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Citylink goes bust
- Thread starter Peter B
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Yep, here:-
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30602326
Sent from my iPhone using Talk Photography Forums
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30602326
Sent from my iPhone using Talk Photography Forums
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Fuji were big users of City Link. All their returns and free lenses were collected / dispatched by them.
Such a shame for all the staff to find themselves redundant at this time of year.
Such a shame for all the staff to find themselves redundant at this time of year.
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- Mr Compatible Ink
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MyHermes is another one, sorry to see anyone lose their job but S*ittylink have been terrible in my experience.
RedRobin
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Citylink have been excellent in my experience of receiving many goods via them over a long period. It has usually been the same driver and I am always friendly towards couriers and treat them like human beings and not some insignificant minion (as many people snobbishly do with couriers). Consequently I have never had to suffer the inconvenience of having to wait in all day on a 9-5 slot.
I am sure that another courier service will jump into its place. With all the online shopping and therefore shipping, it surely isn't a dying market.
I am sure that another courier service will jump into its place. With all the online shopping and therefore shipping, it surely isn't a dying market.
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I've used my hermes lots of times and have had great service.
I'm sure there will be folks able to list issues with most delivery companies, but it's hardly reason for hoping they go bust.
I'm sure there will be folks able to list issues with most delivery companies, but it's hardly reason for hoping they go bust.
Really! ... and who do you think would take up the slack if that happened? It sure as hell wouldn't be TNT, DPD, DHL, or Interlink Express because they're probably stretched to near full capacity already. Most independent courier companies wouldn't touch it with a barge pole either because there's no money in it. If they did decide to 'help out' they'd be wanting in the region of £150 £160 a day per transit load and you could bet your boots that would force delivery charges up pretty quickly.The problem, as always, lies in the fact that retailers offer and the public demand dirt cheap or free delivery. Getting stuff from A - B costs money in the form of fuel, insurances, vehicle wear & tear and that's more likely to be the reason that Citylink have gone under ... because it cost them more to deliver than they could get away with charging.
Hermes, Yodel and the other cheap delivery companies might be crap but because people have come to expect their stuff to be delivered to them for next to nothing ... they're a necessity. If they "follow suit" as you hope then parcel deliveries across the country would be up sh*t creek without a paddle PDQ.
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Gremlin
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It became Post Office Ltd which incorporates Post Office Counters, Parcelforce & Royal Mail.
Surprised no one wants to them go bust as well!
Fuel costs, well l drive a newish Vauxhall combo and get about 230miles to a tank of diesel on stop/startd
delivery.
Have no problem with other delivery drivers round here, not had a problem yet
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Being an online retailer, I totally understand that customers expect dirt cheap or free delivery and I subsidise all of our deliveries. Being cheap isn't an excuse for crap customer service.
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We deliver most of out stuff via Royal Mail (2-300 items a week) and beside the occasional missing item they are the best courier by a country mile.
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Plus you get to collect your stuff when you're inevitably not in on a weekday afternoon from a sorting office that is less than 5 miles away for a huge percentage of the population (And open nice and early). Most couriers I have to collect from are a 60 mile round trip away and open during office hours, handy.
Then it's people like you that need to get your heads out of the clouds and smell the coffee because if the multitude of sellers that think like you do keep doing what they're doing, we will have no big capacity parcel delivery firms left within a few years because they'll all have gone the way of CityLink. Somewhere down the line the entire country needs to come to the realisation that making parcel deliveries cheaper than it costs to do the job is simply not sustainable.
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RedRobin
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....As a customer I think it reasonable to sometimes expect free delivery but NOT at the expense of the courier - In those cases I expect the shipping / courier cost to be paid by the online seller if it's within the UK mainland.
OP
Peter B
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I bought a small item recently in a box about the size of after eight mints. Buying direct from the seller meant paying £10 for delivery to the highlands, but buying from the same seller via Amazon was free and delivered by PO. Someone obviously took a hit.
RedRobin
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....Surely that's because Amazon have huge purchasing power and can afford to cover the courier's costs. Although unfortunately they probably screw the courier so they maximise their own profit. Just like many supermarkets.
