IELTS Speaking Part 2: 'bad service' answer

Here's the task that I showed you last week:

Describe a time when you were not satisfied with a service.
You should say

- what the service was
- who provided it
- what happened
- and explain why you were unhappy with the service.

And here's my band 9 sample answer:

I’m going to describe a time when I experienced poor service from staff in a restaurant. This happened a couple of months ago, when some family members, who live abroad, came to stay. We decided to visit a nearby town, and at some point everyone was a little hungry, so we thought we would have a bite to eat.

The first restaurant that we came across looked perfect. It had plenty of empty tables - we hadn’t booked in advance - and we were all happy with the menu. But as soon as we walked through the door, things started to go wrong, and we weren’t at all impressed with the attitude of the staff.

After standing around for a few minutes waiting for someone to greet us, I managed to attract the attention of a waitress who told me that we had come into the restaurant through the wrong door. So, I went over to the main door, only to be told by the manager that there were no tables free for a party of our size - there were eight of us. I could see several free tables with four seats, so I suggested simply moving two of these tables together. But the manager was adamant that this was impossible; our only option was to divide the family and sit at two separate tables.

By this time, some of my family members were getting fed up. The restaurant was half empty, yet we were being treated as if they didn’t need customers. We decided we didn’t want to sit at separate tables or stay in a place where we felt unwelcome. We left, feeling disappointed by how dismissive the restaurant manager had been, and fortunately we found a much friendlier place to eat just around the corner.

Comments

[Pachu]

It only a dream sir for we to say with similar things, but thanks you sir

[Tae]

Hi everyone.
What do you think about my story?

I would like to tell you about my recent experience that I had terrible service from a shop assistant when I went to UGG boots shop at Burleigh Heads last week. It was Sunday afternoon around 3 o’clock, when I got to the shop. There were several customers in the shop, so I waited for a little to get attention from the shop keeper.

She looks very young around the early ’20s, and she was not very friendly to other customers. I wanted to buy UGG slippers for my birthday present. So I asked her to bring couple of different size of the slippers to try them on to find out the right size. Then I asked for the colour choices. I was nearly ready to purchase the items. However, I could not purchase from her, or I should say, I did not want to buy from her.

I wanted to use a gift card, but She did not let me use the card. The shop attendance refused to do the transaction. Because I did not know how much money on the card. I just wanted make a split payment with the gift card and my debit card. According to her knowledge if I do not know how much money on the card, She cannot split the payment. I felt a bit strange because I have never had any terrible using a gift card before. So I asked her experience with gift cards from other customers. She was not happy at all and she kept refusing to swipe my gift card.

I gave up on her and walked away form her and the shop. As soon as when I left the shop, She shut and locked the front door. It was actually already passed the closing time. On the way home, I went to glossary shopping and I used the gift card, just in case the staff was right or not. She was wrong! I used the card with any problems. I was very disappointed about her customer service; especially I wanted to purchase my birthday present. She just wanted to go home, instead let me buy the UGG slippers.

[zsófi]

Tae

The first sentence is a bit long and complicated. -> experience where I had ..OR (more simply):

Well, last week I had a bad experience when I went to UGG boots shop at Burleigh Heads. The service from the shop assistant was absolutely terrible!

"Shopkeeper" is one word.

"She looks very young": tense?

"she was not very friendly to other customers." What made you think this?

"to bring a couple of different sizes"

"The shop attendance" -> shop assistant

"Because I did not know how much money was on the card, I just wanted " [Note the comma, NOT a full-stop/period].

"According to her knowledge [comma] if I do [did: reported speech] not know ... [could]"

Do not capitalize 'she' mid-sentence.

"I have never had any terrible trouble using a gift card ..."

"So I asked about her experience"

As soon as when I left

"already passed the closing time" -> past

I used the card without any problems

-> disappointed with

-> instead of letting me buy ..

[nitesh]

I'm going to speak about a time when I ordered food online via one of the apps available in my country.I had just arrived in the morning tom my home from a vacation and was not in a mood to cook for the afternoon.

A few of my friends had suggested the app for some discounts on online food purchase so I decided with installing the app.Post installation,I quickly surfed for hotels providing free home delivery and decided to opt for one of them.The moment I started selecting various courses from the menu the application stopped abruptly and restarted again.This went on for three or four times.Somehow after countless futile attempts I was successful in placing an order.

Another disappointing thing about this food order was that I had to wait more than the expected time which was shown on the app. The app displayed the estimated time of arrival to be 30 mins however the moment 30 mins were over,the estimated time refreshed to another 15 mins. This went on for another 45 mins or so.Hungry and at the same time frustrated with the service I cancelled the order and uninstalled the application right away. The next step taken by me was to login to one of the social media sites and inform my friends and family about the horrible experience which I had to go through.

[Zainab]

I would like to talk about my experience in one of the restaurant which i visited couple of days ago.

I along with my other colleagues decided to dine out after our shift ended. So,we went to a restaurant known for its local cuisine. We visited that place quite often and loved it but that day it was not a good experience because as we entered there was a waiter standing right next to the door and he gave us the weird look.

Anyways, we ignored that at first and called the waiter. Unfortunately,he was the one who was serving us. As, one of my friend was giving him the order. He kept gazing her from top to bottom with weird smile on his face. All that thing made us quite uncomfortable so we decided to leave out but before leaving I went to the manager to record our protest and complained against that staff member for his inappropriate behavior.I hoped he took the action against him.

Anyways,After that we went to a new place near by, enjoyed our dinner and saved our time from being ruined.

[Mahdi Hajizadeh Zaker]

Hi Simon

thanks for the great material you put out every day.

I have a burning question.

When telling a story , should all my tenses be in the form of past simple?

In the sample you posted here , all the tenses are past simple but when I watch youtube clips , I hear all sorts of tense. Present simple , past simple, among others.

Does this matter? Naturally I supposed it should not matter but if I bring a mix of present tenses while telling a story , would I lose marks?