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EVRi disgracefully delinquent delivery disaster

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Which is the worst possible courier by which you might be horrified to discover that your latest LP purchase is to be delivered to your door?

It used to be DPD, until they seemed to up their game a year or two back, but now it must be EVRi, the bargain-basement, careless, cack-handed pillocks who seem to gleefully lob everything, irrespective of contents, value or ‘FRAGILE’ markings, into the back of a half knackered white van driven by a gormless idiot primate with a mobile for a sat nav, a soggy old sock for a brain and a carefree attitude to private property that has been entrusted into their ‘professional’ care.

See my latest delivery in the comments.

Any more tales of EVRi hopelessness, or the depressing failures of your own courier-related shoddy experience?

2

Comments

  2. The culprits:

    View post on imgur.com

    Note FRAGILE marking – this is on BOTH sides of the LP container.

    Obviously, nowhere along the line could anyone at EVRi read or understand the meaning of this word and what it signified for the level of service they were being PAID to deliver.

    The cover of the LP contained within this unfortunate parcel inevitably carries corresponding bends and folds to those that its container was allowed to acquire during the time it spent – all of three or four days – in EVRi’s ‘care’.

  3. Clearly, you’ve built up a head of steam – and naturally one doesn’t wish to get in the way of your oncoming wrath – but I must state that I’ve been very impressed by my local EVRI delivery woman. No damage, no problems – and if I need to sign for something, she’s always very pleasant.
    Maybe I’ve just been lucky?

    • Isn’t it always down to whomsoever is employed locally? Whilst the global reputation of Evri remains nearly as poor as that of Hermes, their name before shame insisted on a re-brand, we too have a superb local conduit. She is a middle-aged woman, in a battered vehicle and more tatts than Millwall, and is utterly superb, and the only such person ever to have me rushing to fill in the inevitable, post delivery “how did we do” e mail.

        • You’ve both been lucky. Every (hah!) time I see an EVRi email pop into my inbox, I brace myself for disappointment and possibly even rage. Every (sic) time the van shows up in the cul-de-sac, if I am able to race downstairs fast enough to catch him before he roars off at limit-exceeding speed to find another target for his basketball practise, I might catch a glimpse of another in a long line of profusely inked dullards wondering what day it is and what postal district they are in as they veer off wildly, steering with one hand and simultaneously consulting Google maps on a cracked mobile screen.

  4. I won’t buy things if they come with the dread words “Delivery by Yodel”. Yodel don’t deliver things, they just put cards through your door making you think it’s your fault.

  5. Thankfully, most online vendors that I use here in Sweden give you options for how, and by which delivery service, your parcel will be delivered. And the only problems I’ve had with failed deliveries have been when I’ve opted to have a parcel delivered directly to a pick-up place and the message of its arrival not getting to me in time, so when I finally got word of it having been delivered, it had already been sent back…
    This was only a problem because I don’t have a mobile phone, and that concept was apparently so unthinkable that they still texted me the delivery message (which I of course didn’t receive) and only sent the dispatch note through the mail once the parcel was getting ready to be sent back. And since the mail delivery no longer comes every day…I’d usually get it the day after it had been sent back!

    But that hasn’t happened in the last year or so, they seem to have become smarter and now send me the delivery details by email instead. Also, I most often opt for some door-to-door delivery option, as it’s always worked brilliantly for me (but I just got an email telling me about a parcel I can now come and pick up at the betting shop/tobacconist/news vendor near me – but it’s a pre-order I made a month ago, so I can’t remember why I chose that option this time…)

    • I have a mobile and I like that you get a text for every stage of the item’s journey. I choose instabox. I get a pin when it’s arrived so I can open the locker at my local store without needing to speak to anyone. The local store is very close by. I can collect on the way home from work. Alternatively if it won’t fit I pick it up at the same store but go to the counter and show the text which has a code. After living in the UK and having so many issues with deliveries this is just brilliant.

  6. Can depend on the person. I was a Fastway franchisee for a few years and while I was aware that some of my colleagues gave the rest of us a bad name, I always tried to handle parcels as carefully as if they were my own, although I had no control over how they had been transported before they got to me. There was one regular delivery I had that once I found out the parcel contents were the cremated remains of somebody’s loved one, I always carried those in the cab on the passenger seat beside me. I was fortunate in that when I was doing this job, it was 90% business to business with no complications. The residential deliveries are naturally more complex with phone calls and sometimes directions required. Nowadays I hear that it has been turned on it’s head, with the vast majority of courier deliveries going to house addresses leading to more time on the road and frustrations when a recipient cannot be contacted.

  7. DHL tracking is piss poor and they often turn up very early, having subbed some of the round out. UPS left a £10k projector on my doorstep with the huge Panasonic on the box clearly visible.
    Our Evri driver is another lady in a car who is very good, DPD are also excellent, a Spanish girl in a small electric van.

