View Full Version : City - link cowboys
I ordered a gift for my parents having missed their anniversary, paid for next day delivery of an item I had been planning to get them for a while. However, city-link (the courrier) have failed me once again and I have written a rather short (in terms of patience rather than actual number of words) e-mail to the company I bought from to voice my displeasure.
Comments, if you will.
Regarding order reference xxxxx.
I am e-mailing you to complain by proxy about the appalling delivery service offered through city-link, and request repayment of delivery charges or some other form of suitable compensation to be repayed to my debit card used for payment either from yourself or from city link.
To give you some information on my dissatisfaction:
I chose to purchase my product from Nicomm due to your competitive prices and next day delivery; However, the order was made Sunday 27th April and dispatched Monday 28th and it is now Friday 1st May with no contact about delivery. Feeling anxious, I contacted your customer services department using live chat, and spoke to "peter" who was very helpful in providing me with tracking details and informing me that delivery had been attempted on two occasions and a card had been left both times.
This claim was met with trepidation as, whilst possible, the chances of the card leaping from the doormat, back out of the letterbox and blowing down the street on two successive days is extremely remote. I have had city link pull this trick on me several occasions previously, where I have been at home not 3 meters from the front door all day, yet they have claimed delivery attempts were made but failed and cards were left - a blatant lie.
I contacted city link and they 'confirmed' that delivery had been attempted and that the product had been returned to the Okehampton branch and could be collected. No chance of this being possible, as it would equate to a 132 mile round trip from the consignee address in Truro, Cornwall. They have therefore assured me that delivery will be attempted tomorrow and I have requested that the parcel be left with one of three other neighbours if the house were to be found empty. We shall see if the promised events transpire.
To restate the purpose of this e-mail, I would like some notification of intention to follow up these issues with your preferred courier "city link" and some suitable compensation for myself for the problems encountered. To add insult to injury, with this delay I could have had the product (an anniversary gift for family members) purchased from a local store and posted it myself for cheaper and enjoyed a quicker delivery.
It is a great disappointment that a seemingly well organised company such as Nicomm have been let down through a poor choice of courier. Without reassurance that issues are resolved, I shall unfortunatly not be offering by business to your company again due to the problems encountered.
Regards and regrets
R Picton.
Edit: Oh I am sure nothing will come of this by the way, but I feel much better.
:(
People - Picky is VERY angry. He used his teaching voice on the phone. Not good.
Will have to snog him and feed him lots to cheer him up.
There's a slight problem here. City Link's contract for delivery of the items is with the supplier, not with you or the recipient. If compensation is appropriate for breach of contract then that should be claimed by the supplier.
I suggest you do the following:
First and foremost, write a letter (i.e. use real paper if you can get an address for someone fairly senior) of complaint to the supplier stating your problem and requesting they take it up with the supplier, and also requesting compensation for non-delivery.
You could also write a letter to City Link requesting they investigate the person responsible for your deliveries for not complying with City Link procedures. If you can, try and find out who that person is, but I doubt you'll be able to, and there's a fair chance it'll be swept under the carpet..
Good luck.
There's a slight problem here. City Link's contract for delivery of the items is with the supplier, not with you or the recipient. If compensation is appropriate for breach of contract then that should be claimed by the supplier.
I suggest you do the following:
First and foremost, write a letter (i.e. use real paper if you can get an address for someone fairly senior) of complaint to the supplier stating your problem and requesting they take it up with the supplier, and also requesting compensation for non-delivery.
You could also write a letter to City Link requesting they investigate the person responsible for your deliveries for not complying with City Link procedures. If you can, try and find out who that person is, but I doubt you'll be able to, and there's a fair chance it'll be swept under the carpet..
Get Pheebs on the Phone when she's feeling the Phury and let the beast within be released!
Good luck.
edited ;)
There's a slight problem here. City Link's contract for delivery of the items is with the supplier, not with you or the recipient. If compensation is appropriate for breach of contract then that should be claimed by the supplier.
hence why I have e-mailed the suplier requesting a portion of whatever compensation they may get from city-link.
As for writing a letter - that can wait for when delivery is finally taken of the product (read: the first non-imaginary attempt has been made to deliver it)
Edit: ah I can now see why you thought the e-mail was to city-link.
further gheyness has been found as its NOT friday 1st May, but Thursday 1st may. d'oh. my bad.
