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That's the end of that then.. taking all relevant market factors into consideration (& given the amount of complaints about them on here alone), 'shock' announcement may be a strong word, but nevertheless calling the administrators in on Christmas Eve.. hell of a blow for the workforce. :(
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30602326
No buyer has been found to save the company - "substantial redundancies" over the coming days.
Sad to see them go. They were a decent courier and very professional.
I am sorry for the people loosing their jobs - but City Link was managed by a load of incompetent baboons. They were so bad around my area,I refused to use any company which had them as a courier:
http://forums.hexus.net/general-disc...-citylink.html
They had been so bad around this area for the last decade people used to call them ****tylink.
It appears after they were given a £40 million lifeline last year,they still screwed up and spent all of it despite fuel costs going down.
Much of it came down to the individual drivers, good ones were... well, good, but the bad ones were dire.
DPD drivers seem better, I don' know if they are self employed under contract, or franchise, but they seem to have a better attitude, and the whole distribution system seems slicker.
We used (my company) City Link for years. 50-100x parcels per day and one or two pallets per week. We always had a problem if not one of the regular drivers came.
Wonder who we will use now to replace. Either DPD or Yodel. Hope it is DPD...
Which in my book has to be attributed to bad management. I do also agree that DPD have a much slicker service, in this day and age the idea of not having a warning that your delivery is due soon, appears, archaic frankly.Quote:
Originally Posted by peterb
But what is even more just, just sad, is the union RMT.
This is frankly nutty, I can't imagine that the management team wanted to go into administration, but they legally have too if they were unable to re-finance or find a buyer. It's quite likely someone had issued some note to allow them capital to operate during what should have been one of the most profitable and busy periods for them. I can really see that funding ended after that period.Quote:
Originally Posted by RMT
They just have this desire to scream at the tide for changing.
Yes, but that is the RMT posturing - it's intended for their members. After all, they are hardly going to turn round and empathise with 'management'. After all in their Triassic class warfare view of the world 'management' are the enemy! :)
(You will recall that the Trassic age was when dinosaurs were far more prolific than they are now)
It is sad and I am a little surprised that they announced it on Christmas eve however as always for City Link, their timing was never one of their biggest strengths.
10 years ago they seemed a common site but in the last 5 I hardly ever saw there vans about.
It was around the time DPD seemed to arrive. I guess they just came along and did it better and yodel just did it for peanuts.
That.Quote:
Originally Posted by TheAnimus
And more. Not only are they legally required to act once they know the company is insolvent, but directors can be held personally liable for debts, and/or further transactions undertaken, if they carry on trading knowing they were insolvent. Any such trading could be held to be "wrongful" or, worse yet, "fraudulent, and either can result in legal action against directors. It is one of the relatively small set of circumstances where the "veil of incorporation" protecting directors of limited companies can be lifted.
Obviously I've no idea if that was the case, but it's certainly plausible that they were holding on, with solvency on a knife-edge, during the Christmas peak, hoping to stay afloat. But once they know they're insolvent, they really have no practical choice but to act on it.
It is, obviously, very bad news for those whose jobs are jeopardised (or lost) but frankly, there's no good time to get that news. But directors will have had little or no choice.
Bad timing and I do feel for the workers - but this is good news for Consumers. CityLink were up there with Yodel as candidates for "worst delivery company in the UK" and prior to yodels rise to power, they held that crown for over 10 years. Yodel are much, much worse, but still I have had more problems with City Link over the years than any other delivery company (apart form yodel, obviously!)
Here's hoping their former customers will give their business to people like DPD who tend to run a much more reliable service.
Oh wow, just read about this. Can totally empathize with the staff, what a crap time of year to get told this.
I had good experiences of city link back in the day. ebuyer pretty much depended on them in early 21st century and it all seemed to work ok. not really encountered them. much in recent years
Would this affect Amazon purchases, as my new case which is being delivered by them (already in transit) has just been cancelled?
possibly, Amazon do use a variety of shippers. the good thing is Amazon trend to look after their customers so I wouldn't worry too much. most of my recent Amazon's have been DPD but I don't always get to be the one who signs for them so it's possible some were city link I guess...Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRockliffe
Well the order has already been cancelled, even though it says it's in transit. Online still says on schedule, but email says the following:
Hello,
Due to unforeseen circumstances, we're unable to deliver your*Amazon.co.uk*order (order number for the computer case) to you.
We've refunded your order in full. Your refund will go through in 2-3 business days and should show on your next statement. Please note that this doesn't include your bank's processing time.
If you'd still like the items you ordered, please return to our website and place a new order.
We apologise for any inconvenience caused.
Regards,
Customer Service Department
Note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only e-mail address that can't accept incoming e-mail. Please don't reply to this message.
this could just be to snow, but if the item is in a city link warehouse then yes, they may have no choice!
