On Sat, 18 Apr 2015 22:41:48 +0100, David Hill
wrote:

y had been posted. The quickest delivery
was the next day - the longest delivery was 14 days later. I even had a
card saying one package was too large and on collecting it I found 3
items that had the postman bothered removing the elastic band around all
three each could have easily gone through the letter box. Royal Mail is
a very poor for perishable goods and too many of these mail order
companies use this service.

I have to disagree, I find Royal mail First class, but it does to a
small amount depend on your postman, here we have a great one, problem
is he is retiring and we have yet to find out how good his replacement
will be.
We had the same worry approx 2 years back the the young chap who took
over is equally as good. Your location can help as well ,our postman
is quite happy to leave things that don't need a signature in a cool
box by the door if we our out but again we fortunate that he still
comes about 8.30 anyway so we usually see him


I used City Link for a time but after taking an order to their depot and
having it then put in the back of a van not in use, and when found 10
days later they delivered a load of slime and said it wasn't their fault.
I got settlement 3 days before we were due to go to court.
I remember in the days of British Rail Red Star delivery having 5 boxes
of young Chrysanth plants sent from Littlehampton, I box got to Cardiff,
2 to Swansea and 2 to Haverford West, took 3 days to get them all
delivered to me in Swansea.
Was City Link handling a segment of that even then?

Red Star was fairly reliable as usually it was simple routes mainly
using through trains between places and say something was presented
at Southampton at 8am it would soon be on a train to Waterloo and the
end customer would be informed that it could be collected from about
10.30. This simple service with few links to the chain made it
quick and reliable which is why we used to send samples up to head
office in London almost daily.

City link started as a privatly owned venture using the BR Red Star
system and expanding on it. eg a Red Star parcel could only be sent to
a london terminus for where it could be collected, City Link started
by collecting the Parcel from a terminus and taking it across the City
and despatching onward to a another destination from another Terminus.
Hence the name. Soon they started to collect and deliver from
customers as well but used Red Star in between.

In later years BR and City Link fell out and City Link moved on to
become a normal courier using roads and it's long distance transport
and depots.


G.Harman