Ways to say Bad in English | How to describe bad service in English?

[Music] hi there this is harry and welcome back to my english lessons where i try to help you to speak better english and to use better english so hopefully you'll be able to understand what i'm going to cover today and if you've got any problems or any questions well of course you can contact me and i'll give you my contact details as always at the end of this particular lesson so if you want to listen to me of course you can do so on my podcast or you can watch me on the youtube channel and to do so make sure you subscribe to the channel okay so what are we going to talk about today well we're going to talk about words for bad and english or ways to say bad in english and what we're specifically referring to is not just bad words you know we're talking about bad service or in particular bad customer service so ways to say bad in english or when we're referring to a bad service or bad customer service so you might have a situation when the service was so bad and you say to your friend wow i'm never going to use that company again the service is so bad i ordered that package and i was told it would be two days here i'm waiting almost 20 days it's really really bad i don't know how they sent it maybe somebody's walking with it but i haven't got it yet i would have thought i would have got it if not two days maybe three or four so that service is so bad it's terrible so let's look at other ways in which we might describe it as always i'm going to go through them one by one and then i'll give you some examples and then we'll take it from there okay so here they are poor atrocious terrible unprofessional horrendous appalling unacceptable shocking lousy sub par disappointing inadequate and finally mediocre okay now again some of them a little bit more formal than others some of them very informal and we will cover those as we go through them so let me give you some examples so the first one is poor well a poor service doesn't mean it doesn't cost a lot of money a poor person has no money a poor service just means bad okay so you could have a poor service on the internet yeah so you log on and you're trying to get your your colleagues on skype or whatever it is and there's a lot of breakdowns or they can't see you or the picture freezes oh god this internet is so poor yeah the service today is very poor or the connection today is very poor so you can refer to it in that way if you get a poor service from a company it just means the response is bad perhaps when you try to get onto their internet site to send in a request for something it breaks down or it hangs or it's you just can't get in yeah so that's a good example of a poor service or indeed if you do manage to get onto the the the website and you send an email requesting whatever you're you're looking for and you get no response after one day or two days you might regard that as a poor service because in the modern world we're usually looking for something to be very prompt you know we want service like that and we don't get it like that then we automatically say it's poor so poor is not always so bad okay it's just you know there are degrees of how bad things can be but if we use the word atrocious well atrocious is a really strong adjective to describe something that is bad so you go into the restaurant you order the food and when it comes it's cold it's lumpy it doesn't smell so well it certainly doesn't taste as it's described on the menu and it's just absolutely atrocious so you complain about the food or the food might be good but the service you got was terrible the waiters come to you after 15 minutes sitting at the table they sort of throw the menu across the table at you they don't you know greet you or anything like that they come back then another 10 minutes later and they take your order and then they go away and then you know it seems like a lifetime before the food arrives and the plate is half dropped in front of you it might taste very well but the service was atrocious and when you fill in that form that they often leave on the table in front of you you make sure to tick the box to say i wouldn't recommend this to anybody i certainly wouldn't come back again because you believed the service is atrocious really really bad and another word similar to atrocious is terrible so it could be terrible service atrocious service the service in the restaurant was terrible last week because there were so many people there that it was crowded they didn't have enough waiters and waitresses and usually it's pretty good so you you never have um had an opportunity to complain before because usually you go there and everything is good so you know it's not the worst you've ever had but other the service was terrible i mean overall the service you got was really terrible if we want to use the word unprofessional now unprofessional can can mean lots of things yeah so professional usually means really tight and accurate and very very good and unprofessional would be the opposite so perhaps if you were going to a a legal firm a lawyer or you were going to an accountant or somebody who you'd expect to keep your information private well then if they disclosed your information to somebody else well then you would have reason to say that that service is very unprofessional yeah so if they mention your name to somebody else or indeed if they mentioned somebody that you knew to you when that person isn't there well then you would consider that service to be very unprofessional so if you went into an accountant and he's asking you about your business how's the business going and what's happening and you're telling him that things are a little difficult but you know things are looking okay and you know you've got some new accounts and you're just talking to him about getting your accounts finalized for last year and he happens to mention oh yeah mike in the in the high street yeah his business is really in trouble and you happen to know mike but you don't expect the accountant to