City Link

Don't Give a **** About You or Your Parcel

I bought an ex-display camera on eBay from a high-street shop, they used City Link for delivery.

What a joke.

When the item had not appeared two days after the promised delivery date I checked City Link's website and found that it was recorded as "Successfully delivered", and there was also a previous
attempt to deliver which said that a card had been put through my door - it hadn't.

I phoned "customer services" on 08444930914 and the telephonist told me I had been put through to a depot. When I asked which depot my delivery was routed through he couldn't pronounce "Carlisle". I phoned Carlisle depot repeatedly to find out whether my parcel had passed through their hands and which address it had actually been delivered to. I was told, every time, that someone would call me back and no-one ever did. There didn't seem to be a manager present.

The two airhead female telephonists made up stupid stories about who had accepted the parcel and signed for it, and how the signature could be interpreted as a code for the driver having left it under a flowerpot. Incredibly, I believed some of this crap, having no reason to suspect that they would do anything other than try to help me, and even quizzed my neighbours about the bullshit I had been told.

We eventually met the driver when he delivered my replacement camera. He showed us exactly where he had left the first parcel, on a neighbour's doorstep, UNSIGNED FOR. How is it possible that the driver would ADMIT leaving it unsigned for if the company wasn't in total meltdown ???

I wrote three letters to different addresses within City Link, including their registered office, complaining about the above, and received no reply. Eventually I made contact with "customer services" by email and was told that there was no trace of any of my letters.

Customer services, incidentally, is different from "customer care" at CL. C. "care" deals with "escalated complaints" while the real dross spend their days churning out even lower-grade bullshit at c. serv. (But c. care give the c. serv. phone number in their correspondence.) The email I received from c. care was almost unreadable, e.g. "I can only assume our driver has been attempt delivery". When I complained about this I was told "Although I proof read all my emails sometimes I do make mistakes". They weren't mistakes, Tom, they were evidence that you are illiterate. How come, when they must get hundreds of applications for any job they advertise, do they employ this kind of moron ? Answer to rhetorical question - they "outsource" their recruitment to fly-by-night agencies.

Unfortunately, City Link isn't uniquely bad. The total abandonment of any pretence of quality of service is de rigeur in most companies employing more than 10 people. Something to do with "growth" "profitablity" and sheer stupid greed.

Mark E Scott found this review useful