City Link Couriers

[tommyboy]

We've used lots over the years for national and international goods. The best we've found has been Interlink.

Fedex have bought ANC and are trying to establish themselves in the UK. I expect that once the ANC service has been tweaked and improved they will rebrand ANC to Fedex.

Royal Mail Special Delivery is still pretty good.

I worked for ANC up untill 2 years ago and retired due to ill health, a lot of the problems stem from this time of year depots having to use relief/agency drivers who naturally wont be so conversant with the delivery route, naturally I am a bit biased to ANC having worked at 6 different depots round the country but I feel ANC are the best of a bad bunch and will turn out to be a major player in the field with the backing of Fedex

 

[hashcake]

City link once failed to deliver 7K's worth of IT kit to me.
They lied and claimed that the driver had left a card when he hadn't.
I had been in all day and whenever a vehicle arrived I would hear the crunch on the gravel.
At work we have used Amtrak, UPS, Interlink and currently Parcelfarce.
We are having major problems with them and it's getting beyond a joke.
It doesn't matter how well we pack the PCs we build and sell because 2 - 3 times a week we get a call from a customer telling us the PC case is damaged.
It's no fun having to build and configure another new PC for a customer when you are very busy.

Back in the late 90's an IT distributor I worked for used Amtrak.
One of our products was a CD duplicator that took one guy at least a day to build and sold for a few thousand pounds.
These things were so heavy that it took two of us to carry one down to the Amtrak van.
We had countless machines damaged so I had a meeting with our account manager from Amtrak.
It turned out that the manager at the central hub in Birmingham was dissapearing in the evening to have an affair and once he had left the premises, various Amtrak staff threw boxes around the depot!
I even saw video footage of one of our duplicators been thrown onto a van.

I talk to drivers from various parcel companies who deliver to us at work on a regular basis.
Each and everyone has told me horror stories about the events that take place at the central hubs.
Fragile labels are apparently a target for items thrown around.

It's bizarre because you name an IT product and we sell it at work and yet, we rarely receive a damaged box.

Personally I would never have something like an expensive LCD TV delivered via a parcel company.
I will always seek out a retailer who can either match an online price or offer a more competitve price.

 

[Flash In The Pan]

I've just had a heated "discussion" with the "manager" at our local City Link after their driver failed to count up to five, tried to deliver my 70-200 VR to my neighbour, failed and went all the way back to the other side of Glasgow.

I ended up having to go over (twice) to pick it up from the depot. When I pointed out that this was all their fault the wee nob behind the counter's exact words were "it's your word against ours".:bang:

The manager (for all the world like a greasier version of Les the publican from Men Behaving Badly) was even worse.

From now on I'm going to make it clear to sellers that under no circumstances will I accept any goods delivered by S.hittyLink....