Yahoo Finance The truth about Evri’s missing parcels and bad service – from the staff who work there
It’s a parcel company plagued with problems.
For the past three years, Evri has been listed at the bottom of the Citizens Advice annual delivery company rankings.
In regulator Ofcom’s latest rankings, the company had the highest number of dissatisfied customers and the lowest number of satisfied ones, at just 26pc.
Consumers have accused couriers of leaving parcels in bins or at the side of the road, throwing their deliveries over walls, and stealing their orders.
Now, whistleblowers have alleged that drivers previously fired or suspended for stealing were still delivering parcels for the company, working under other couriers.
Evri, which rebranded from Hermes in March 2022, announced at the beginning of November that it would launch its services at 2,000 post offices.
It is the first time in the Post Office’s 360-year history that consumers will be able to choose to use a delivery service other than Royal Mail.
The company, which delivers for large retailers including John Lewis, Marks & Spencer and Next, says it delivers more than 720 million parcels annually – working out at more than 10 per person for the population of the UK – and that only 1pc fail to arrive on time.
But small retailers told the Telegraph they will be pausing their contracts with Evri this Christmas due to missing parcels and poor service, which is leaving them out of pocket.
It comes ahead of the busiest time of the year for delivery firms as shoppers start ordering Christmas gifts.
‘Evri has no control’
Evri whistleblowers blame back-to-back depot failures, low pay rates and unvetted staff for the poor service being received by consumers.
One manager who has worked for Evri for more than a decade claimed that he had seen couriers suspended for stealing, return to the same depot just days later.
“In the last 12 months we’ve found nine couriers – not the loss prevention team, just us – stealing. Those nine couriers will be taken away, they won’t be able to work,” he said.
“No police are really involved unless it is really high-value stuff; nine times out of ten the police are not involved. But out of those nine, three are now working at the same depot, under a different driver.”
The manager claimed it was the practice of allowing couriers to “contract out” their routes that was leading to most of the problems – including thefts.
Evri couriers are self-employed, a driver with the company can take on several rounds, before then employing their own couriers, who could be friends or family members, to deliver the extra parcels.
The whistleblower claimed: “Evri has no control over the driver system, and therefore anyone can come back as a courier and work under a driver number, going into the same place where they’ve just stolen the parcels.”
Another delivery driver said he was given thousands of parcels to deliver at a rate of 60p per package. The driver, who had to store the parcels in his car and shed, said he resigned after a month.
Under Evri’s storage policy, parcels that are unable to be delivered on first attempt must remain in the care of the courier until the next delivery attempt.
He said: “We were led to believe this is a job you can do whilst doing other things like minding your children or in your spare time and it was not like that.”
The driver added that they would sometimes have to visit a property up to four times to deliver the parcels, but would only be paid once.
A third, who worked during Covid for what was then Hermes, said he left after he was told he would need to take a pay cut.
He said he felt that the company’s response was disrespectful to the sacrifice delivery drivers had made throughout the pandemic.
A Facebook group called “Hermes Packet Rip-Off” contains disgruntled drivers, who say that packages being wrongly labelled is costing them money.
Drivers are paid differently depending on whether they are delivering a “parcel” or a “packet”, on the basis that the packets are smaller.
A standard parcel at Evri is anything between 1.4kg and 17kg. Drivers claimed that deliveries that were heavier than they should be were being sent in the wrong parcel band.
The whistleblower alleged that the incorrectly labelled parcels can knock up to a third off what the drivers receive for each package, in what is known among staff as the “packet racket”.
He explained that while it is possible for the drivers to appeal the badly listed packages, it is onerous and time consuming. Evri told The Telegraph it reviews all claims of incorrectly listed parcels.
“It is a complete and utter farce. You’re thinking, I’ve got 100 parcels today, I am going to get £100, but you’re more likely to get 60,” he said.
The whistleblower said he no longer bothers reporting the wrongly labelled deliveries: “I don’t do it anymore, because it’s such a hassle.”
34,000 missing parcels
Evri customers have long complained about parcels being thrown over walls, stolen, or arriving damaged.
More than 16,800 complaints about the delivery company have been made through consumer website Resolver so far this year, compared to 419 made about Royal Mail.
Last year, the disputes website saw more than 55,000 complaints made about the company, with 34,000 about packages not being delivered.
One customer claimed he was physically assaulted by another homeowner after an Evri driver left their delivery in a bin several streets away from his home.
Others said they had watched Evri drivers take photos of their parcels in their doorways, before picking them up and leaving with them.
Tessa Cobley said she’d had several parcels left on the side of the road where she lives in central Brighton, including a vacuum cleaner and an advent calendar worth £150.
She said her latest experience with the delivery company saw a driver leave a package in her recycling bin. The bin, which was then blown completely open in the wind, was filled with rainwater, damaging her order.
She said: “I couldn’t even bring it inside. It was so wet, it was dripping.”
While the shampoo bottles in the package were waterproof, she was left with a messy clean-up job.
“I was just flabbergasted. We were like, ‘How did anyone think that was a good idea?’” she said.
Julie Clements, who lives near Folkestone, said she’d had a number of problems with an Evri delivery driver when ordering clothes and toys for her four-year-old grandson.
She said parcels hadn’t been delivered, that orders had been left next to bins put out for collection, and that she had stopped buying from some retailers because they used Evri.
Customers said they’d struggled to get in contact with the delivery company, which requires recipients missing parcels to use a chatbot. Evri’s website also lists a phone number that consumers can use.
Small businesses cutting ties
Martin Gerhard, 52, the founder of Boostology, an online gift shop, said he had stopped using Evri in the run-up to Christmas.
He said: “We’ve just removed Evri from our delivery options, as when things start to go wrong with them, we know it will only get worse.
“They tend to work well when it’s quiet during the summer, but as Christmas approaches random issues start appearing so we remove them as a delivery choice for our customers at that point.”
Mr Gerhard said he’d received emails from people who had bought from his shop, saying that they’d had parcels delivered to the wrong address by the courier.
“I have no idea how or why this has happened, and won’t even bother trying to contact Evri as I know I won’t get an answer. I’ll just have to dispatch another to our customer who’s still awaiting their delivery,” he said.
It is the responsibility of the retailer to ensure that any contractor they use to deliver parcels gets the product to the consumer.
If a parcel is not delivered, it can mean that small businesses are left out of pocket, as they have to send out a replacement.
Hanna Stewart, who runs Curlicue, a wrapping paper company, said she’s faced problems with Evri’s compensation process, which she said “never goes anywhere”.
She explained: “I understand that things can sometimes go wrong so we tend to send parcels out to our customers again at a cost to us, in the hope that compensation comes through – which it never does.”
The small business owner said she was closing Evri delivery much earlier this year after chaos last Christmas.
Jacqueline Buckland, who owns the puzzle retailer Play Shed Puzzles, said usually the company was “great and definitely the cheapest option”.
But she described the compensation process as “cold” and said that it “just feels wrong that I paid them for a service that they then failed at”.
Ofcom, the regulator responsible for delivery firms, said it has introduced stricter guidance for parcel firms, meaning they must tell customers how to complain and provide staff with training.
It expects postal operators to take steps to ensure that communications channels available to consumers are clear and accessible, which includes chatbots.
An Ofcom spokesman said: “We’re closely monitoring implementation of our guidance and new requirements, including carrying out further customer research – which we’ll publish before the end of the year – and engaging regularly with major delivery companies.
“If we don’t see significant improvements in customer service, we’ll consider enforcement action or tighten regulations further.”
When contacted for comment on the claims made, a spokesman for Evri said the company has invested more than £130m to improve its operations and customer service.
The spokesman added that the couriers have a rating of 4.67 stars on the company’s own app and more than three million five-star ratings on TrustPilot.
The company said that of the parcels it delivers annually, more than 99pc arrive on time.
The spokesman said: “Our new client wins and rising parcel volumes are proof of the trust that our customers have in our service and our reliability which is why the Post Office has started to sell our services.
“Our self-employed couriers are at the heart of the business and we work hard to ensure they have good work conditions and support. Working hours vary for couriers who choose how many, and what size of parcels, they wish to deliver.”
The company said pay is typically between £17 and £20 an hour, and that the rates couriers earn are determined by the local geography, the volume and the proximity of the deliveries.
The Evri spokesman continued: “Offences lead to the immediate termination of a courier’s contract with Evri and we have robust procedures in place to investigate claims against our couriers and sub-contractors with serious criminal matters reported to the police.
“It is a requirement that all couriers – including sub-contractors – should have no criminal convictions. Any instances whereby someone has lied about their criminal record to deliver on our behalf would be investigated and lead to immediate dismissal or a contractor having their round terminated.”
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