One of the UK’s most popular delivery companies has come under fire for reports of late deliveries, damaged parcels, poor communication, and misplaced packages.
Not too long ago, Evri tried to turn a new page. Formerly known as Hermes, it rebranded the company in March 2022. “The rebrand also established our new Evri values, which have quickly been adopted by our colleagues and couriers,” promises the company on its website.
Evri is an accredited seller fulfilled prime carrier for Amazon, which is being used by many merchants across the UK.
Under Hermes, the courier firm was marred by allegations of poor service, resulting in the rebranding.
The standard under the new name improved a few months, with the company even releasing a statement saying: “Evri excelled during the trial with Amazon Prime, meeting all their requirements by delivering a high-quality service during the trial period, with a delivery success rate of over 97%.”
However, just recently, the complaints started rolling in again. Locate2u News reached out to Evri, which only confirmed that a team will look into the complaints.
Delivery experience
Recently, complaints about Evri’s service have emerged. Customers complain about poor communication, not knowing when the parcel will be delivered, and sometimes, no updates for nearly half a day.
In response to Locate2u News’ questions, Evri says: “Sorry to see some customers have had an issue.” However, some customers also feel frustrated with the company’s response when trying to follow up on where their missed parcel could be.
One customer posted a response from the courier company apologizing for the inconvenience due to the delivery driver using the wrong address. “The quickest way to solve this is to check with your neighbors to see if they have taken your parcel,” the employee suggested.
Right of reply
Evri responded to Locate2u’s query by reminding customers that it delivers more than 730 million parcels annually, serving 12 million customers weekly.
“We have invested £46million ($56million) into our operation and customer service in preparation for our Christmas peak, including the recruitment of 6,500 extra people,” clarified a spokesperson.
Evri works with 700 of the country’s top retailers and says this Christmas, it will have a new “phoneline and UK-based customer service team” to help with customer service.
What businesses can learn from this
Locate2u CEO Steve Orenstein says these types of mistakes happen in logistics. It’s the nature of the business. But it depends on how the company recovers from this and turns a complaint into a returning customer.
“The key thing here is thinking about preventing this from happening. But also how can you reduce [the mistakes] as much as possible,” says Orenstein.
How to recover from a bad review
Solution One: Capture a live review of the experience the minute the delivery is completed.
Orenstein: “If you know the customer is unhappy, it means that you can fix it.”
Solution Two: Look for patterns – if a group of drivers repeat the same mistakes.
Orenstein: “Maybe some drivers need some education on specific issues.”
Solution Three: Allowing drivers to take photos or GPS coordinates of the parcel upon completion of delivery.
Orenstein: “[With GPS coordinates] a customer can see exactly where the driver is at that point in time.”
Financial overview
According to The Guardian, Evri paid more than £8m ($10m) in back pension payments for more than 6,000 of its drivers last year. This was due to pressure from the retirement savings watchdog and unions.
Since a court ruling in 2021 that found Uber drivers were not self-employed and therefore had pension rights, the Pensions Regulator has been encouraging gig economy companies to enroll workers into pension schemes proactively. Evri agreed to do so last year when it also began offering maternity and paternity leave to the majority of drivers.
Evri now works with 20,000 drivers – all of whom are self-employed – and directly employs almost 7,700 people at its head offices and warehouses – about 400 more year-on-year.
More than half of its couriers have opted for its “self-employed-plus” (SE-plus) model – a deal agreed with the GMB union in 2019 that includes paid holiday and guaranteed minimum hourly wages for drivers.
It’s reported that sales in the UK (Evri’s core market) slipped 1.4%, but overseas sales more than doubled.
Evri is battling with “record high volumes” of parcels per day, more than during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Guardian says Evri has invested £40m ($50m) in its operations. This includes employing more than 6,000 new staff. This is set to help with the high volume of parcels needed to be processed daily. It plans to double in size over the next five years. But this will be tricky if staff aren’t trained properly.
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About the author
Mia is a multi-award-winning journalist. She has more than 14 years of experience in mainstream media. She's covered many historic moments that happened in Africa and internationally. She has a strong focus on human interest stories, to bring her readers and viewers closer to the topics at hand.
