I hate Citylink

[DanceswithUnix]

City Link are probably the worst courier company down south IMHO and its the same experience with mates who call them ****tylink since they are that bad. Its not the first time they have lied about deliveries - lots of people I know have had similar experiences. Its been happening for years now.

Have you not experienced Yodel then? I think they make City Link look good.

[peterb]

Lucky you. I had Yodel who threw my Amazon order, containing an ADSL modem, over a 9 foot wall into my back garden in December 2011.

Air mail?

[virtuo]

Few years ago I'd have argued the opposite - City Link were pretty good and DPD were worse than useless. But I suppose any carrier agreeing to carry hard drives are asking for trouble..!

Fast forward to today, got an order from Scan arriving through DPD, fully informed all the way, even know the name of my driver before she gets here. Vast improvement.

Haven't had much experience with city link recently, but it annoys me that their nearest depot to me is a good 45 minutes away in the middle of nowhere.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Being a day late receiving your item is not worth a few quid for sure, but I would imagine you complaining about City Link and having more issues with them would prompt them not to use City Link for your orders. I tend to order everything before 2pm when using Amazon, you can also choose a paid for delivery option which might take City Link out of the equation but I am not sure.

One thing to look for is if the Prime delivery came directly from Amazon, was fulfilled by Amazon or was from a shop part of the prime scheme. I get most of my stuff directly from Amazon if I can, otherwise I am careful about other shops. It might be other shops that use City Link rather than Amazon specifically which might help you to avoid City Link.

The Prime order came in three parts and one of the parts was fulfilled by Amazon. The fulfilled by Amazon part came by DPD on a Sunday. The other bits were straight from Amazon using RM and City Link.

If Amazon are using City Link for bulkier orders,then I will avoid them. Many of the specialist photographic retailers and computer parts companies know use DPD or Royal Mail and in the case of the former if you contact them they can make arrangements for you using other companies. For example I bought a largish camera bag off Park Cameras and asked if they could use Royal Mail for a delivery instead of a courier as I could not be in reliably for that week and they changed it and I still got it quickly.

Have you not experienced Yodel then? I think they make City Link look good.

Yodel thankfully are not so common round here for whatever reason(luckily).

However,have you experienced City Link round this part of Kent?? Horrendous. They have not improved in years and still have the audacity to lie to my face over the phone. Yet their depot is much closer(if you can call it that) than DPD. So inept that DPD delivered on a Sunday on time and City Link could not even get the delivery done by 8PM on a Tuesday.

DPD and RM are far better.

[DanceswithUnix]

Have you experienced City Link round this part of Kent?? Horrendous. They have not improved in years and still have the audacity to lie to my face over the phone.

DPD and RM are far better.

Friend of mine a few years ago ordered a laptop from Ebuyer just before Christmas. I think that was CityLink that was supposed to deliver it. Third one turned up covered in tracking stuff, the first two were stolen in transit.

So yeah, I get it that they aren't good and being lied to always sucks, but if you want something mishandled then I think the Yodel shot putting team are the favourites.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Have you not experienced Yodel then? I think they make City Link look good.

Friend of mine a few years ago ordered a laptop from Ebuyer just before Christmas. I think that was CityLink that was supposed to deliver it. Third one turned up covered in tracking stuff, the first two were stolen in transit.

So yeah, I get it that they aren't good and being lied to always sucks, but if you want something mishandled then I think the Yodel shot putting team are the favourites.

Hermes do the same too it seems. However City Link have been known to damage items too.

I contacted Amazon CS and told them I expected City Link to deliver later on in the day when someone would be at home otherwise I wanted the order cancelled. Amazon said they forwarded my request to City Link. The CS operator also said that my feedback on City Link had been forwarded to the section which deals with deliveries,etc too.

So if any of you have had poor service with City Link and are using Amazon make sure you ring them and tell them. Hopefully it will mean Amazon will stop using them(or at least stop using them in their "worst" areas).

[Bagnaj97]

It's Hermes at the top of my hitlist currently. I've had 2 parcels recently just dropped over my side gate, one of them in the pouring rain. Thankfully neither were fragile and the one in the rain was in a plastic bag inside the very soggy box!

Citylink's depot isn't too far from me so I don't mind them so much. I did have trouble with them a couple of years ago, but it was during several days of snow around Christmas so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt around that incident.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It's Hermes at the top of my hitlist currently. I've had 2 parcels recently just dropped over my side gate, one of them in the pouring rain. Thankfully neither were fragile and the one in the rain was in a plastic bag inside the very soggy box!

Citylink's depot isn't too far from me so I don't mind them so much. I did have trouble with them a couple of years ago, but it was during several days of snow around Christmas so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt around that incident.

Yet down the road in my neck of the woods they consistently are crap. Heck,they were crap in the other parts of Kent too.

Their service has never improved in all the years I have ever used them.

Compare that to DPD who have actually tried to improve their operation.

The previous owners of City Link ditched the company for £1:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22335092

Rentokil acquired City Link in 2006, but City Link has lost money since 2007, including £26m in 2012.

It has struggled in the face of weakening demand for its services from small businesses.

I wonder why??

Companies like Amazon are big enough to be able to absorb all the problems City Link passes onto them.

Small businesses not so much.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It gets better. So contacted Amazon last night and this morning to see what they could do about it and whether City Link could try and deliver in the afternoon so I could actually be there.

So in the morning they sent me an e-mail saying City Link had said the delivery would be here between 2.30PM and 4.30PM - some of you might predict what happened?

At 6.15PM still nothing and now they said on the consignment page they were "running late". Rang Amazon who said they will refund me if it did not arrive tonight.

So I decided to ring City Link again - and the CS person tried contacting the depot twice to no avail and he was quite surprised at what was happening especially when I said the depot was only 15 miles away. He was actually speechless TBH.

Now its 8.30PM and still nothing.

Absolutely rubbish company and sadly it means I will not touch Amazon Prime again and I will probably avoid Amazon for any items which won't fit through the post box now,since they are using this incompetent lot.

[Noxvayl]

It is hard to understand how they have managed to get it so wrong, not just once but again today.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

It is hard to understand how they have managed to get it so wrong, not just once but again today.

Well Amazon have lost a lot of future custom from me now for anything other than small packages which can fit through a letter box.

If they want to play their courier games,they can do with it others not me.

I certainly might need to decide against listing them for parts in any build threads, if they intend to use City Link, unless people know the risk of going with such a useless company.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Managed to get a refund now. Only problem is now I have not enough time to order from elsewhere online so need to buy the item in the shop with a 40% increase in price!

[Tumble]

The thing to remember with City Link, is it's a franchise, like Subway... they all look & smell the same, but no 2 places are identical. Some of them are run by absolute creatures, whereas some will be semi-decent at delivering things. You sadly seem to be the victim of a creature-led establishment

That said, most of them ARE honking... diamonds in the rough and all that

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Just got another DPD delivery - the driver was spot on time.

[DanceswithUnix]

Just got another DPD delivery - the driver was spot on time.

I remember when Scan first switched to City Link very many years ago, I wondered who they were but found the service was excellent so was happy. Wonder what went wrong.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

BTW,I used Amazon locker for my motherboard and even though it was delivered to a newsagent(who has no electronic lockers) it seemed to work reasonably smoothly.