City Link has gone into administration

[MarkF]

I think the exploitation of courier employees is well known, I will not use them for personal purchases. It's a lethal combination of stressed, anxious and dispirited drivers that some are willing to keep on our roads.

 

[Arrowfoot]

When they were taken over prices went up 25-30% or a bit more. They coped very well from a senders point of view with December which would really suggest a downturn in senders. They had improved a lot of their infrastructure IT. Which suggest that my gut instinct of being asset stripped by the investment company wrong.

I doubt it is stripping as they bought more vehicles and invested 2,500 new hand held scanners worth £2m. And their 2013 year end services score had gone up. Any CFO worth his salt would known what the financial state of affairs are and the announcement on the Eve suggest an event triggered incident probably the talks with the unions had broken down.

 

[brand]

Parcel force is dire. If you are not in they drop it at a Post Office. That's a 6 mile cycle ride for me. That's not what I call parcel delivery service. Parcel Force price are exorbitant. I can get my hermes to pick up from my home and deliver for about 30% less. I had a quote for US posting of £50+ Parcel Force and a like for like of £17 with collection from a private company. I am afraid Parcel Force have abused their monopoly position for to long.
As for City Link I am very very surprised they have lasted this long. Although on saying that they have improved from years ago when after a failed delivery I had two options, cycle 30 odd miles to collect or ring a premium rate number for redelivery.
I Let then return to sender. Hopefully Citylink staff will find jobs with the other delivery companies....hopefully.

 

[Cycleops]

Share your opinions first for entertainment value.

Apparently it's £7.85 an hour outside London.How much were these guys were earning?

 

[welsh dragon]

Apparently it's £7.85 an hour outside London.How much were these guys were earning?

They don't earn an hourly rate. They are paid by the parcel. And the amount they are paid depends on which area they work.

 

[MontyVeda]

not surprised.... i used to work for national florist who used city link... in spite of the huge green arrows on four sides of a box and the words 'this way up', their drivers kept delivering our potted plants upside-down. That was 9 years ago. Over the last two months, City Link has spectacularly fecked up all but one delivery to our premises... good riddance!

 

[vernon]

Apparently it's £7.85 an hour outside London.How much were these guys were earning?

That's not an opinion it's a fact that you had to look up to save you delivering a funny answer.

 

[Cycleops]

That's not an opinion it's a fact that you had to look up to save you delivering a funny answer.

It also appears that you didn't know there was a figure as you referred to drivers ' A living wage' not 'THE living wage'.

 

[StuAff]

Parcel force is dire. If you are not in they drop it at a Post Office. That's a 6 mile cycle ride for me. That's not what I call parcel delivery service. Parcel Force price are exorbitant. I can get my hermes to pick up from my home and deliver for about 30% less. I had a quote for US posting of £50+ Parcel Force and a like for like of £17 with collection from a private company. I am afraid Parcel Force have abused their monopoly position for to long.
As for City Link I am very very surprised they have lasted this long. Although on saying that they have improved from years ago when after a failed delivery I had two options, cycle 30 odd miles to collect or ring a premium rate number for redelivery.
I Let then return to sender. Hopefully Citylink staff will find jobs with the other delivery companies....hopefully.

There is no such monopoly.

 

[MontyVeda]

...
Hopefully City Link staff will find jobs with the other delivery companies....hopefully.

in my experience, it's their drivers that let them down.

A couple of weeks before Xmas, we were waiting a for a delivery of ink & pre-treat. instead of two days it took four days because the driver couldn't find our premises. this meant one of our printers was out of action for a day. The ink turned up late and the pre-treat was missing. When the pre-treat finally turned up, the driver was driving up and down the lane trying to find us and we had to stand on the lane to flag him down. Fair enough, we're not easy to find... imagine our bewilderment when it turned out to be the very same driver that had delivered to us only a few days previously.

 

[nickyboy]

We can moan and groan and wring our hands as much as we like about the issue of self-employed couriers. But they are a product of people buying on the internet and not giving a stuff about the living conditions of the people who are tasked with delivering it to them.
People by and large don't care about the courier. They only care about the price they pay for the product. Things will only change if we, the marketplace, tell suppliers they must use a reliable, reasonably-paid delivery system. Until then we're just pissing in the wind

 

[oldfatfool]

It is a race to the bottom, driven by the general public demanding free postage of everything. How people expect to buy something for less than the price of the postage of it is beyond me. If it continues, and it will, expect there to be NO quality delivery service within 5 years. As soon as the terms and conditions of postmen can legally come under review then it will only be a matter of time.

As for having to travel and pick up a package at least with PF and RM the depots are relatively local. The likes of Herpes don't have 'callers' offices and the drivers getting paid 50p per parcel are expected to make 3 attempts at delivery before returning the item to sender. If you had spent 10 mins and 20p on fuel on the first attempt are you going to:

a) Try again the next day and possibly the day after
b) Dump it anywhere

 

[Dan B]

But even if you don't give a stuff about the living conditions of your suppliers employees, you might well care at least slightly that the supplier can actually supply the service contracted (home delivery) instead of fobbng you off with something inferior (delivery to next doors recycling bin/a depot 30 miles away), and it tends to be the case in general that screwing your staff financially results in their being less motivated to do a good job

 

[nickyboy]

But even if you don't give a stuff about the living conditions of your suppliers employees, you might well care at least slightly that the supplier can actually supply the service contracted (home delivery) instead of fobbng you off with something inferior (delivery to next doors recycling bin/a depot 30 miles away), and it tends to be the case in general that screwing your staff financially results in their being less motivated to do a good job

That, I think, is the glimmer of hope here. Of course there is no way that consumers will behave altruistically and demand their supplier uses a courier paid the living wage. They just don't care.

But they do care about the service they receive. Perhaps the courier market will start to segmentalise; more expensive ones who give you a 1hr time slot, don't chuck it over the fence when you're not in. Cheap ones who offer practically no service. Then you can choose.

I'd really like to see this industry develop in a way where you have a choice of courier with differing prices.

 

[brand]

The fact is if you give someone minimum wage for an 8 hour day and then give them 12 hours work the consequence are obvious. The taxman is I believe responsible for enforcing minimum wage? but clearly couldn't give a sh*t.​