City - link cowboys

[Lana]

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.

[Zirax]

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.

[Desmo]

Originally Posted by Pumpkinstew

I wonder how they remain in buisness and why retailers still use them.

Because they're cheaper than the rest.

[Pickers]

The plot thickens.

Originally Posted by company rep

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.

Called Nicomm and left a message...
Still angry. GrrrRRRRrrrr.

[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.

[Feek]

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.

[Muban]

Originally Posted by Lopez

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.

[Desmo]

Originally Posted by Lopez

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.

[Burble]

Originally Posted by Lopez

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.

[Lana]

This is terrible...they had someone be nice to disarm you, and then they continue to be idiots.