Returning a product

Intermediate

6 min

You bought an electronic gadget that stopped working after 2 days. Return it and negotiate a refund or replacement.

An intermediate-level session of about 6 minutes.

It starts friendly: you explain, they listen, they type something into a screen. Then comes the line about the window, or the manufacturer, or a form you were meant to keep, and you are being pointed somewhere else. What carries the rest of it is one fact, repeated calmly: the gadget worked for two days and then stopped. Policies have room for that, and the person across the counter usually knows where the room is. The hard part is saying the same thing a third time without getting louder, and staying at the counter instead of agreeing to come back tomorrow with paperwork you may not have.

Angles worth taking

Keep the fault description short and factual; a long story invites troubleshooting, which quietly turns a return into a repair.
When the policy line arrives, ask which part of it covers a product that failed on its own.
Repeat your position in the same words and the same voice, because rising volume makes refusing you easier.
If a replacement is offered first, ask what happens should the second unit fail the same way.
Escalate only after the person in front of you has actually run out of room, not during their explanation.
Before leaving, get whatever was agreed written on the docket or sent to you by email.

Who is in the room

You play

A customer returning a defective product

You speak with

A store employee following a strict return policy

Phrases to reach for

These are shown to you before the session starts. They are what you are asked to use, not a list the scorer is checking off.

I would like to return this

It stopped working after

Do you have the receipt

I would prefer a refund

Can I speak to a manager

Ready to speak?

Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.

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The format

Modes

Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)

How a roleplay session works

Read your brief

Your role, the situation, and what a good outcome looks like. The counterpart has their own brief, and you do not get to read it.

Open the conversation

You speak first in most scenarios. How you open sets what you can ask for later, which is most of the exercise.

Handle the turn

Somewhere in the middle it stops going your way — a refusal, a counter-offer, a rebuttal you did not prepare for. That moment is the scenario.

Read the report

Outcome, the phrases you used and the ones you missed, fluency and clarity, and the specific line worth rewriting.

What you're scored on

Across every roleplay, the report looks at the same four things — because they are what makes a real conversation work or fail.

Your objective

Get a full refund or replacement for the defective product.

Task outcome

Whether you got what the brief asked for: the refund, the extension, the concession, the point conceded.

Appropriacy

Whether the register fits. A complaint that is too soft gets nothing; the same complaint too hard gets a manager and no refund.

Recovery

What you do with the unexpected turn — repair, rephrase, push back, or stall. This is where most of the marks move.

Delivery

Fluency, pronunciation and pace, judged in conversation rather than in a prepared monologue.

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