This is mostly to remind myself as probably all of UK and anyone who’d google for city link review already knows to stay away. Far far away. And then some.
I’ve had two deliveries handled by City Link and both have been surreal experiences (I only need to read a few reviews to see that’s how they operate.)
Try 1
First they were delivering a TV and I was looking forward to having someone else deal with carrying 25kg to second floor using stairs. Delivery was to be on Wednesday. As they were incapable of providing any more accurate estimate I got to wait home the whole day.
Nothing.
Thursday morning before I managed to start calling around myself I got a call from the store explaining they made some mistake with the delivery address and next delivery would be attempted on Friday. Fine, mistakes happen. I’ll work from home again on Friday. (At this point I had no opinion about City Link yet.) Thursday evening I get home from office. Someone rings the door bell, asks who I am and if I could come down. It turns out to be the owner of a shoe repair store nearby and he might have something for me.
This is when it dawned on me. There’s something wrong with City Link. Not only did they deliver the wrong day, but to wrong address as well. And considered it job well done I’m sure.
Try 2
Around New Year I bought a cheap camera on impulse. Made the order just in time for next day delivery which was confirmed within the hour. I was positively surprised to hear they’d be delivering on New Year’s Eve.
Nothing.
I figured someone had holiday spirits or something already. They’d try again the next working day. So on Friday I was pretending to work while waiting for the delivery. Again nothing. I contacted the store to figure it out. (At this point I actually thought Royal Mail was handling the delivery as the store uses both, and I had been looking at their Christmas season delivery times.)
On Tuesday the store replied delivery is handled by City Link (bad memories starting to come back) and “the delivery has failed due to the delivery point being closed.” With tracking number now at hand I get to see the tracking information:
15:43 - Wednesday, December 31, 2008 - Delivery point closed (Carded)
12:24 - Friday, January 2, 2009 - Delivery point closed (Carded)
Having been home the both times, not hearing anyone ring or seen any cards, I’m left wondering what have they been smoking, and more precisely where. (Attempting delivery and leaving cards at unknown addresses seems to be recurring theme in reviews. There was a good one about trying doors with different colors.)
Not having learned my lesson yet I call City Link (not toll-free) to arrange new delivery. They can’t delivery to other addresses, including neighbors, unless instructed so by the store. (WTF?! You silently dropped off my package to some not-exactly-neighbor the last time I had to deal with you.) Can’t deliver on Saturday either without extra cost. (No way do you deserve any money.) Not interested at all in epic fail with finding the right address. I get new delivery attempt for the next day (today) and try to guess how one could fail to find the right building and give some hints. (There’s two entrances in essentially the same address.) See before for ‘Not interested’. In retrospect ability to find $number $street might’ve been too much to expect from delivery company. (Oddly IKEA – or whatever delivery company they use – had no such problem. They visited me a few times and always found me.)
11:24 - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 - Delivery point closed (Carded)
…
As they seem to be incapable of finding my place I’m trying to get the store to change the delivery to the office (which would be preferable anyway since I should, you know, be working) before canceling the order. Should be easier to find as it’s a bigger building with building number out front. Then again, Lucas might disagree… 😉
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5 comments ↓
We have a similar thing in the States. It is called UPS. there is another one called FedEx.
Try this number for City Link rather than expensive 0870
01908 280280.
I had a delivery yesterday from them, though they did punch a hole through the box. Luckly the DVD player was okay, but it makes you think they don’t handle stuff carefully. Good luck with the TV!
My experience with City Link has been quite good, but then they can find my house. The process simply goes: order something, wait for them to fail to deliver, take card along to distribution point and collect whatever it is.
I’ve also successfully intercepted a package which reached the local delivery point on a Saturday, so instead of waiting for a failed attempt on the Monday I just went along with proof of id and got it immediately.
Couple of horror stories regarding Citylink myself.
I ordered a home cinema receiver, which like your items was delivered to the wrong house in the wrong street. cos citylink had a signiture on the delivery, they claimed tha it was not lost(!) and refused to help. The retailer who sent the package, decyphered the signiture and looked though the phone book to find all of the people in my village with that surname, then I had to door knock to find who had it. the package was eventually found at the other end of the village!
At work, we were doing a major network upgrade, and some vital equipment was on a Saturday AM delivery. City Link never delivered, and claimed that noone was about – This site is a major hospital with a A&E dept, and a permenantly manned security gatehouse as well!!
They are the most outragously bad delivery service – I will rather order from another company then risk using city-link!
Gaz
As a citylink driver i would just like 2 make a couple of points;1,most incorrectly delivered items tend 2 b incorrectly addressed!this is down 2 the senders who generate the address labels using postcodes etc.2,if u live in a property that is difficult 2 locate,the driver can only spend so long looking 4 it!with inxs of 50 seperate addressess 2 find there r just not enuf hours in the day 2 spend looking 4 ur needle!if u had given the senders some basic clues on how 2 find ur address then our job wud b easier & u wud have received ur parcel ontime.3,the amount of people that order nexday delivery & no that they r not gonna b @ home is quite incredible!not being able 2 leave a parcel @ an alternative address without prior instuction from the sender is a sercurity measure,without which there wud b no system.4,the layman does not understand the complexitys of finding all ur adressess & delivering all consignments by specified times!if ur prepared 2 pay a little xtra then u cud have ur parcel by a specified time. alternatively u cud bring along 2 ur local depot ure card with your id and collect it in person. 5, the company using us as there preferd carrier will always come across problems, but a large proporiton of consignments are deliverd succesfully everyday, if the company have lost business or freight, then there is a insurance procedure they can use. in a perfect world everyone would get there parcels on time everytime, but unfortunatly with the presure of the number consigments we deliver and the pressure to be in several places at the same time makes for a demanding job, not everyone is fortunate enough to be able to earn a half decent wage or work from home. but a vast majority of drivers are very conscienceous and hard working it never seases to amaze me what volums acctually do get deliverd specificly timed deliveries, so FY!
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