We do our best (Initial City Link)

Member Name: pbclmpeter

Product:	Initial City Link
Date:	07/04/03 (1145 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Efficient, Fast, Reliable

Disadvantages: none

I am also a driver for City-Link and have read the reviews. Firstly let me say that nomatter who the courier is they cannot please all the people all the time, even though we do try our best.
There are numerous reasons why parcels etc don't always reach customers doors as planned, here is a few genuine ones to ponder:-

1....Wrong post-code
2....Insuffient address information ( remember we don't live there- you do )
3....If you have not commited yourself to a 'Timed Delivery' we can only deliver
between 9am-6pm
4.... New housing areas are never on the maps so finding them can be very difficult and time consumming.

We not only deliver over 100-130 parcels over a 10 mile radius, we also have collections as well, usually around 12 a day.

The public expects all drivers to have a brain installed with a Streetmap of the Uk. THIS IS NOT SO. How many of the public knows there own area and who is on it. Even Taxi Drivers would not do our job.

We start at 6am load our own vans, route ourselves to the best we can, juggling with the Timed Deliveries and Collections all day long. We can average around 200 miles a day.

This is all done with the inclusion of the above 4 points.

Then when we finally reach our drops we then encounter these few obsticles:

1.....Customer not in
2.....Neighbours won't take parcel in for them.
3.....Has a dog loose in the garden etc ( even a jack Russel can bite )
4.....When you get there you also have a collection and the customer has not even packed
it and you have to wait till they have. 12 collections a day wastes 1 hour for deliveries.

Of course this does not happen with everyone, business's have a lable system that really does, help as we would have to lable the collections ourselves when we get back to base at the end of the shift.

When the shift is over ( Driving Wise ) we then have to unload what
parcels we did not deliver for whatever resason, we have to lable and make sure collections are sent to thier respective depots. When you have 20-30 drivers doing the same thing it can take forever because we always put the customer first.

Lastly, with the ones we coudn't find for whatever reason, we spend ages finding out where it is via the net or other maps so we can deliver the very next day.


So you see a deliveryman's lot is not a bed of roses, those of us who do this job ....do care about our customers but we don't always get it right. We are human after all and all we ask is that you give us a bit of slack, you are not the only ones to get a little hot under the collar.

Yours

Pete ( Your Local Delivery Man for City-Link )

Summary: