We've all been there. Door knocking on neighbours half way down your street who you've never spoken to before to try and find out where on earth your parcel has been left this time. From parcels that go missing, rogue delivery locations, hours spent on hold with chatbots and bashed boxes, you don’t need to look far to find a horror story about UK delivery companies. It's one of the few things Brits can all agree on - the infuriating rage we feel when it takes longer to track down your parcel than if we'd just gone to a shop and bought the thing.
Now, new figures suggest a certain delivery company is the worst offender. Yes, chances are you guessed right. It's Evri! They rebranded from Hermes UK two years ago and have been named the UK’s worst parcel distribution company for the second year running, with around one in two customers reporting a problem with its service. The annual post monitoring report by Ofcom polled more than 4,000 people who had used any delivery company in the last six months and asked them to report on how often they had experienced a ‘delivery issue’ with each company.
The most common issues were delivery delays (27%), parcels being left in an inappropriate location (23%), the delivery driver not knocking loudly enough (20%), and not being given enough time to answer the door (19%). Evri came out worse than Yodel, while Amazon and DHL are the best performers, according to the report.
'Evri Rage' is real. A quick look on social media suggests the experience is pretty common. Accompanied by a meme of a man falling flat on the floor, one user wrote on X ‘Oh god Evri have "delivered" my parcel...somewhere, am absolutely never going to see it again. Why oh why @marksandspencer do you use them??’ Another user wrore ‘Has anyone ever managed to make a claim for a lost parcel with evri? I am stuck in chat bot hell, unable to get through to a parcel and keep being told to contact the sender, when I am the sender.’ A third wrote ‘GAME have finally dispatched my Sonic games! But there's one problem... Evri have them.’
Strange delivery locations and poor communication appear to be reoccurring issues. Sarah* says ‘This summer, I was gardening and moved a plant pot that’s not even anywhere near my front door. There was a totally sodden, disintegrated package tucked underneath. I realised it was a present I’d ordered my dad for Christmas 6 months earlier. I had no idea it was there it was in such a random place, and I’d never had a note through the door telling me it had arrived. Evri’s haphazard chucking of parcels and me forgetting I was still waiting for a gift to be delivered is clearly not a good combo.’
When Holly* has an order being delivered by Evri, she often turns into a detective to find out where it will end up. 'We have to play a game of hunt the package. Will it be in the bin, or stuffed on top of our electricity meter, or in next door's recycling? Who knows! It's fun trying to find out,’ she says. Meanwhile, Lorraine says ‘I’ve definitely had to sprint down the street barefoot in my pjs chasing after them because they give you 0.5 secs to answer the door.’
The complaints have, unsurprisingly, reached Evri. In December last year, Evri admitted that it has ‘earned’ its poor reputation for customer service, but claimed it was turning things around. And, true to their word, they have shown some improvement; it's satisfaction score for resolving complaints has increased from 26% in 2023 to 32% this year.
A spokesman for Evri said: ‘2024 has been a year of significant investment and listening to our customers to improve our service. Our ambition is that every customer’s experience with Evri is a positive one. We recognise there remains more to do, but Ofcom found that we are making year-on-year improvements and our rising parcel volumes are proof that customers and retail clients are voting with their feet and trust us with their deliveries.’
Also, it wouldn’t be fair to heap all the blame on Evri. While people love to rant about the courier, research by Citizen’s Advice found parcel complains are a problem across the board. According to the organisation, one in three people in the UK had problems with the most recent delivery of a parcel to them in 2023.
Plus, while are quick to complain when something goes wrong with our parcel, it's worth remembering the mass unemployment, the zero-hours contracts and the fact that some parcel couriers have complained about low wages in the past.
So, how do you solve a problem like delivery companies? You could try bracing the shops IRL, of course, but this comes with its own frustrations (although at least running down the street in your PJs isn’t one of them.) Or, we simply accept that yes, the parcel might be delayed/lost/battered, and this is just part of the package (excuse the pun) when it comes to online deliveries at the busiest time of the year. Happy shopping!