High Street chain collapse sweepstake

tillyoshea · Thu 25 Dec, 2014 22.01

Not high street, but I see that courier Citylink has gone into administration - at a terrible time of year for their workers. I see that they haven't managed to update their website with their media message re parcels sent on Christmas Eve not being delivered.

http://bbc.co.uk/news/business-30602326

Unfortunate news for John Lewis, too - I understand that pre-Christmas trading was down year-on-year, and knocking out their main courier will surely have an impact on their ability to catch up in the post-Christmas sales.

Oh, and Merry Christmas all.

Jovis · Fri 26 Dec, 2014 09.55

tillyoshea wrote:Unfortunate news for John Lewis, too - I understand that pre-Christmas trading was down year-on-year

Where have you heard that?

gottago · Fri 26 Dec, 2014 18.43

Really surprised to see John Lewis closed today. Has it always been like this on Boxing Day?

tillyoshea · Sat 27 Dec, 2014 10.47

Jovis wrote:
tillyoshea wrote:Unfortunate news for John Lewis, too - I understand that pre-Christmas trading was down year-on-year
Where have you heard that?

At least one of the newspapers, but can't remember which, and it's entirely possible that I've mis-remembered. According to this Guardian article, sales were down year-on-year in the weeks leading up to Christmas, which they were putting down to Black Friday sales... but may, of course, have balanced out (or increased) trade over the whole period including Black Friday. That's certainly the direction of travel implied by this earlier FT article.

gottago wrote:Really surprised to see John Lewis closed today. Has it always been like this on Boxing Day?

I can't recall it ever being open on Boxing Day - I think M&S used to be the same until relatively recently?

Martin Phillp · Sat 27 Dec, 2014 11.38

John Lewis used CityLink as it's main courier. I always found CityLink to be one of the better couriers in comparison to Yodel and DPD.

Alexia · Sat 27 Dec, 2014 13.47

tillyoshea wrote:I think M&S used to be the same until relatively recently?

M&S has been fully open Boxing Day for precisely two years.

JAS84 · Sat 27 Dec, 2014 15.04

Martin Phillp wrote:John Lewis used CityLink as it's main courier. I always found CityLink to be one of the better couriers in comparison to Yodel and DPD.

Yodel have made headlines for the wrong reasons more than once. They've even ended up on BBC Watchdog: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/article ... een-learnt

jonathan · Sat 27 Dec, 2014 21.30

Martin Phillp wrote:John Lewis used CityLink as it's main courier. I always found CityLink to be one of the better couriers in comparison to Yodel and DPD.

DPD is by far the best courier in my experience. The only time they have let me down is when they arrived 10 minutes after the one hour delivery window they provided.

WillPS · Sun 28 Dec, 2014 02.29

They're all completely useless in some way. I don't really have any positive memories of CityLink.

I expect John Lewis will just dump everything with Royal Mail/Parcelforce as a stop-gap.

Royal Mail and Parcelforce would be perfect if interacting with them didn't involve the fecking Post Office.

tillyoshea · Mon 05 Jan, 2015 16.52

Fashion retailer Bank has entered administration today. I don't think I've ever entered any of their 84 shops.

barcode · Mon 05 Jan, 2015 22.48

I have, it like a small department store with each section to different brands.