Describe a time you received terrible service – IELTS Band 8 Sample

Sample Answer 1

There have been a few situations in my life when I received terrible services. It doesn’t happen very often, but it just spoils your mood. A similar situation happened to me about two months ago on my best friend’s birthday when we decided to visit a new cafe.

Being a gastronome, I enjoy trying out new types of food, and because of that reason, we decided to go there to try it. When we entered, the environment looked accommodating, and we were elated to see that. Anyhow, our attendant was not listening to us and was not attending appropriately. Eventually, he received our order, and we chose to forget about it. However, it took way more than the given time to deliver the order, which made us furious and spoiled our mood.

I have no idea whether it was due to anger at that time or the ingredients were stale, but we didn’t fancy it. We complained and wrote feedback about it to the manager, but he didn’t seem concerned. We just left the food and decided to go somewhere else where we usually go. So we wasted some money but eventually got delicious food and excellent service when visiting the restaurant we typically visit. Although the beginning didn’t pay off, we still managed to enjoy the day in the end.

Sample Answer 2

I’m going to talk about this time when I got wrong results for one of my IELTS tests.

Apparently there’s a 13-day wait before the result is out, and almost every test-taker feels nervous, hopeful and worried at the same time during this period. I was no exception. I did pretty well and was hoping for an 8 or 8.5. So you can imagine how disappointed I was when I received a message from the test organiser (IDP) first thing in the morning telling me that I got a THREE. A freaking THREE.

I wasn’t overconfident and I knew I couldn’t have gone lower than 7. So I immediately called IDP and complained. But the person on the other side was pretty rude to me. She didn’t even let me finish my sentence and insisted that the result was correct. I had nearly lost my temper when she told me to wait for some time so she could check with the head office. She came back to me a few minutes later announcing that there was a ‘systematic error’ and I would need to wait for a further 2 weeks to get the result.

Although I was happy with the final IELTS scores, I can’t say the same for IDP.

Sample Audio

Click on the audio to listen to the sample answer above. Pay attention to the intonation and pronunciation of the words

Vocabulary

• Freelance: doing particular pieces of work for different organizations, rather than working all the time for a single organization
  Eg: As I was tired of working full-time jobs, I opted for freelance work. 
• Persuade: to make someone do or believe something by giving them a good reason to do it
  Eg: “ You cannot persuade her. She is resolute”
• Establish: set up on a firm or permanent basis. 
  Eg: His father’s business was established in the same year, when he was born. 
• Awareness: knowledge or perception of a situation or fact. 
  Eg: Over the years, Environmental awareness has been increased.  
• Controversy: prolonged public disagreement or heated discussion 
  Eg: The new movie created a lot of controversy. 
• Insist: demand something forcefully, not accepting refusal. 
  Eg: His father insisted him to show his mobile. 

Explore More Time Cue cards >>