If I were a betting man, I'd say that was a dead cert for a Citylink order stuck in transit.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRockliffe
As ever, Amazon's outstanding customer service has kicked in to protect you. Apart from anything else, they have more clout when dealing with the administrator in getting goods released and returned, so while you might be a inconvenienced by the delay, you will neither be out of pocket, nor face the hassle of tracking doen your goods.
I'm Always impressed by the speed of Amazons refunds, a lesson some other e.tailers could learn from.
Amazon are usually pretty quick, but as it happens they don't have the case in stock (I bought the last one)
Rather annoying - my experience of citylink is that they don't even bother really to try to deliver - they expect you to pick up at the warehouse as the default.Quote:
Originally Posted by ik9000
Mind you I did end up with four angle grinders for the price of one a long time ago due to a customer services / Citylink spiral of stupidity.
Personally, I had very few problems with CityLink over the years, I suspect because they were delivering to a business address.
Residential deliveries were fairly bad though, usually just late, took them 3 days to deliver a TV because they kept running out of time and the address was probably near the end of their route.
Hmm, City Link was dire when I first started using them, but after a few years I had no major complaints (in the areas I used them).
UK couriers have much to learn from Japan, especially in terms of re-deliveries. Every single delivery companies lets you choose from at least 5 options within the same day (e.g. AM, 12:00-14:00, 14:00-16:00, 16:00:18:00, 18:00-21:00) or something to that effect, and they always meet the deadline in my experience. And it is not some kind of premium service, this is standard.
I had pretty good experiences with CityLink in the past, but don't use any courier all that much these days.
Personally, I think a LOT of the customer experience of any courier firm depends primarily on two things :-
1) The driver
2) How good the local depot manager is
A good manager gets good drivers, treats them reasonably well and the result is good service. My regular (several times a week) CityLink driver discussed with me the best time to deliver, or collect. Afternoons were better for me, and avoiding wasted trips suited me, so we agreed he'd deliver to me on his usual 'collection' run in the afternoon. It helped me, and helped him.
He retired a few years back, and I don't (didn't) see his replacement often enough for it to matter.
But .... get a poor manager, and drivers who don't care, including if they get fired 'cos they just job-hop, and any courier service can be lousy in that area. So, me getting great service from company A and lousy from company B is no indication that anyone in a different depot's area will too.
Of course, the input from head office should be to get good managers everywhere, 'cos the rest follows. Sadly, that often seems to be lacking and most courier services have, in my experience, been object lessons in a lousy customer experience.
Of course, if HQ also have lousy pay rates, and delivery schedules and volumes that make it impossible for drivers to spend the extra minute or two getting it right, then we can't blame drivers for not giving a damn. But, that extra time has to be paid for, so maybe customers are to blame for pressure on delivery charges, meaning HQ has to pay poorly and load up the schedule. So really, we perhaps get what we deserve. ;)
Did you build an angle grinder go-kart? Foolish not to IMO!:PQuote:
Originally Posted by wasabi
Quality idea:devilish::devilish: As it was, what I really needed a wall chaser but was too skint to get one. Maybe I should have superglued two together?Quote:
Originally Posted by Rave
I read that they are saying that if you have goods in transit, it is down to you to track them down and get them from whichever depot they ended up at. Sounds like Amazon are helping you a lot there.Quote:
Originally Posted by MrRockliffe
^ but as amazon have already refunded in full and said to re-order if still wanted..?
Do you?Quote:
Originally Posted by DanceswithUnix
I read it as Amazon saying they've cancelled the order and refunded the customer, who should place an entirely new order if they still want the goods.
Therefore, any goods in transit are the property of Amazon, not the customer, and it's Amazon's responsibility to physically retrieve in-transit goods, and their liability if they fail to do so. And that, IIRC, is consistent with basic consumer law, because responsibility for goods does not pass to customer from seller until they physically pass from courier to end-customer (and even then, only assuming they're paid-for).
Some USP's from other couriers:
-DPD inform their customers when to expect a parcel within a 2 hour time slot (with a good degree of accuracy from my experience), so that you don't nod off or go out for a risky 5 minutes.
- UPS and others can now collect from or deliver to a local convenience store so that you can take or collect a parcel at your leisure.
- CityLink - still delivering parcels from 1999
I cant speak for the last 3 years of CityLink as its been that long since I had any dealings with them. But my opinion up until then was that they were stuck in '00 - as others modernised over time they didn't. Their systems hadn't changed much since the 90's and was a dilapidated DOS system (at least up until 3 years ago, my last visit to one of their depots) which just couldn't cope with the volume. It took so long for an operator to search for an individual product on the computer to find its whereabouts, it appeared like the information was stored on about 3 different systems all joined together by sellotape.