Complaint Letter About Unsatisfactory Online Clothing Purchase

You have bought some clothing online and are not satisfied with your purchase. Write a letter to the company that you bought the clothing from. In your email • give details of the purchase • describe the problem • explain why you need a replacement urgently You do NOT need to write any addresses. Begin your letter as follows: Dear Sir or Madam,

Annotated response

12 correction notes

Dear Sir or Madam,

Last week I bought some from your online store, but I just do not think that I am fully satisfied with the purchase I made. four t-shirts and three pairs of trousers which I was planning to use later as my summer outfits. I used my credit card to pay for those clothing items, and the online receipt number is GA- 5487.

Two of the t-shirts were supposed to be while the other two were supposed to have a regular collar. But, when they arrived, Not only that but also they were not in the colours that I chose when ordering them. In fact, I wanted two of them to be of light navy blue colour and the remaining two black, but they all regular blue, instead. As for the trousers, two of them seem to be smaller sizes than what I actually ordered.

replace them at your earliest convenience because I do not really have any decent to use this coming summer. If I do not hear from you within the next seven days, to lodge a "Consumer Rights Commission" office.

Thank you in advance.

Yours faithfully,

Amal Buksha

Overall assessment

Why this response received Band 7.0

The letter fulfills the communicative purpose well, covering all three bullet points with concrete purchase details, a clear problem description, and a plausible urgency explanation in an appropriately formal tone. Its main limitation is somewhat formulaic and occasionally imprecise language, which keeps the expression from being fully flexible and natural.

IELTS criteria

How each score was decided

Task Achievement

7.0

The letter clearly addresses all three bullet points with specific purchase details (receipt number, payment method, items), a detailed description of the collar, colour, and size problems, and a convincing reason for urgency, all in a consistently formal register with only a mildly abrupt closing demand.

Coherence and Cohesion

7.0

Ideas are logically organised into paragraphs that each handle one bullet point, with cohesive devices such as 'Not only that but also', 'As for the trousers', and 'So, please' guiding the reader smoothly through the message.

Lexical Resource

7.0

The vocabulary is generally appropriate for a formal complaint, including items like 'round-neck collar', 'receipt number', and 'at your earliest convenience', though phrases such as 'decent summer dresses' and 'lodge a complaint to' show occasional imprecision.

Grammatical Range and Accuracy

7.0

A good range of sentence structures is used with mostly accurate control, including complex forms like relative and conditional clauses, despite a few minor slips such as awkward punctuation and slightly unnatural constructions.

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