Letter of Complaint About an Unrepaired Mobile Phone

  • Smartphones
  • Customer service
  • Complaint
  • Request

You have bought a new mobile phone and in a few days after purchase it has stopped working. You spoken to the company representative a week ago but the phone 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 to company to take.

Annotated response

3 correction notes

Dear Sir or Madam, I am writing to notify you that I have recently purchased a brand-new mobile phone from your store and it stopped working after a week. I want you to replace this mobile phone with a new one as per the warranty clauses. Three weeks ago I purchased a X100 mobile phone from your Broadway Avenue store. I was excited to have it but soon disheartened to find that it was a faulty product that stopped working just after a week's use. The problem with the mobile phone started to appear on it is completely unusable now. I am very surprised to discover such issues in an expensive model. Naturally, I returned the phone to your store to be replaced with a new one. One of your staff told me that they will send it to my home address within a week. However, two weeks have already passed and I have not received it yet. I am very disappointed with your poor after-sales service. The order number is 54875412 and I am attaching a copy of my receipt for you to look into it. In this regard, I insist on getting a full refund of the purchase amount if the replacement does not happen within the next week. Thank you for giving the matter your attention and I hope to hear your reply soon. Yours faithfully, Joseph Mark

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 6.5

The letter explains the purchase, fault and requested replacement or refund with generally controlled language. However, the whole letter is presented as one paragraph, making its main stages harder to identify. Some purchase details are repeated, while the customer’s name appears only in the signature.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Achievement

7.0

The letter covers all three required points from the prompt with specific detail, including the purchase date, order number, and refund condition, and maintains a consistently formal tone, though the timeline details are slightly unevenly developed.

Coherence and Cohesion

5.5

The complaint narrative is understandable, but the entire letter is one continuous paragraph, including the salutation and closing. The purchase, fault, unsuccessful follow-up and requested remedy need separate grouping.

Lexical Resource

7.0

Vocabulary is sufficiently flexible and precise for a formal complaint, with natural collocations such as 'faulty product' and 'after-sales service', with only occasional over-repetition of phrases like 'brand-new'.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

7.0

Complex sentences, relative clauses and the final conditional request are generally controlled. Told me that they will send it can retain the original future wording; backshift to would is not an automatic requirement. The main weakness is repetitive phrasing rather than a clear recurring tense error.

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