This is a copy of a complaint letter I wrote to CityLink after being hugely messed around by them and lied to on several occasions. I mentioned in my letter that if they were not able to reassure and/or compensate me for my inconvenience, I would be posting the letter publicly on my blog. I called their head office up several times after writing the letter to ask if they were going to respond.
I never received a reply.
So, here’s the letter:
Head Office
City Link Ltd
Riverbank
Meadows Business Park
Blackwater
Surrey
GU17 9AB
Re: Consignment YAM*****
Dear Sir/Madam,
I am writing to complain about the absolutely awful service which I have received from your company this week. On Monday, 2nd July I was due to receive a package containing 8 items from Ebuyer, which was being delivered by your company. Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond my control I was unable to be in to sign for the package(s) so I left instructions with a third party to sign for the delivery. Unfortunately these instructions were not followed by my third party so I phoned up that afternoon to arrange re-delivery for Tuesday 3rd July.
According to your web site, at 11:27 that morning (3rd July) the goods were loaded onto a van, so I sat at home and awaited delivery. When 17:30 arrived, and the goods had still not turned up, I phoned up to try and chase the delivery, and was cut off when a representative put me through to the Liverpool depot. Fortunately, she had given me the direct local number as well, which I tried several times but it just rang out.
On Wednesday morning I phoned up and spoke to someone at the Liverpool depot who told me that “the driver did not attempt delivery” on the Tuesday because he “ran out of time” and then guaranteed that my goods would be delivered later that day (Wednesday). However, at midday I noticed that nothing had changed on the delivery tracking section of your web site, so I phoned up again and was told that they were never going to be delivered on the Wednesday in the first place, and “they should have told you that this morning” – I was told that they would be delivered “tomorrow” (Thursday). I said that that was completely unacceptable and that I would prefer to make the trip to Widnes to collect the parcel myself. So the woman on the phone made arrangements for me to be able to come and collect the item from the warehouse.
Later that day, I drove for 40 minutes to the Widnes depot only to be told that despite a note being written on my account that I would be coming to collect the items, some clown had failed to read the simple notice and once again put my items out for delivery. The clerk at the front desk told me that despite the fact that my parcel was in the building, there were 4,500 others and it would be impractical for him to try and find mine. Is there no system?
At midday on Thursday I again gave up, having seen no progress on the Delivery Tracking page. I phoned up and was told – surprise, surprise – that it had in fact NOT been put out for delivery on the Thursday. Yet again, someone had either lied to me to get rid of me, or someone somewhere had decided not to bother doing their job… again. I was then assured that my goods would be delivered by 5.30pm. At about 5.25pm I phoned up to see what was going on, to be told that at 16.57 someone had called round and found I wasn’t in, and had left a card posted through a “brown front door”. This was false. I had been waiting in the living room directly above the front door with the window open and no music on so that I would definitely hear the delivery men if they ever did turn up. There was no card through my door, and my front door is black! Either someone is in the habit of lying to customers, or your staff can’t use an A to Z.
I was told that the “best” you could offer was to deliver the goods on Friday! By this time I had lost all faith in the company and wouldn’t believe any promises at all so I asked to speak to a manager, who told me that there was no way I could get the goods even on the Thursday. I protested that I wasn’t going to be in Liverpool on the Friday, and since the goods should have been delivered on the Tuesday why would I have ever thought twice about making arrangements to be away on the Friday? After much argument I managed to persuade them to send someone out who would be there by 8pm at the “absolute latest”. When, at 8.30pm, the goods FINALLY turned up, the delivery man was rude and argumentative; he had a huge go at me for checking the delivery was actually complete before I signed anything. Under the circumstances, I feel that was perfectly reasonable.
I do not hold you responsible for the Monday delivery failing or for the fact that I then had to wait around on the Tuesday as a result of this. However, I find it absolutely unacceptable that the company acted with a complete disregard for my schedule when it not only failed to deliver my parcel on the Tuesday but then does not make any effort to contact me to explain and /or apologise. If the driver runs out of time then either a smaller number of jobs should be loaded onto that particular van, or the driver should complete the work and just get home to his tea a bit later! Why should I suffer just because a driver wants to clock off on time rather than finish his work? Throughout the whole saga, was there ever any intention of delivering my goods?!
Then, it is left up to me to phone an 0870 number during peak hours to find out what is going on, and either I am blatantly lied to or one arm doesn’t know what the other’s doing. To be “guaranteed” that my parcel is coming later “today” and then later told that could never have been the case does not fill me with much confidence in the running of your company. It is expensive and frustrating enough having to take one extra day off work and sit around my house all day being afraid to leave whilst waiting for an elusive delivery, but then to be lied to, told to drive for 1hr20mins only to messed around again, and be told to wait for a SECOND and THIRD day as a result of sheer incompetence in your company.
It is plain to see that these two extra days I have had to take off work, along with the wasted petrol for a trip to Widnes, are completely the fault of CityLink who seem to act with a complete disregard for the fact that their customers cannot just take day after day off work, staying in the house doing nothing, on the off chance that a driver might get round to doing his job. I have better things to do than waste my time chasing up a package that any reputable company would have delivered on the Tuesday morning and had done with it.
As a result of the terrible way in which I have been treated, I would like to request not only a refund for the delivery cost which I paid via Ebuyer, but also compensation for the phone calls and 16.2 miles I had to drive in vein and the two extra days I had to take off work due to failings in your company. I usually earn at least £70 per day, so you now owe me £140 in lost earnings please.
This is by no means an isolated incident. Every single time I have used CityLink in the Liverpool area I have been messed around and disappointed by the service I received. I do not understand how it makes business sense to run a company in such a way. Would it not be a good idea to look after your customers and treat them properly? Or is it because many of your customers are in fact customers of companies like Ebuyer so they have no choice but to be at the mercy of CityLink?
I do hope that this matter can be sorted out fairly for both parties, that you can provide me with compensation for the considerable expenses which you have caused me, and that you can provide me with assurances that measures will be introduced to prevent things like this from happening to your valued customers in the future. If all of these conditions cannot be met, I feel it would be my duty to report CityLink to the Office of Fair Trading and BBC Watchdog as well as post this letter on my blog in order to warn off other potential customers from becoming tied up in a similar terrible mess.
I look forward very much to hearing from you and to seeing a satisfactory resolution to this matter.
Yours sincerely,
Paul Freeman-Powell
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