OK - I'll admit I only scanned the OP, and the fact that it was to be sent to the supplier didn't become obvious to me until right near the end, so sorry for being a little wide of the mark. :o
As for the e-mail content, see if you can shorten it a little. One obvious example is the 'To restate' paragraph. If the letter/email is long enough that you have to start restating things, then it's probably too long. Customer Services types (no offence intended) often have short attention spans or volume targets. Make it too long and it'll often get filed in a deep, dark place, never to be seen again.
I'm not one for making sweeping generalisations but on this one I feel relatively safe - all courier companies are crap. Some are less crap than others but they're all crap to some degree.
Still, none are quite as bad as Royal Mail.
OK - I'll admit I only scanned the OP, and the fact that it was to be sent to the supplier didn't become obvious to me until right near the end, so sorry for being a little wide of the mark. :o
As for the e-mail content, see if you can shorten it a little. One obvious example is the 'To restate' paragraph. If the letter/email is long enough that you have to start restating things, then it's probably too long. Customer Services types (no offence intended) often have short attention spans or volume targets. Make it too long and it'll often get filed in a deep, dark place, never to be seen again.
Aye you are right - too bad its been sent, warts and all ;) As aforementioned, a letter or followup email shall be sent.
Pumpkinstew
01-05-2008, 21:41
This claim was met with trepidation as, whilst possible, the chances of the card leaping from the doormat, back out of the letterbox and blowing down the street on two successive days is extremely remote
I think you mean consternation not trepidation, but nice use of blatant sarcasm either way.:thumbup:
I've been let down by **ittylink plenty of times before now as well. I wonder how they remain in buisness and why retailers still use them.
It might help you to know that the delivery driver should record the colour of the door they are attempting to deliver to. They normally hedge their bets and stick white down if they haven't actually visited the property. If your door's white though that doesn't help much.
I thought it was good. I get better responses from paper letters myself, but this is a good place to start.
I hope it gets you some a good response! I especially like the part about "unfortunately" not giving them business in the future... I used that with a car insurance company and they started throwing money at me.
City link are pants, amtrack are much worse. Still through city-link I think I had two printers and two UPS's nicked. At about £100-130 a time you would think the supplier might get a little upset.
I wonder how they remain in buisness and why retailers still use them.
Because they're cheaper than the rest.
The plot thickens.
I am really sorry to hear about the service you received from City
Link, and I have explained the situation to my manager who has agreed that
I can issue a refund for the postage to you. It is very rare that we
tend to have any problems with City Link, and to be honest over the years
working in this industry personally I have found them one of the
better ones. We have a department at Nicomm dedicated to handling our
deliveries and I have passed on your comments to the department manager who
is going to follow this up.
At Nicomm we use a secure payment service so I do not have any of your
card details to issue the refund. If you would like the credit going
back onto your card I would need your card details, alternatively we
could raise a cheque. Also can you let me know when you receive the goods
today as I will also be chasing this up from this end as well.
Again apologises for the problems you have had and I hope this does not
put you off using Nicomm again. If you ever need to contact me
directly you can always use this E-mail address or my direct line 0161 xxx
xxxx.
Let me know how you would like me to proceed with the postage refund
and when you receive the goods.
Kind Regards
Well, after a quick call to my praents, they have had nothing and after tracking the parcel online, it appeared it was still at Okehampton.
I called city-link and talked to a helpful young lady who confirmed it was in Okehampton and would I like to collect it "not likely," says I, "Its 1 130 mile round trip." She also informed me there was no record of any calls from me yesterday about requesting re-delivery today.
I asked about delivery tomorrow and she said that the supplier has to specify this being a Saturday it costs more. I asked about Tuesday and if I could have it left with a neighbour. I was told this was not possible without the say-so of the supplier. "So I was lied to and played for a fool yesterday then?" says I. If no delivery is successful by next Wednesday, the item gets returned to the supplier. I thanked her for being honest and re-delivery has been arranged for Tuesday, which wont happen as no-one will be in. :confused:
Called Nicomm and left a message...
Still angry. GrrrRRRRrrrr.
I'm not one for making sweeping generalisations but on this one I feel relatively safe - all courier companies are crap. Some are less crap than others but they're all crap to some degree.
Still, none are quite as bad as Royal Mail.
