly malfunctioned. Firstly, the cameraFirstly the camera stopped working and later the touchscreen became unresponsiveirresponsive. The phone is now unusable. Please find enclosed a copy of the purchase receiptbill. I reported the issuedid report the issue to your customer servicecare department a week ago and returned the faulty phone to your store. I was promised that a new phone would be sent to my home address within three days. However, I have not received the replacement or heard from customer servicenot received it yet or heard anything from customer care. I would greatlyhighly appreciate it if you could resolve this delaylook into this matter. I have a valid warranty covering replacementvalid replacement warranty and I would like you to replace this faulty phoneproduct with a new one. If this is not resolved, I will haveOtherwise, I would be forced to complain to the Consumer Protection Authority. Looking forward to your response and kind cooperation. Yours faithfully, Preeti Zinta
Why this response received Band 7.0
The complaint is firm, appropriately formal, and detailed about the purchase, faults, earlier contact, warranty, and requested replacement. Its main limitation is an internal timing contradiction: the phone is first said to have failed after a few days but later to have worked for two weeks, which weakens the factual record. Prioritise presenting one consistent timeline and correcting imprecise technical wording before requesting a replacement deadline.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Achievement
The purpose, product details, fault history, prior contact, and desired action are thoroughly covered, but the contradictory failure timeline reduces reliability.
State one exact date when the phone failed and request replacement delivery by a specific reasonable deadline.
Coherence and Cohesion
The letter progresses clearly from purchase and faults to the previous promise, current non-delivery, and escalation request.
Separate the product details, fault chronology, and requested resolution into distinct paragraphs and avoid repeating the replacement demand.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is generally precise for a formal complaint, though ‘claiming the warranty’, ‘irresponsive’, and the device specification are inaccurate or unnatural.
Use ‘making a warranty claim’, ‘unresponsive touchscreen’, ‘512 GB storage’, and ‘replacement under warranty’.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A range of sentence forms is generally well controlled, with occasional errors in coordination, punctuation, articles, and fragmentary closing language.
Add punctuation after introductory sequence markers and convert the closing fragment into a complete polite sentence.
Write this task while it is fresh
Try the same task now. It helps you remember the feedback and write better next time.
IELTS General Training Writing Task 1
You have bought a new mobile phone and in a few days of purchase, it has stopped working. You spoke to the company representative a week ago but it has still not been repaired. Write a letter to the company. In your letter:
- introduce yourself
- explain the situation
- say what action you would like the company to take
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.