Well then,

A chap bought a Hackler frame from me on Monday, so I arranged City Link to collect on Tuesday for next day delivery.

Missus stays at home from 7.30am til I get home, then I stay in til 9pm… no driver turns up. We tried to call during the day, but just hold music for half an hour at a time.

I was at home today, and got until 4pm and no driver, still couldn’t get through to City Link, so drove to their depot 30 miles away. Eventually found it down a dirty alley in scrubland – again couldn’t call them to confirm exactly where they were, as Google maps was not very helpful.

There were another 2 people there complaining, one had a note left over a week ago and they’d lost his package, the same with the other chap.

I was eventually told that they couldn’t collect as they didn’t have a street name for my house…. guess what? we have no street name, just a village. Royal Mail, Parcelforce, TNT, APC, DHL all seem to find it fine, in fact I’ve had two deliveries from City Link in the last 3 months.

So…. frame should have turned up today with the buyer, but it was still sat with me.

I’ll definitely be not using them again, totally unprofessional. And a total waste of money, as I had to pay to drive to their depot and back home again, 60 miles. And they couldn’t care less at the depot.

I understand it’s a really busy time, but why not either call me, send me an email, or text or update the status of the order online? Instead of leaving us waiting around for two days, with no way to contact them.

Rubbish indeed.

There’s no money in parcels. That’s why the service is crap.

That’s fine, but set the expectation. Not promise a service level that cannot be provided.

You can never get through to City Link, phones are usually jammed with hacked of customers

One chap was in the depot, his parcel was somewhere in the depot, but they couldn’t find it, so he was on hold to the customer service center.

Bonkers.

They are an utter mess and there is a reason why they are cheap.

Amamzon next day delivery from 2 weeks ago is, guess what, lost in the CityLink system. Hopeless.

SH1TTYLINK.

There, that is the only useful thing I can add to this thread. That is all.

City Link at this time of the year in particular are the very very worst courier of them all. Their customer service is atrocious and if you think emailing them will get a response, dream on! Not in a million years! I refuse to buy anything online if that shop uses them as they’re hopeless. I know from first hand experience that even when they say your delivery is on the van, it’s not and its back at the depot. From failed deliveries in the past I questioned one driver and he told me that’s what happens, it all goes up shit creek and they’re the ones who get the hassle as its the office staff who decide who takes what and they’re hopeless at controlling their deliveries. Definitely Shitty Link.

Use Parcel2go and avoid shittylink.

I recently swapped a car exhaust with someone down in Bristol and used Shitty Link both ways. Idea was, I take the one off my car, box it up, send it to him, he swaps it for the one on his car and sends me his one back up. Bear in mind this is an 8ft parcel. Between being picked up at my house and delivered to their Edinburgh depot it vanished. Took a week to sort out, with them not having the faintest idea where it was. Bloke in Bristol tried to prevent the issue on the way back and spraypainted the parcel as Bender from Futurama. An 8ft Bender amongst a sea of 30cm x 30cm x 40cm beige cardboard boxes. They still lost it. Online tracking system help page advice was to call the Customer Services. Customer Services advice was to use their online tracking system. And then I got grief on here for calling them “mouth breathers”.

While I can’t really comment on the OPs post, (although city link have a reputation for poor service) Its worth looking at things from the Delivery drivers perspective.

I work for a small family run delivery firm in the lake district,(national company) One of our drivers had a half our drive from home this morning to start work at 6am, he then had to hand sort over 100 deliveries for a run in the south lakes area.

With the van fully loaded, and I mean FULLY loaded he then set off on a 2 hour drive to start his first delivery,Time is money etc (and so is fuel) steady away then,no accidents permitting he’s on his first drop at around 8am.

So he knocks on the door (signature required,next day delivery) No one in,so he has an option,card through the door or try a bit harder,because its young jonnys Christmas present.

After trying both neighbours doors (no one in) he considers trying a local post office down the road,but hang on, if the shop keeper won’t sign he will need to come back and re card the door, hmmmn, what to do.

So he puts a card through the door with the depot phone number and the advice, parcel taken to village post office for signature. but please ring depot to confirm. From when he started the delivery to completion at the shop it took 15 minutes, only 99 more deliveries to go,before the 2 hour drive back to the depot,unload the van/sort and re label parcels followed by the half hour drive home.

Plus theres collections on top of this workload,

Other time consumers are, Wreathes on doors hiding door numbers,no house names,trees covering house names, One Post codes covering large areas. Holiday/Christmas traffic. Very slow driving,Credit card companies restricting neighbours signature,check address parcels, poorly packaged items/awkward shaped items/hazardous chemicals.Rain and Fog making visibility for house names numbers near impossible.

But jonny did get his parcel.. 😉

I am still awaiting a delivery from shittylink. The tracking number still shows an expected delivery date of the Wednesday the 19th. I’ve phoned the automated service this morning and the good news is that my parcel will be delivered tomorrow (yup – on Christmas Day). I’ve now been in the queue to speak to a person for 45 minutes. I don’t expect anybody to answer soon.

What is the point in a tracking numbers if the data isn’t accurate?

Just after I posted, they answered my call. I spoke to a lady who seemed totalled f***ed of. I was about to give her the bomber treatment but as she seemed pretty down and as it’s Christmas, I decided that it wouldn’t be in the spirit to go off on one.

FWIW – the package hasn’t even turned up at the local depot, so who knows when I’ll receive it?.

City Link picked up a parcel today that Yodel missed 2 dates on….ok, they came at 8am this morning even though I had rearranged collection till the 28th….but they turned up at least 8)

Guess I’ve been lucky then! I’ve used City Link for 4 bits I’ve sold on here, including 2 frames. All delivered with no problems. Might nip out any buy a lottery ticket before my luck runs out!

Could be worse …. Could be delivery by screw fix couriers. What i arrived home to on friday.

Biggerer.

Similar city-link woes this morning, Amazon order which should have arrived Saturday. Tracking info says it was delivered and signed for…10 days before I ordered the item. 😯

2 sessions of 30mins on hold, given up. If/when it ever gets here it’s going straight back as I’m popping out to Argos to get a replacement item today.
I think generally city-link are ‘known’ for this, I’m more annoyed at not knowing beforehand that it would be them as I would certainly not have ordered otherwise. I suspect that is why we don’t know though.

Looks like I’m not the only one let down by Citylink

As a counter, Ive used Citylink many times, and always found them to be reliable, though i cant speak for this time of year as ive usually done my Christmas shopping by the start of November to avoid all this lark. HDNL/Yodel on the other hand..i simply refuse to use a website if i know they use them for their deliveries…they are truly abysmal, at least 3 seperate occasions in the past ive watched them stuff a you were a out card through my postbox whilst ive been sat there, no attempt to deliver at all, until i caught the driver of course.

I used to live in north London, shitty link’s “local” depot was in Hertfordshire, but I guess that’s the drawback to living in a sleepy little town like LONDON !!.

That said, Yodel are worse than shitty link and that takes some doing.

Whatever yoy do donr use UK mail couriers. They are useless.

Click and collect is the new delivery.

Shitty link fail again. Arranged a collection via parcel monkey, waited in all day and a no show from city link.

Hey ho, off to look at collect + courier now

B

I think I’m quite lucky then as I have used City Link a fair bit and only had one problem over the years. My local car tyre shop gets six collections a day from City Link so they’re maybe better in out area because of that. I can imagine theirs little money in being a courier for the drivers and they’ll be under a fair bit of pressure to make lots of deliveries in a short space of time.