Unfortunately this is true - ALL courier companies mess up, even ones like UPS who have the reputation of being whiter than white. There will always be a security hole where things can get stolen too - much like any warehouse job.
Does anyone here deal with couriers a lot in their job? If your courier misroutes a parcel (very easily done) and it ends up in say, Alton when it should be in Manchester, what do they generally do about it? We send the majority of ours on a dedicated misroutes vehicle and get them tendered same day wherever possible - especially if they are timed (Before 9/10/12) deliveries. Just wondered if that was common practice or something that we do better than other companies.
Pickers - if we fail a delivery, and the sender asks us to put it on a Saturday delivery then 9 times out of 10 we will, regardless of the "extra" cost to us. The only exceptions are bulky awkward items as we tend to use Transits rather than 7.5 tonners at the weekend.
In answer to Lopez...
I don't personally get involved with our usual day to day management of the courier contract but I tend to get called upon when things go tits up.
The last three instances I can think of...
A parcel sent from Brentwood to Liverpool on a Friday afternoon for Saturday morning delivery arrived at Brentwood on Saturday morning. The best we were offered was a collection on Monday for Tuesday delivery.
A parcel from Brentwood to Tewkesbury turned up at the Glasgow delivery office. It was delivered to the correct office the next day.
A parcel from Brentwood to Liverpool containing a mobile phone and SIM didn't arrive. We had it tracked and investigated and it turned out it went missing from the Basildon depot. It was doubly annoying because I normally send phones and SIMs by separate methods, this was the first time I'd done them together for ages. I disabled the SIM as soon as we knew it had gone missing but the package never turned up and I traced a number of calls from that number to Iraq! The courier compensated both the cost of the phone and the calls.
Unfortunately this is true - ALL courier companies mess up, even ones like UPS who have the reputation of being whiter than white.
Strangely enough they are one of the poorest couriers up here. It once took them 5 days to deliver something from Edinburgh to Inverness (they have been known to send something from Edinburgh via Tamworth to get here). Consistently they always take at least one day more (sometimes two) to deliver than most other couriers. DHL come a very close second at being the worst. They always have stuff sat on the van for delivery but it never gets delivered the day it's put on the van, always the day after (Arrives in Inverness early hours Monday, put on van Monday before 9am but doesn't get delivered until at least Tuesday late afternoon). Citylink (who use a local firm as a partner) and TNT always deliver quicker and have far better customer service if you need to rearrange delivery or pickup from the depot.
Does anyone here deal with couriers a lot in their job? If your courier misroutes a parcel (very easily done) and it ends up in say, Alton when it should be in Manchester, what do they generally do about it?
They're normally just sent out to the correct place the next day.
Does anyone here deal with couriers a lot in their job?
Officially I'm in charge of the logistics for our central logistics centre in Frankfurt but in practise I delegate most of it so I don't have a massive amount of involvement but we recently changed from using UPS for the majority of shipments to DHL because UPS had got into the habit of returning any misrouted packages to Frankfurt even though the addresses were 100% correct. So a next day shipment could often take 4 days and go Frankfurt -> Milan -> Frankfurt -> Milan -> Customer.
So far DHL have only misrouted a couple of packages (we're sending something in the region of 5,000/week) and to my knowledge they've all been delivered the following day.
This is terrible...they had someone be nice to disarm you, and then they continue to be idiots.
Strangely enough they are one of the poorest couriers up here. It once took them 5 days to deliver something from Edinburgh to Inverness (they have been known to send something from Edinburgh via Tamworth to get here). Consistently they always take at least one day more (sometimes two) to deliver than most other couriers. DHL come a very close second at being the worst. They always have stuff sat on the van for delivery but it never gets delivered the day it's put on the van, always the day after (Arrives in Inverness early hours Monday, put on van Monday before 9am but doesn't get delivered until at least Tuesday late afternoon). Citylink (who use a local firm as a partner) and TNT always deliver quicker and have far better customer service if you need to rearrange delivery or pickup from the depot.
The reason for going via Tamworth is probably for sortation at central hub - some depots "hold back" local freight, others don't. UPS probably don't have a direct Edinburgh to Inverness trunk vehicle which is why it takes what looks like an illogical route.
TNT Inverness are a really friendly depot, Edinburgh and Aberdeen are as well. Glasgow and Stirling on the other hand....
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