City Link - The Conspiracy

What is it at the moment with (mainly) non-member reviews of (mainly Citylink) courier firms. Okay if they really are that bad then the reviews are valid but how much really info do they contain. Not much is the answer. I have writen reviews of two of the larger courier firms and they were some of the longest pieces i have written. Surely moaning about the experience of one package, is in the scheme of things, is not very representative. Isnt it fair to say that a review can only be useful if written by someone who has a fair amount of knowledge and experience of the product.

These companies have much more to them than the one parcel that was delivered late. As well as the delivery, surely there are customer services and support systems, business systems, on-line sites, a whole history etc. Without any of this overall info it seems like a bit of a pointless rant or even a deliberate smear campaign.

Writing about one poorly delivered parcel is like reviewing oone chapter of a book or one scene in a film that you didnt like. These stand alone experiences are not representative of the overall product and as such I feel that the writer is reviewing something that they do not know enough about.

My next review is going to be of the novel War and Peace, but only of the cover...which I hated.

I thoroughly agree and especially at this time of year with the volume of parcels. Also it has to be said that one bad experience of a website isn't enough to write about that website, as others use it and find it super. There are reviews written before matters have reached conclusions, and I always think that I wish they had waited and could tell the outcome.

This also gets to be a bit of a problem as most people who write about these companies is due to the fact that they have had one bad experience and the overall rate for the firm gives a poor impression for anybody looking for information on them. So the 90% who are doing just fine tend to be happy with the situation and those 10% will publicly moan of their sorrows.

By the way, I once read War and Peace. It had a nice historical story, but Tolstoy just got so terribly philosophical for too long a stretches at time, so the book really became excruciatingly tedious at times.

I too thought that there might be a bit of a smear going on... ops are different but really not that representative.

Reading reviews that expect 24 hour delivery in busy times also bugs me as many people's deliveries are usually on time and I don't feel a one off experience is really relevant.

I've worked for a handful of courier firms and they are as bad as customers make out....

Ciao has a fair share of Redsave.com (computer company I thihnk) reviews, 11 since the end of November, all by white dots with just one review to their account, same system, different company I reckon.

I was all ready to write a throughly negative review of a courier company the other week (DHL it so happens) as four times they claimed to deliver a parcel when i was sat by the door and no one ever came. I had most of the review written, before I found out (after lots of phone calls!) that it was the sender at fault as they'd addressed my parcel wrong, and after that DHL were really nice about re-delivering to the right address and on specific days etc.

But because that's my only experience ever with DHL i decided to scrap the review as, like has pretty much been concluded above, a review can't really be thorough if its based on one experience.

There are a lot of companies (and their competitors) who are 'placing' reviews. The one that always stands out for me on Ciao is Countrywide Property Lawyers. Of the dozens written only 2 appear to be genuine - the rest are people who sign up, write one review (either v. positive or v. negative) and then disappear. And the style is always very similar. I'd like to see these semi-professional reviews junked by the sites. To be fair, I think any review that's a one off from someone who never writes again and never reads anything is of questionable validity.

just read a review of an Ebuyer moan, 50% of which is a dig at city link. They are getting clever.

If I see one more rant and not a review, I'll scream! Like others have said I don't see how you can review something, after just one experience. A review of such a subject is only helpful, if you've used it for sometime. Lisa x

I've noticed the tendancy for Initial City Link, and was about to start a similar thread! I have not actually read any of the reviews as the title tends to give away where the writer is coming from, and like most of you, feel that a one off negative experience is not representative of the whole company.

I am actually reading War & Peace. It is good for insomnia. Look out for my review in about two years (providing I can actually remember what happened at the beginning by that point).

War and Peace is great, this Russian guy orders a DVD and has it delivered by City Link. Unfortunatley it gets sent to Napolean and after a bit of an argument he invades Moscow. However he gets beaten back because City Link were meant to have delivered all of the winter supplies and they dont. They lied!!!!! And theres some stuff about some russian families. But don't use City Link. Ever.

So far some Russian bloke has died and there are lots of women called Anna and Natasha. I haven't got to the bit about City Link yet.

Its the best bit.

I found the bit about Lidl and their checkout to be even more involving.

but then you have a more "braxian" mind than me. Quick look innocent, Rachels watching.

I also suffer from "Freudian Gravitational Oedipus Complex" and "Strindbergian Bizarro Nightmare Syndrome". But then again you are "Multi-Schizophrenically Entrenchant" (at least based on past discussions) so it makes it a bit of a tie.

I also found this quite interesting

thats probably just a clever way of calling me a twat.

No, it's a clever way of saying you are weird, but I think I can find a scientific term for twat as well.

berlioz wrote:

No, it's a clever way of saying you are weird, but I think I can find a scientific term for twat as well.

We have one already it is called "being a Cowell"