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My tyre supplier has recently had to swop there delivery company (TNT )because will no longer deliver what is now termed as dirty freight !
Apparently there are few companies that will handle this type of item now for some strang reason.
I see a local small outfit is specifically advertising that they will handle such "Dirty freight" as they say nothingis undeliverable by them.
As one door closes it opens up for someone else
Apparently there are few companies that will handle this type of item now for some strang reason.
I see a local small outfit is specifically advertising that they will handle such "Dirty freight" as they say nothingis undeliverable by them.
As one door closes it opens up for someone else
Steve Smith
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I'm fairly sure that bankruptcy and/or going out of business will have no effect on the level of service provided by City Link.
Steve.
Steve.
Steve Smith
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No you don't. Your customers pay for it.
The only money coming into a business is what the customers provide. Therefore they are paying for everything - even things they think they are getting free.
Steve.
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Sad to see City Link go under even if i have had issues with them in the past. There are too many courier companies about stealing a bit of chunk of this parcel business, might see another one or two fold pretty soon but honestly, they compete with each other for the cheapest price to deliver a parcel then wonder why they cannot compete in an affordable business model or afford to operate altogether.
RedRobin
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....This may be the case in your business but I think you misunderstand me. I think that some businesses pay couriers out of their profits so that they can offer free delivery to some of their customers. Offering free delivery is always attractive to any customer. The shipping cost may be hidden and subsidised. A courier company will doubtless be negotiated under contract to charge discounted prices to a large online shop in return for a regular volume of jobs.
Steve Smith
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But however you look at it, your customers are paying it.
Steve.
Steve.
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Really..
Lets take a look at an example.
Business Sells online an item for £10.00 of which £2.00 is profit.
The customer pays 50p postage at check out This amount being the total cost to the business of the postage.
Total cost to customer £10.50
Customer has covered postage in the total price
Business says hay sales are down lets do free postage
Now customer pays £10.00 NO Postage..
Business profit is now down 50p as this is the cost to them for postage.
So profit £1.50
At what point did the free postage cost reflect negatively on the purchasers experiance ????
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A lot of items with free postage are slightly more expensive than those without.
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My post was in response to Steve's comment which implied all.
I agree there are a considerable amount that fall into that category.
We even get prices increased ready for the sales and supermarkets advertising 2 for £5.00 when there only £2.25 each lol
I agree there are a considerable amount that fall into that category.
We even get prices increased ready for the sales and supermarkets advertising 2 for £5.00 when there only £2.25 each lol
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Love how so many people seem to know how my business operates.
No my customers do not pay for delivery unless they choose an express method. If I up my prices to cover those costs, I'm no longer competitive.
I would love to charge enough to cover my costs and not have to offer free delivery. When my competitors do, I'll be sure to join them, until then, I need to compete.
Non of this really matters though does it. If a courier (whoever it may be) offers to provide a service of delivering my goods in 1,2 or 3 days for £x, then that's what should happen.
Unfortunately though far to many go missing, are thrown over the fence, damaged, left in insecure places and the customer service is bad.
The main reason for this is because they sub contract to any man it's a van and only pay them for complete jobs. The man in the van doesn't want to come back tomorrow so just throws the goods over the fence, signs for the goods himself and doesn't care about the consequences.
No my customers do not pay for delivery unless they choose an express method. If I up my prices to cover those costs, I'm no longer competitive.
I would love to charge enough to cover my costs and not have to offer free delivery. When my competitors do, I'll be sure to join them, until then, I need to compete.
Non of this really matters though does it. If a courier (whoever it may be) offers to provide a service of delivering my goods in 1,2 or 3 days for £x, then that's what should happen.
Unfortunately though far to many go missing, are thrown over the fence, damaged, left in insecure places and the customer service is bad.
The main reason for this is because they sub contract to any man it's a van and only pay them for complete jobs. The man in the van doesn't want to come back tomorrow so just throws the goods over the fence, signs for the goods himself and doesn't care about the consequences.
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Like Robin - I've never had a problem with CityLink - same driver covering my area for the last few years.
According to BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, the senior management contacted the staff a couple of days before Christmas and said there was no truth in the rumours the company was in trouble. Clearly they knew its demise was imminent.