tell you you know maybe mike might tell you but maybe he wouldn't maybe he wouldn't want people to know so you go out of the office thinking hmm if he tells me about mike what is he telling mike about me or other people so from that point of view you might classify and regard that service as very unprofessional an unprofessional way to do it because if you give information to people like that they should keep it quiet the next two words would also describe poor service horrendous and appalling now these words can always also be used for describing other things because they're adjectives so we could talk about the weather and if i was to use all these adjectives i could describe the irish weather very well because yesterday it rained all day so it was horrendous the weather was appalling okay but if we're talking about service then of course we can use we have horrendous service appalling service so usually a service that doesn't meet your expectations or doesn't meet the service that you had expected to get so it could be in the local supermarket so perhaps you're standing in the checkout queue for a long long time and you know there are maybe three or four other checkered lines but there's nobody there so the line is getting bigger and bigger and people are getting more and more impatient and people are just you know muttering and there's a little bit of annoyance and you know people are trying to get the manager's attention to see can they put somebody else out on one of the other checkout lines so they are talking to each other isn't this service it's appalling ah it's always the same here on a friday they never have enough staff they're always too many people i think i'm going to have to go to another supermarket it's horrendous it's appalling to have to wait so long we are spending good money in this shop you think the least they could do is have enough people on the checkouts they don't even have an express checkout i mean every supermarket these days has an express checkout line oh i think they're going to put one in i heard they had a few problems so you know people are trying to make some allowances for it but yeah they're getting a little bit annoyed or browned off as we say because the service is appalling or it's horrendous okay we use the word unacceptable when we talk about service unacceptable service so unacceptable means something that you are not prepared to accept or something that somebody shouldn't have to accept it's an unacceptable service okay so if you're applying for some let's say to renew your passport and usually when you renew the password it's only once every five or ten years so you don't have to do it so often you go to the passport office as a big notice that tells you that there's a delay expected of six to eight weeks wow so you you look at this and think this is just totally unacceptable what am i supposed to do i've got a holiday booked for the end of the month and here we are at the beginning of the month if there's a delay of six weeks i have to cancel the holiday and there's no contact number so you go back home you log on to the site and you see the form you have to have and then at the end you see a little pop-up which says in the case of emergency please contact this number so at least there's some place to to ring and complain but overall the service that you have seen is totally unacceptable for a government department the passport offers delays of six to eight weeks posting in your passport completely unacceptable for you completely unacceptable now as i say there are many many ways in which we can describe bad service so we can say that the service is shocking yeah very british english it's shocking this shocking service i don't know what i have to do you know they they get plenty of money they god knows they charge enough there's an expression you don't often hear from people but this service is just shocking yeah i i'm just going to to go somewhere else so the person just walks out of the shop and never to be seen again shocking so something bad we can also say words like lousy or crap that's another word you'll often hear so lousy very very informal what a lousy service what a crap service yeah so we could use that to describe perhaps the bus service this is a really well used and situation and an area where people always complain public services particular public transport you know you're standing at the bus stop and the classic situation you look at the timetable and the schedule and the bus should have been here ten minutes ago but it's not and then you look around the five or six or eight people oh yeah this service it's lousy i mean they never have enough buses and guess what one bus will come and there'll be two of them together and as you look around the corner yeah two buses are coming together the same number some hold up somewhere perhaps it was traffic but yeah this all adds to a bad service a lousy service a crap service so these are the situations where we would usually use those words so lousy or crap we wouldn't say shocking yeah because it's nothing shocking about it in fact you're used to it so all you're doing is repeating something that's every time you get here it never changes yeah you come to this bus stop you're gonna wait yeah the bus that you expected to get it'll always be late the one you get it will be delayed so you're never quite sure which bus you're getting so it's a lousy service it's a crap service and what's the point of complaining because they're not going to do anything about it okay they'll they'll make excuses that it's the traffic it's too slow the government having to prove the bus lanes too many people in cars whatever the excuse is it's never going to change so every time you go for that bus yeah the service is going to be crappy it's going to be crap or it's going to be lousy we can also talk about a service being the sub par okay now par is a golfing term yeah so if anybody plays golf there's a certain number of shots you get to get the ball into the hole so if it's a par four you have four shots