City Link in Administration

mattyprice4004

Not good:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30602326

Have any posters got parcels with them at the moment? I'd be interested to know what happens, as I can't remember the last time a major carrier went under.

I've got a few parcels with InPost (who use City Link as their carrier) so I've got no idea what'll happen with those.

Feel free to post any questions regarding the administration in this thread - there's a few MSE'ers that work with major carriers (any City Link staff able to shed light on the events?) who may know more.

Nodding_Donkey

Hardly surprising really given the state of the service they offered.

Yodel next I hope.

mattyprice4004

Nodding_Donkey wrote: »

Hardly surprising really given the state of the service they offered.

Yodel next I hope.

I'm not going to argue with you about Yodel, given the hash they made of my deliveries recently!
Had to call in the 'big boys' (UPS in this instance) to un-balls their balls-up.
Massive shocker, UPS did it properly with no fuss.

mro85

Couldn't happen to a more deserving company.

I have two sites and only just yesterday I had the driver threaten and swear at me when I told him his delivery was for the wrong place and that he needed to deliver it to the correct address up the road as per the parcel level.

The drivers are always rude and very aggressive.

debbie6899

I feel for the workers too. They weren't paid yesterday as they were supposed to have been and they've found out today they won't get it at all, as well as finding out they have more than likely lost their jobs. Horrible Xmas present for them

Barny1979

mro85 wrote: »

Couldn't happen to a more deserving company.

I have two sites and only just yesterday I had the driver threaten and swear at me when I told him his delivery was for the wrong place and that he needed to deliver it to the correct address up the road as per the parcel level.

The drivers are always rude and very aggressive.

In defence of the driver, he may have just found out he was going to lose his job.

visidigi

The fact they have gone to admin is purely because the recovery funds ran out and no one wants to buy a network that bloated with old problems.

They have the problem of having loose management around owner drivers. Its a shame as the local City Link drivers near me have been nothing but great - alas the visits to the depots less so.

They didn't have much hope when you hire sort staff for the lowest cost - that leads to high damage rates and low yields overall.

I suspect APLE, now known as Amazon Logistics also have a stake in this outcome, they must have hit the City Link bottom line quite significantly - that and Amazon seem to have moved alcohol & perfumery movements solely to Royal Mail (at least for me - couriers charge a premium for Hazardous deliveries).

City Link also seemed to have stopped investing in the technology they give customers and use in the network - which is only further impacting when DPD is such a market leader in this segment when it comes to technology.

The difficulty with these carries is the balance of B2B versus B2C - B2C is expensive - people aren't in, they expect repeated delivery attempts etc.

Where as B2B is more reliable in delivery rate and less reattempts.

Yodel is very B2C orientated - hence their horrific problems - think about it, courier tries to deliver 400 pieces in a day - 100 fail due to people not being in - the following day he gets a further 400 pieces, plus the original 100, again 150 fail, rinse and repeat you can see why/how yodel made such a hash of this - with warehouses backed up to the hilt.

This industry has to get smarter with how customers receive deliveries - retail points, lockers, local corner shops etc are the way forward - its low cost, high success rate delivery - if this doesn't happen City Link won't be the final failure in the market.

(B2B = Business to Business)
(B2C = Business to Consumer)

theGrinch

the big surprise is why it didnt happen earlier?

pmduk

visidigi wrote: »

Yodel is very B2C orientated - hence their horrific problems - think about it, courier tries to deliver 400 pieces in a day - 100 fail due to people not being in - the following day he gets a further 400 pieces, plus the original 100, again 150 fail, rinse and repeat you can see why/how yodel made such a hash of this - with warehouses backed up to the hilt.

Yodel's major problem is people are just unable to wait in day after day for the lottery of possibly receiving a delivery due, in my case, the previous week - when arrangements may well have been made for the parcels reception.

visidigi

pmduk wrote: »

Yodel's major problem is people are just unable to wait in day after day for the lottery of possibly receiving a delivery due, in my case, the previous week - when arrangements may well have been made for the parcels reception.

Yep, which is the exact thing that happens with the failed delivery routine, its a vicious circle and Yodel simply haven't planned not scope for sufficient network control.

If anything CL's failure may actually make the situation worse for Yodel.

Yodel actually are incredibly effective when the variables of collections and insome cases deliveries are removed - they part own and do the logistics for Collect+ - Yodel came 13th out of 16th in the recent MSE poll, yet Collect+ came 2nd.

Yodel could fix a great deal of their problems if they could leave parcels with local retail points which are part of the collect+ network.

visidigi

theGrinch wrote: »

the big surprise is why it didnt happen earlier?

because they bought them for £1 and had £40 million to spend.

The true failure of CL began before, but was exacerbated buy the very poor integration process they went through with Target Express.