How to write a complaint letter to a UK company.

Complaint letters can come in handy if you have an issue you can’t resolve with a conversation. This could be the case if you’ve received bad service or a product that hasn’t met the standard you’d expect from a brand or organisation.

As a consumer, you’re entitled to a certain standard when buying goods or services. A complaint letter is a form of written communication to raise your concerns with your experience.

Not sure where to start? This Adobe Express guide will talk you through what to include when writing a letter of complaint.

When should you write a complaint letter?

In an ideal world, you’d never need to know how to write a complaint letter. But sometimes things happen outside of our control. Complaint letters are useful to address problems and seek resolutions.

You may write a complaint letter for a number of reasons, whether drawing attention to poor treatment in your local shopping centre or acknowledging disappointing customer service from your energy provider. Here are some example scenarios:

1. Complaint about bad service. If you’ve received bad service, you could decide to use a complaint letter to address your experience with rude or unhelpful staff, missed delivery windows or long waiting times.
2. Complaint about poor product quality. If a product you’ve bought isn’t up to scratch, you can express your dissatisfaction with a complaint letter. It might be a one-off but flagging it may help to prevent the issue happening again in the future.
3. Complaint about an ongoing issue. If you have had a repeated issue with a company’s product or service, write a formal letter of complaint to help encourage a resolution.
4. Complaint about a safety issue. In some cases, you may need to write a complaint letter due to a safety issue – for example a poorly maintained road or public path.
5. Complaint about an issue at work. You may decide to write a letter to your employer to complain about a grievance at work.

Complaint letter examples.

What to include in your letter of complaint.

The relevant information to include in a letter of complaint ultimately depends on the situation and problem. If you’re complaining to an official organisation, like the police or council, they may ask for specific details.

For a general complaint letter, here are some things to make sure you include:

1. Your contact details. Include your full name and contact information so it’s easy for the recipient to get in touch.
2. Any relevant product or service identification. Make sure to put in any policy numbers, account numbers or customer information that may help the recipient locate your data. You can also include any supporting documents, like receipts.
3. Date, time and location. Try to include as much useful information to pinpoint the event as possible. For example, if the complaint is concerned with a store interaction, include the name of the staff member, address of the store and time the incident occurred.
4. How the event has impacted you. Detail how the situation has affected you. This will form the main part of the complaint.
5. What you would like as compensation. Include what you would like as compensation for your trouble, whether that’s a replacement product, a reduction in price or a refund. You could also suggest a deadline or timeline.
6. Anything they can do to help resolve this issue. This gives the recipient a chance to rectify the situation. This could be as simple as training staff to make sure the issue isn’t repeated.
7. End with an appropriate sign-off. End the complaint letter with Yours Sincerely if you know the name of the recipient, or Yours Faithfully if you don’t.

It’s important to base your complaint letter around the facts of what happened and avoid straying into unnecessary background information. Take care not to come across as aggressive and do not personally attack the individuals involved.

Tips for writing an effective complaint letter.

An effective complaint letter is polite, concise and clear. Here are some things to remember when you start your letter of complaint:

Address your letter to a specific person.

It’s worth finding the specific person who can help you resolve the issue and address the letter directly to them. Use their name, rather than writing to a whole department or an impersonal letter greeting. Action may be more likely if you give someone responsibility for the issue.

Avoid threatening action.

It’s easy to get caught up in the moment when you write a letter of complaint. But be careful not to threaten any action that you’re unable to go through with or ask for more compensation than you’re likely to receive. This may cause your recipient to not take you as seriously.

Manage your tone.

It’s important to get the tone right. Your formal letter of complaint needs to be firm, but polite and respectful. You may be more likely to get help if the recipient sympathises with you. You need to keep things friendly – especially if you hope to have connections with them in the future.

Get other signatures.

Where possible, try to get signatures from other people also affected by what happened. It will help give some weight to your cause and could help to increase the effectiveness of the letter. This may come in handy if the letter is aiming to influence change or legislation.

Keep copies.

Keep records of all correspondence surrounding the issue. You can send photocopies but try to keep the originals. These can be used at a later date if the issue is not resolved to back up your complaint and show you mean business.

How to send your complaint.

Once you’ve written your complaint letter, take some time to proofread it and make sure you haven’t made any mistakes.

Then you can send the complaint by email or by post – depending on the company’s complaints process. While both options are acceptable, a response to an email is likely to be faster.

Using Adobe Express to create a complaint letter.

Adobe Express lets you easily create a letter. Just open the application in your web browser and open a new project. Choose from one of the many designs in the template library or create a custom one. You can even make use of the Generative AI function. Just enter a prompt and it can create a template from your description. After you have your template, choose a professional font and formatting style to write your formal complaint letter. Once you’re finished, you can print out the letter to send by post or save as a PDF to attach to an email.

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Good to know.

How should you address a letter of complaint?

You should try to find the name of your recipient, rather than addressing it to an entire department. This helps to place the responsibility on someone to resolve the issue for you. But if this isn’t possible, locate the contact details of the customer service team.

How do you end a letter of complaint?

End a letter of complaint politely and respectfully. You could include a timeline of when the recipient should action your requests and provide your contact details so they can get in touch. Then end as you would an official letter, with Yours Sincerely if you know the name of the recipient, or Yours Faithfully if you don’t.

Should you email a complaint letter?

Whether you email or post your letter of complaint depends on the company you are complaining to. Your response will likely be dealt with quicker if you send by email, but you should follow the company’s complaints process.

Is Adobe Express free?

Yes. The basic version of Adobe Express includes everything you need to start working creatively. Adobe Express offers thousands of design templates, images, videos and royalty-free photos, quick actions for processing images, as well as much more. Learn how to write a letter of complaint using Adobe Express tools.