Letter of Complaint

You are obliged to write a Letter of Complaint (about hotel facilities or/and service OR travel agency service). The deadline is the 2nd class next /8 - 12 November/ week Useful expressions for writing a complaint letter:

• I am writing to express my strong dissatisfaction with …
• I am writing to complain about … 
• We were extremely disappointed with … 
• … was not what we had been led to expect
• The … was so bad that … 
• It was not up to standard 
• It didn’t work / was out of use 
• We were appalled to find … 
• We were thoroughly disgusted with … 
• I am not going to accept / put up with this / let this go.
• I should like to know what you intend / you are going to do about this.
• Your attitude is deceitful / negligent.
• I don’t see why you …
• It’s high time you did something …
• We expect a letter of explanation / a substantial refund
• Unless …, we shall take matters further
• I should warn you that …

Sample letter of complaint

Dear Sir/Madam,

My husband and I have just returned from one of your “special city tours” in Amsterdam (August 31 – September 10) and I am writing to complain about the holiday we were given.

To begin with, the hotel was not at all what we had been led to expect from your brochure. You advertise air-conditioned rooms with mini bar and private bathroom, but what we got was a tiny room with none of the promised facilities. The room only had a washbasin and we had to share the sanitary installations with five other parties on our floor. The temperature was 90° every day, so you can imagine the comforts of a room with nothing but the cold water tub for cooling. As for the hotel staff, whenever we called down to the reception there was simply no one around. There did not even seem to be any cleaning staff since our beds were made once during the whole of our stay.
Added to all this, the tourist guide included in your offer had fallen ill shortly before we arrived and there was obviously nobody in charge to organise a suitable substitute. After five days a courier turned up who spoke only fragmentary English and we had difficulties understanding only half of what he said.
As you will realise, we are highly dissatisfied with the holiday your company provided and we do not see why we should put up with it. We expect a letter of explanation as well as a substantial refund of our money. Unless this is forthcoming, we shall have to take matters a step further.

Yours faithfully,
(Mrs J Smith)