Vent: City Link

custardy

well I have to join in here
Just remembered i had an Amazon order outstanding. Nothing important,just some baby wipes
order due 31/12/10
checked the tracking on Amazon
delivery attempted 4/1/11 (I was off work that day and home all day doing uni work)
onto citylink and it stated delivery attempted on the 4th and that they would retry on the 5th
well I have no cards left.
we are a main door in a modern area.so its all accessible and sign posted
according to citylink i have till Tuesday to collect
Im working Monday and have Uni Tuesday
Making a 55 mile round trip would negate any savings I made on Amazon
I know problems happen but I'll be cancelling the subscription i made on Amazon. Its pointless as I cant(wont!) collect from citylink and we havnet had any delivery attempts

lucylucky

custardy wrote: »

well I have to join in here
Just remembered i had an Amazon order outstanding. Nothing important,just some baby wipes
order due 31/12/10
checked the tracking on Amazon
delivery attempted 4/1/11 (I was off work that day and home all day doing uni work)
onto citylink and it stated delivery attempted on the 4th and that they would retry on the 5th
well I have no cards left.
we are a main door in a modern area.so its all accessible and sign posted
according to citylink i have till Tuesday to collect
Im working Monday and have Uni Tuesday
Making a 55 mile round trip would negate any savings I made on Amazon
I know problems happen but I'll be cancelling the subscription i made on Amazon. Its pointless as I cant(wont!) collect from citylink and we havnet had any delivery attempts

Sounds par for the course with this company, which is why I posted earlier that they will hapily lie to you about deliveries, attempted deliveries and cards left.

twinkle1981_2

DHL are fans of phantom deliveries as well. I don't understand why the do this as I thought they only got paid per successful delivery, not per attempt. Are there actually any courier companies that are any good?

*max*

Same here! I'm waiting for a parcel that was collected by City Link on the 4th and was a "One Day Delivery". Yeah right!
The tracking online is useless, it didn't update for 4 days, saying "Item en route to destination depot".

I called Friday, and after being on hold for 25 mins, finally spoke to a harrassed young man who was very nice, but couldn't tell me anything because the parcel hadn't been scanned at the depot!

The online tracking finally updated on Friday night to "Arrived at depot ready for delivery". So it may (or may not!) come tomorrow.

What a shamble!!!

caz2703

This should be interesting:

09/01/11, 10:32, These goods have been loaded onto a van for delivery today.

Now given it's a Sunday and the roads are quiet, both me and DH are at home and there's no snow, what's the chances we get the parcel or a phantom card?

Edit: Holy smokes, our bin has just arrived!!!!!!!! And there was me being cynical that City Link would actually be working on a Sunday.

misschatterbox

I have actually had a reply from the CEO of City Link who is looking into this for me, surprised to have got a reply

Madmel

twinkle1981 wrote: »

Are there actually any courier companies that are any good?

I'm happy to praise FedEx and no, I don't work for them!

In the mad week before Christmas when we were snowed and iced in, FedEx got to the next village which is just over a mile away. They rang us to ask if we could walk over or would be prepared to drive to collect our boxes. He parked in the pub car park and waited for an hour to give people a chance to get there. All the large boxes we wanted were on the van and we had them safely at home by 23rd.

Very different from UPS. DH ordered DD a laptop from Dell and the tracking info was on his computer which has a completely different ISP from mine. He went into the city to collect the turkey and said he'd try UPS as the laptop was probably at the depot. He asked me to call them. So I tried to saynoto0870 and got the head office number. As I didn't have the tracking number, they refused to help. I gave them our postcode which only has 4 properties but they can't check that. So I had to ring Dell, give some of DH's personal info then the kind chap there emailed me with the tracking info, back for another 15 minutes of hold music for UPS only to be told it was out for delivery - yeah right! DH turned up at their depot and after 45 minutes they found it on a shelf in the back of the warehouse. Definitely on a van out being delivered on icy roads - NOT!

renegade

What a rubbish company they are. I bought from Amazon with the given delivery date being Jan 4th First class.
Waited in for 3 days, very traumatic, needed to shop ,walk my dogs,go to the library.
I sent a complaint into Amazon and told them I would not order from them again, anything that could not be posted through my letter box as their choice of deliveries City Link were unreliable and I am not into 'Guesstimate' delivery dates.

Astuteboy

twinkle1981 wrote: »

DHL are fans of phantom deliveries as well. I don't understand why the do this as I thought they only got paid per successful delivery, not per attempt. Are there actually any courier companies that are any good?

I had a similar issue here to many of no cards being left by City Link (and I could prove they hadn't attempted delivery via CCTV): https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2963486

Apparently:

chalkie99 wrote: »

It's a performance thing.

If the records are marked as a card being left then it is not a failed delivery and the driver/depot do not get a black mark.

which would go some way to explaining why it happens so much.

In terms of the charges, the customer sending the parcel gets charged for the attempted deliveries regardless; this is the same for all courier companies (we've dealt with a few via my work). Most will make 2-3 attempts under 1 charge (or pretend to make attempts in the case of City Link) but will charge you again to attempt more deliveries. Their argument of course being it costs the same amount of fuel, time etc to attempt a delivery as it does to actually deliver.

As I put in my original post, my company stopped using City Link due to the volume of customer complaints; we get far less now we send most packages via Interlink Express. Hopefully with enough complaints, more online retailers will move away from using City Link. The main problem preventing this I think is that their rates are cheap - all those pretend deliveries must save quite a lot of money!

CandyApocalypse

I have had many years of misery with City Link and their team of stealth ninja delivery men. Well actually, there was one exception when I lived in Kent as there was a regular City Link delivery guy who was lovely and actually went out of his way to bring parcels on Christmas Eve once.

The company may have improved, but in my experience it was just no end of 'sorry we missed you' cards when I was sat in all day, then calls to a busy signal and then finally give in, go to the warehouse which was situated in the back of beyond, only for them to not be able to find my parcel. It got to the point where I felt like getting up at dawn, sitting under the delivery slot in silence until I heard a van.

But anyway, hope you get this resolved soon!