I've been lucky with them in the past and I actually know one of the drivers who lives locally - he's kept stuff on his van for me when I've been out in the past and dropped it round later!
It just struck me as bizarre that they have a system open until 23:00 for varying next day delivery, but then whether the diver is notified of the changes is a matter of chance. The way the girl told me that 'of course, the driver won't always see the change' reminded me of the the moment in Groundhog day when Phil Connors complains about the lack of hot water and the landlady tells him 'There wouldn't be any today.' as though it should be obvious.
Amazon are clearly miffed at not getting their own crack at fucking up. Even though City Link's tracking correctly records a failure to deliver with the goods still 'in our network', Amazon record them as 'Delivered'.
Hoorah for all round incompetence!
Reminds me of when I got a camera lens for delivery by canpar (CANadian PARcel). I got a notice that I wasn't home when they tried to deliver, but I could go pick it up at their depot in town. Fine, I work in town. After work I go down to their depot: "it's out on the truck but he'll be back any minute". Two hours later, I get them to agree to deliver it to my office next day, and had to get really irate for them to back down on charging me 10 bucks extra.
It doesn't surprise me.
There's a certain rough and ready approach prevalent amongst delivery firms: most stuff delivered most of the time - nearly always to the right address - usually for the right price - that's near enough.
Mainly because the drivers are overworked and treated like shit.
Not City Link (only because I haven't looked inside one), but I have seen inside many delivery vans where the boxes are literally thrown around by the driver, parcels that are marked at fragile thrown out of the way to look for others underneath.
No special problem with the drivers who I'm sure are as good or bad as anybody else. But there's a chronic lack of imagination and investment from the delivery firms most of which are doing exactly what they were doing 30 years ago - just desperately trying to undercut each other and the Post Office (oh yeah -I forgot they're just another delivery firm now).
City Link make no effort to negotiate the initial delivery. They offer a second delivery, if you miss the first one, from a limited selection of days (with no time slots or anything) and if you miss that then that's it. They expect you to pick the goods up from their depot. I think that's pitiful.
Amazon may be the worst employer on God's earth, but they certainly have some interesting ideas about delivery.
They have some bad ones too - like using City Link.
But I like the idea of being able to collect my stuff from the paper shop around the corner, or from a local deposit box. That's precisely why I've always preferred delivery by the Post Office, because if I'm out it ends up in the local Post Office, not 40 miles away in somebody's 'hub'.
A guy I'm working with used to work for [courier]. He'd leave the depot at 7am, get back at 8pm and then get a bollocking for not having gone back after his shift (in his own time) with the parcels for people who weren't in the first time he called.
best courier firm I know of is DPD, if you get offered a choice and they are available that's the one to go for
the vans have GPS, accessible by customers online, and they'll txt you with a 1 hour delivery window on the day
They are good but I did have one not turn up but claim they had.
Then when the package was delivered on a before 10am thing the next day the driver said "this must have cost you a lot to get this delivery time" he wasn't too happy to be told that I didn't pay a penny because it was actually a day late and whoever (probably him) was supposed to deliver the day before didn't bother to call my flat.