but if it's sub par okay it's below that and when we talk about a service being sub-par it's below what is expected okay something below what is expected so if you expect this type of service and the service doesn't meet your requirements then you can describe it as a sub par service okay so it could be just simply getting your clothes from the dry cleaners you're busy and you don't have time so you're running on your way to work you're dropping jacket or coat or trousers whatever they happen to be you get your ticket and you're told they'll be ready for collection tomorrow afternoon so on their way back from the afternoon the next day you call in but the clothes are not ready in fact they can't even find them and they say oh look just leave it with me can you call back tomorrow so next day they say oh yeah yeah yeah they're here but we haven't got them finished yet so they'll be ready on friday so you come back on friday and yeah they're there they're ready but it's been a week uh longer than you had expected so you could describe that service as subpar something below what you had expected okay now interestingly if you play golf and you instead of being a four you get a three that's really really good that's a positive but when we talk about subpar in terms of service it's really really bad so even though the word par is connected with golf if you get something at two or three in golf yeah you'll be celebrating for weeks and weeks and weeks but if you get a sub par service you're going to be complaining for weeks and weeks and weeks okay in the next three words we can take them together disappointing mediocre and inadequate okay so when a service is disappointing it just leaves you feeling sad and unhappy about it there's nothing you can do oh just a very disappointing service i'll give you a good example i i buy my books from a online bookstore because i think you get better value and you can always get books that are slightly out of print but i was buying a collection of four books in one about one story so they were connected so there's no point reading one if i didn't read the other three books but i got two of them and then the second book didn't arrive in the time that i thought and i was waiting i didn't want to start the other books because they'd be out of sequence so i checked it online and they said oh yes it gives us another 10 days it should be there 10 days no sign of the book and then there was another five days and after about 20 days the book finally arrived and i found that the book had been posted from melbourne and australia that's sort of crazy you know so the service there for me was really disappointing i wanted to start the books and i couldn't stop them because if i started i'd be out of sequence with the the books and i i'd like to have all of them there together so for me the the service was not only disappointing it was totally inadequate it didn't meet my expectations and when something is inadequate it doesn't get you what you want yeah an adequate service is you getting the books when you expect to get them or getting the service completed when you expect to get it and anything below that is inadequate it's the opposite it's not what you need it's not what you expected so it's a disappointing or an inadequate service okay and then when something is mediocre mediocre is just ah just acceptable but just about yeah so what was the performance like ah mediocre they didn't play great they didn't play so badly but you know it wasn't something exciting it was mediocre so we can say the same when we talk about service it might be acceptable but nothing great and as we say in english nothing to write home about it was just a mediocre middle of the road type of service not something that would make you feel as if you were something special that you they really wanted your business it was just a mediocre service so it could be the takeaway when you want something you expect to get it within a reasonable amount of time so you're ordering the pizzas or whatever the food happens to be for the family meal and it doesn't arrive in time so the family are getting a little bit edgy you're getting a little bit edgy people are saying where's the food would you not ring them again and oh so everybody's just annoying you and you're tapping your fingers on the table and looking at your watch looking at the mobile phone and then eventually ding dong ding dong the bell rings and there they are so you give the guy the money but you don't give them a tip because the service was really mediocre it should have been there 30 minutes before that okay so another way to refer to bad service okay so their words and expressions connected with bad service let me give them to you one more time poor atrocious terrible unprofessional horrendous appalling unacceptable shocking lousy below par or crap crappy service disappointing inadequate and then finally mediocre so all of them connected with bad servers some of them more formal than others some of them informal but will give you lots of opportunities if you unfortunately suffer from a bad service at least you'll have many ways in which you can describe it okay great well that's the end of this particular lesson and i hope you enjoy it and i hope you get out of it what you want if you have any questions then you can contact me www.englishlessonviaskype.com and i'm always very happy to hear from and as i said before don't forget to subscribe to the channel so that you can get to watch this whenever you wish okay well thanks for joining me and join me again soon

Channel: Learn English with Harry

Views: 1,817

Keywords: ways to say bad in English, how to describe bad service in english, describe bad service in english, complaints in english, making complaints in English, speak better English with Harry, learn English with Harry, english with harry, stop saying bad in English, learn english, learning english, english lesson, synonyms for bad

Id: Qej0U--tTO8

Length: 19min 12sec (1152 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 01 2021