City - link cowboys

[Pickers]

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.

Originally Posted by me

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.

[Pheebs]

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.

[Mark]

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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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.

[Pheebs]

Originally Posted by Mark

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:

1. 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.
   
   
2. 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..
   
3. Get Pheebs on the Phone when she's feeling the Phury and let the beast within be released!

Good luck.

edited

[Pickers]

Originally Posted by Mark

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.

[Pickers]

further gheyness has been found as its NOT friday 1st May, but Thursday 1st may. d'oh. my bad.

[Mark]

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.

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.

[Pickers]

Originally Posted by Mark

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.

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.

[Burble]

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.

[Lopez]

Originally Posted by Burble

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.