According to BBC Radio 4 Today programme this morning, the senior management contacted the staff a couple of days before Christmas and said there was no truth in the rumours the company was in trouble. Clearly they knew its demise was imminent.
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I'm not surprised tbh, after they failed to deliver my sounds new bed a couple of years ago they have been avoided at all costs in our house, at work and by colleagues in work ordering stuff.
They told us they couldn't find my parents road (where they were supposed to deliver... ) Let alone the house. Yet for several days before delivery was due and for several after, there was a city link van parked at the bottom of the road!!!
My husband and father went to try and find out what had happened to it from the depot and had to wait for over two hours iirc. They didn't know what had happened to it. About a week after it was due we got a phonecall from a company about quarter of a mile away saying our parcel had been delivered there, just before they closed for Christmas and they hadn't realised it wasn't for them until now... a month or two later the city link website still said the parcel was "in transit" or words to that effect. Bl**dy useless IMHO.
After all that I am sorry for the staff that have lost their jobs at this, well any time of year tbh.
They told us they couldn't find my parents road (where they were supposed to deliver... ) Let alone the house. Yet for several days before delivery was due and for several after, there was a city link van parked at the bottom of the road!!!
My husband and father went to try and find out what had happened to it from the depot and had to wait for over two hours iirc. They didn't know what had happened to it. About a week after it was due we got a phonecall from a company about quarter of a mile away saying our parcel had been delivered there, just before they closed for Christmas and they hadn't realised it wasn't for them until now... a month or two later the city link website still said the parcel was "in transit" or words to that effect. Bl**dy useless IMHO.
After all that I am sorry for the staff that have lost their jobs at this, well any time of year tbh.
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Up to five years ago we had a big City Link distro centre in Kidderminster covering South Birmingham and Worcestershire until that was closed and business moved to West Bromwich. They then realised that they were covering too large an area to make it viable (West B'ham, Nth B'ham, Walsall as well as Sth B'ham and Worcestershire) so they opened a brand new, bigger centre in Kidderminster again.
That lasted two years until they started losing money and moved it down to Gloucester. That's how they thought it would work and it didn't.
Prime time cock up and shocking top down management. Inevitable at the end of the day.
That lasted two years until they started losing money and moved it down to Gloucester. That's how they thought it would work and it didn't.
Prime time cock up and shocking top down management. Inevitable at the end of the day.
Steve Smith
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The implication is that the only money coming into any business is from its customers - therefore anything offered as free is actually paid for by the customers. Unless you can think of any other cash income a business has.
So who pays for the delivery then?
Steve.
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Agreed, I found City Link one of the worst. Parcels arriving damaged, parcels being carded when people were in all day and worst of all, a friend had a laptop computer thrown over the garden gate by a City Link driver and carded as "in a safe place - rear garden".
Even more annoying, the local depot around 2 miles away wasn't my local depot, I was expected to travel 20 miles to a depot in Durham to collect parcels because my local depot "is only for Newcastle addresses, and you don't live in Newcastle", they couldn't give an explanantion when it was pointed out the depot wasn't in Newcastle, it wasn't even on the same side of the river as Newcastle.
Bunch of idiots, they were only going to go one way from my experiences with them.
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Steve Smith
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Same here. I live on the Isle of Wight. They have a depot in Cowes (about eight miles away) but if no one is at home when they try to deliver, they leave a card inviting me to pick it up from their Portsmouth depot. A couple of miles closer but requires a boat trip!
A few times I have managed to retrieve an item by going to the local depot which is hidden at the back of an industrial area with no signs pointing to its existence.
Steve.
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Well I'm screwed. City Link/DPD are the only ones I will deal with. Parcel Force won't deliver to my home address because the driver's a lazy sod and will always phone with an excuse, Yodel will struggle as I have an injunction pending against their local driver, and their service has been useless as well, Hermes are worse than useless and got binned yonks ago (I still have credit with them for my next delivery, they can keep it) . Both the DPD driver and City Link driver are both top blokes here and had nothing but excellent service from them personally and as a company with not a single missed delivery when I've sent stuff either.
With all courier companies you are at the mercy of the delivery driver of course.
With all courier companies you are at the mercy of the delivery driver of course.