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[Closed] RIP City Link
I always assumed they were pretty cheap too...
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30602326
hopefully a decent operator will take this lot over - would be disappointing to see the same shambles of a company rise from the ashes
owned by investment firm Better Capital
Who I assume, as vulture capitalists, will walk away with a tidy profit after eating the company from the insides.
Screw the company. I feel sorry for the 2.5k staff though.
Truly the worst organisation I have ever dealt with in any walk of life so won't miss them.
Never had an issue with City Link, it's a shame to see them go and what a time to announce substantial job losses
Not being taken over by Yodel I hope....
Looks like City's management weren't aware, so probably the holding company decided that they didn't have deep enough pockets to run with the 'big boys'.
Most of the operators are loss makers! survival of the fittest shame about the workers most of them self employed with no payoffs 🙁
They had been increasing in new software and hardware recently, including new contract arrangements for drivers, so it's a bit of a surprise.
Never ever used or received from them. Corporate clients mainly?
I'd used them a few times without a problem.
Shame about all the job losses.
At least they delivered the xmas parcels
Never had a problem from City Link but God help us all if Yodel take over..........UKMail would be handy because it's a right mission if you have to go collect a parcel from the " local " depot......50 mile round trip making it cheaper to buy from LBS.
Courier parcel deliveries should be booming nowadays. They must have had a lot wrong !
[i]Courier parcel deliveries should be booming nowadays. They must have had a lot wrong ! [/i]
As an Accountant once said to me:
"only three things matter in business; cash, cash and..., cash"
Who I assume, as vulture capitalists, will walk away with a tidy profit after eating the company from the insides.
They put £40m into the company in 2013 to rescue it, without that investment it would have gone bust then
Courier parcel deliveries should be booming nowadays. They must have had a lot wrong !
Delivery business is booming in terms of volume but is highly competitive with a race to the bottom on pricing. Based on comments above its perhaps not surprising they've gone out of business
I had a delivery which arrived at around 6pm, the driver still had thirty more drops to do that day so it's must be massively competitive.
I thought they'd improved recently, well I hadn't been nearly ran over by one of their vans recently.
Agree on low pricing. I bet their competitors will give a sigh of relief being able to soak up some of city links customers. I always think myhermes us TOO cheap.
Only ever had bad experiences with City link - not great timing on Christmas day though very poor that one . Yodel next they are pretty poor too .
Hope everyone gets their parcels back. Says people can pick them up from depots but what if its at a hub half way across the country? Never been a fan of city link after being let down by them a few times but one would think it was a minority letting down the rest who did their jobs.
Home delivery isn't very profitable, and most of the courier firms are cutting their own throats with their pricing. We'll eventually see everything moving towards click and collect and delivery becoming a premium option.
Home delivery isn't very profitable, and most of the courier firms are cutting their own throats with their pricing. We'll eventually see everything moving towards click and collect and delivery becoming a premium option.
Not used that yet, but I have had it as an option with Argos as the collect point. Royal Mail are ok, but if I get home and find a card, then I have to wait 24 hours to collect from the main depot, which is a pain, because it's only a hundred metres from where I work, which is, in turn, a fifteen minute walk from home, or a five minute bike ride.
But at least I can just toddle along from work during the day if I get the opportunity.
An Argos click-and-collect would mean I could just pop into town from work, takes five minutes on the bike, and there's a couple of small local supermarkets that offer it locally as well.
Watching the news it can't be out of the blue if they were bought for a pound a year ago and it was known that they were loosing a lot of money? They were trying to sell it ongoing.
Yodel/Hermes effectively taken their market share.
City link were dreadful and the whole industry needs regulating. Its telling that flogging financial products is regulated to stop companies encouraging employees to mis-sell stuff but multi drop firms put enormous pressure on their employees to drive like ****s cos the only risk is running people over.
There's a huge CL depot near my office, that'll be a lot of people out of work 🙁
Hopefully the firms that pick up their contracts will take some of the staff too.
Should be a lot of green and yellow vans in the auctions soon, with all the money going to creditors and liquidators not to the poor workers who kept the company afloat.
While the tax payer makes up all the redundancy payments for those employed and nothing for those self employed,
So very sad for the employees at this time of year.
I would guess most drivers were self employed with there own van
And paid by the drop
Yes the reputation was poor but it's all the staff we should feel for
On the news now- allegations that drivers were forced to go self employed. Nice.
Yep one of their (self employed) drivers was on the news the other day. It was his van and he's just paid to have liveried up. Gutting.
It's been coming for some time. Brutal business with only one slight, unsustainable source of competitive advantage. VC firm (has Moulton lost his touch) invested £40m, never saw a profit and wrote down half the investment. Management and unions fell out. Crap service. Only a matter of when....shitty timing for those concerned though, agreed.