City Link in administration.

stonevibe

Hope no one is using them to ship guitars...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-30602326

stickyfiddle

That sucks for anyone with a pending delivery, but it's excellent news in general. Awful company. 

ICBM

+1

I feel sorry for those who have lost their jobs (well, apart from the ones who break, lose and misdeliver packages) but there are too many couriers chasing too little business, fighting over the bottom of the market and driving customer service down in the attempt to offer the lowest cost… so frankly I'm not really that sorry that one of the worst offenders has gone.

thumpingrug

Odd day to make the announcement.

stickyfiddle

thumpingrug said:

Odd day to make the announcement.

I'd guess they didn't want to undermine their own business before today, but don't have any money to continue operating after today.

Danny1969

I've been a City Link account holder for 15 years . Service wise there's never been a problem but their prices have risen to the point we just don't use them anymore
We now suffer with the school run mother couriers, the worst service ever but cheap so we put up with it and there,s the problem, no one wants to pay for service anymore

lloyd

I've had problems with them in the past but no more than any other courier, but yeah shit of you're still waiting on something soon, I assume they'll honour their work/sell it on to another company

mudslide73

This is bad news. I feel sorry for anyone who loses their job - especially at Christmas time. The only positives will be felt in the used van market.

Fortheloveofguitar

Through parcel monkey they were very cheap but the service was bad if something went wrong.

I use UPS through Interparcel now

ICBM

stickyfiddle said:

thumpingrug said:

Odd day to make the announcement.

I'd guess they didn't want to undermine their own business before today, but don't have any money to continue operating after today.

"Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT union, said: "This is the bitterest blow any group of workers could receive on Christmas Day and it is absolutely shocking that the company have sprung this announcement once all the Christmas deliveries have been completed." (BBC)

I'd guess that the timing wasn't accidental and they did it at the point in the year when the total amount of goods in transit is at the absolute minimum.

Emp_Fab

It's going to be interesting for my lot come Monday as we use them exclusively - and a lot.

VimFuego

ICBM said:

stickyfiddle said:

thumpingrug said:

Odd day to make the announcement.

I'd guess they didn't want to undermine their own business before today, but don't have any money to continue operating after today.

"Mick Cash, general secretary of the RMT union, said: "This is the bitterest blow any group of workers could receive on Christmas Day and it is absolutely shocking that the company have sprung this announcement once all the Christmas deliveries have been completed." (BBC)

I'd guess that the timing wasn't accidental and they did it at the point in the year when the total amount of goods in transit is at the absolute minimum.

gives you a warm, fuzzy glow to know they hold their fellow human beings in such high regard. Fuck me, sometimes I reckon chimpanzees could teach us a thing or two about decent behaviour. Still, I'm sure it made economic sense, so that's alright.

randomhandclaps

ICBM said:

I'd guess that the timing wasn't accidental

Timing just makes them looks like massive dicks.  On the very night one fat man and a few reindeer are delivering to every child in the world they tell us that their plan of filling hundreds of speeding vans with eastern European guys, with no knowledge of the area they are delivering and trained exclusively using Grand Theft Auto has gone tits up  No fucking way!.

ICBM

Yes, very cynical. They must have known it was going this way for months. The only good thing to be said for it is that it also probably means that the number of people losing packages or having to try to get compensation out of the administrators may be minimised.

jonnyburgo

Used them twice and they fucked up both times, moved to UPS, no fuck ups in 5 years (touch wood)

randomhandclaps

A few years back I sent a speaker to Photek.  Photek messaged me to say it hadn't arrived 4 days later.  I phoned City Link who said that they had tried to deliver it three times, even though he was in.  As a result they wouldn't try again unless I paid again.  I called them back and they said they had photo proof that they had attended.  The next day they sent me three copies of exactly the same wonky and out of focus photo with a different date printed on each.  Not only was the photo not Photek's front door (it was his neighbour's so wrong number), it was clearly taken from outside the front gate and they also forgot to delete the EXIF data which meant when I checked the details they were clearly taken the morning after I rang.  If it wasn't so insulting and fucked up it'd probably be hilarious. 

suspiciousminds

I was offered a supervisors job with them once by one of their area mgrs - proper pissed me about.
I passed the first interview then got invited to a second at a different depot. Which was a nice 80m round trip.
Got offered the job verbally, shook hands and told to wait for the written confirmation.
5 weeks, and a few emails later i had a reply saying the position was now unavailable.

jonnyburgo

with shittylink you couldnt actually talk to anybody who knew what was happening, just some centralised bullshit. With UPS I can talk to people at the actual depot who can talk to the actual driver and get back to you with an actual answer, how fucking hard can that be?

boogieman

Good riddance to bad rubbish. Feel sorry for the staff though, what a crappy Christmas Day they must be having

Fretwired

thumpingrug said:

Odd day to make the announcement.

  Burying bad news ... sad for those whose Christmas has been ruined through redundancy.

d8m

Feel sorry for the staff. What a day to find out