    • DPD left a £2700 top-end Windows PC in its cardboard shipping box, clearly labelled ‘Chillblast’ (a rather upmarket gaming rig manufacturer) sat on my front drive in broad daylight, 20 feet from the house, and 10 feet from any passing van.

  8. Have never heard of this particular delivery service. Guess I am lucky, don’t think I have ever had LPs or CDs damaged in delivery and there have been hundreds

  9. Yep. I was away for a couple of days, and Evri thought it appropriate to fling my parcel – in a manner not unlike paperboys in American films – into the middle of my front garden. It would’ve easily fitted through the letterbox; it actually sat in the middle of the front lawn in full sight of dozens of passers by for two days.

  10. My evri driver has given me his phone number so I can call him on day of delivery to let me know what time he will be delivering.that way I make sure I’m home so it’s a help to him as well. I have also seen parcels left at some people’s front door within a couple of feet from passing pedestrians.

  11. Evri’s the worse. They sucked when they were ‘Hermes’. The Evri logo is sh1te, too. Especially when huge on one of their distribution warehouses.

    Prior to them, Home Delivery Network were so bad, that my feedback alone meant that they changed their name to Yodel.

    Don’t use Amazon, but their driver drives too fast, and usually delivers next door’s stuff to us. I say deliver, but abandoned would be more accurate.

    The best are DPD and Parcel Force. The same drivers have been on ‘our’ round for so long they wave if they see me out on the bike.

    • I’ve got a dirty lens re Amazon, having been a driver during Covid but their contract drivers, at least, are massively overworked and badly paid, all the risk and expense being on the driver. Their own liveried vans are invariably beaten to crap, driven by school leavers who don’t know how to drive anything bigger than a hatchback.

      • Oh, I agree. The Amazon man always seems run ragged, but he drives too fast off our access and down the lane. Pulls out in front of bikes, and turns left in front of them. Which he did in the space of 5 minutes to me one day. Won’t do it again, though, after a few words.

  12. I’m sure it’s the individual rather than the company, I’ve had bad experiences with Evri/Hermes but our current delivery person is brilliant. The one company that seems consistently poor around here is UPS who rarely deliver on the day they initially say they will or they can’t find our address despite it having a unique postcode. We also had an instance of delayed delivery because “access to the property was obstructed”, the accompanying photograph showed that the bin men had emptied the wheelie bin and it was slightly overlapping one side of the gate, still enough room to broadside a bus through but no, obstruction…

  13. I sold an old but VGC bit of computer kit on eBay and to my amazement got £150 for it. Packed it up, carefully, but Hermes still managed to smash it meaning a refund to the buyer and £25 built in insurance for me. I suppose I should have insured it but how they managed to smash it through the serried layers of bubble wrap I don’t know. Lessons learnt – insure, double wrap, avoid Hermes, who are now called, yes…Evri.

  14. In the main, I’ve not had any issues with any of the delivery companies. I would probably blame the packaging rather than the delivery company. All modern parcel services are hugely automated. That looks like a cardboard envelope when it should be in a corrugated cardboard box I would have thought.

  15. When EVRi first morphed out of Herpes their service was abysmal. Parcels went missing for days on end, sometimes completely, their tracking was hopeless and their customer service non-existent. More recently though they have become very reliable, round our way at least. Parcels are usually delivered when they say they will be, our local drivers are polite and helpful, and most importantly have mastered the art of shutting the front gate when they leave, a skill which Amazon are consistently unable to grasp.

  16. Both EVRI and DHL (or those pretending to be) are often sending texts and emails saying: “Your package is on it’s way. Click the link below to give us access to all your personal information”

  17. Last week the Dodgers left a package in a field 100 yards from my house – in the rain. Thankfully they sent a photo of where they had dropped it. I was able to recognise and retrieve before too much damage was done.

    A few years ago I signed up to Pasta Evangelists. They dropped my first package outside my garage in the pissing rain. I asked them for a replacement which they sent. The pasta was shit so never ordered again.

  18. Evri are totally hit and miss depending on the driver. Our current one is great, she always turns up on time saying “Evri, parcel for you” although i would prefer it if she turned up singing “I’m Evri woman”.

  19. I’ve had deliveries from just about all of them and not had as bad service from any company as some of you seem to have had.
    There have been a few damaged packages, which were replaced without any great hassle and a couple that have just disappeared and the payment refunded, over the years.
    None of the delivery services are perfect and I don’t expect they ever will be.

  20. Living in rural Australia as I do, I have learned not to expect anything much – next-day delivery is but a distant dream. Things will arrive when they arrive. Sometimes something dispatched from Brisbane – 1 1/2 hours and 134km hours away – will arrive in 2 days, sometimes (naming no names because I can’t remember) it will go to their distribution centre in Coffs Harbour, then back up to their distribution centre on the Gold Coast, and finally to me. A round trip of over 750km…

    I’m lucky in my drivers though – no damage or misdeliveries, and all without exception cheery and happy to have a natter on the doorstep. The Auspost Welsh one’s my favourite – he’s been here 15 years and still sounds like he’s just got off the plane.

  21. I’ve had dealings with most of them over the years. I’ve had a few annoyances here and there the most recent being with the frankly terrible Yodal who held a box set of CDs at their Wrexham depot for over a week before they finally deigned to deliver it and only then after numerous emails sent to the seller and to Yodal. Prior to this I’ve had Royal Mail deliver discs bought from Presto Music to the wrong address which I managed to recover with Presto’s assistance, they had GPS coordinates. The worst though was a number of years ago when I bought a DAC from a Singapore audio dealer. None of the hassle was the dealer’s fault it was entirely the fault of UPS. The DAC arrived from Singapore to the UK remarkably quickly. UPS then took almost a month to deliver it to me. Endless emails from me and the audio dealer’s representative in the UK finally got them moving. The truly frustrating aspect of the whole shebang was that the local UPS depot is twenty minutes from my address. It took them twice as long to move the package from that local depot to me than it took for the DAC to travel from Singapore to the UK.
    A quick word about the best delivery which was yesterday. The Welsh Ambulance service brought me home from Ysbyty Abergele. They got me up the stairs to my flat and made sure I was ok before they departed. First class all the way.

    • I was worrying about the steps…..
      Bravo to the Gwasanaeth Ambiwlans Cymru!!
      Anything decent on the stereo during the drive? The only ambulance driver/paramedic I know has an unedifying love of “songs from the shows”…..

      • The two lovely women in the ambulance team told me I tackled ascending them like a pro. (I’d been practicing with Megan the physio). I think I’ll leave going down them though for a bit.
        BBC Radio Cymru all the way back but I sat chatting about Mick Herron amongst other authors and books with Sioned all the way home. She is a reader and spent some time examining the spines of my books upon arrival into my flat.
        I had many good chats with staff at Abergele about music. The place was a hotbed of music lovers. Much talk about Hans Zimmer and movie soundtracks while the anaesthetics were administered and I definitely met a kindred spirit in Chris one of the night nurses who is a huge Zappa fan amongst others. He’s calling to see me at home in a couple of months time to take those DALI floorstanders off me. He phoned me last night for a chat and to check I was alright. Lovely people each and everyone of them and that’s not the Oxy talking.

        • Happy to hear everything went well and that you had such a positive experience!
          I hope you’ve got a big stack of good books to get you through the first weeks.

          • Thanks Lo. Hopefully everything will improve over the coming weeks and months. It’s hard going at the moment. I’ve always got a stack of books to get stuck into. I’m reading the latest Mick Herron and Lustrum by Robert Harris at the moment and enjoying both of them.

            • The end result will be worth it, I bet.
              The one day I was on Oxy after my op, I happened to read a novel that featured, fittingly, talking mushrooms! 😉

                • Oh, they gave me lots of it too, I just chose to not take it after my operation day. I had other painkillers of a less grim variety that worked well enough for me. But I’m OK with pain, I’ve been in pain most days of my adult life, and some of it was the kind that makes you want to jump from a window…a little knee surgery was nothing after living through those times (without any painkillers!)

          • I’ve been given elbow crutches which are fine except when I need to carry anything. If I drop something which I’m managing to do frequently when using the crutches it’s a drag. I need to get my leaf-picker to grab the dropped item then try again. Everything takes ages. It’s frustrating and painful.

      • Welcome back P, glad you’ve got the surgery part done and now, hoping for a speedy and comfortable recovery. I must say, it sounds as if you lucked out with your care team – superb health care AND music / book fans too!

        Now, time to whack on the Wharfedales and relax for a bit. All the best

      • Thanks D. It will take some time. Hopefully I’ll improve week on week and as I’m following the directions I’ve been given by Megan the physio to the letter and taking the meds as instructed I’ve no reason to doubt that progress will be made but it is very early in my recovery. I only had the op done on Thursday morning so it’s very sore and I have to be very careful for now. The district nurse is calling on me on Monday or Tuesday to check I’m alright and again in around two weeks to change the dressing and tidy the incision up. Then it’s off to Wrexham again in six weeks time to see my consultant. After that it’s going to be steady progress. I should be far more robust in a few months but it takes up to a year or more for a complete recovery.

    • It’s gratifying to hear that the ambulance service delivered you home with care – both physical and mental.
      Best wishes for a speedy recovery.

  22. Our local Hermes driver, Bev, had to retire on grounds of ill health during a lockdown. She was already drawing her pension and took the part-time job as a tob-up, then suddenly everybody was having stuff delivered and she’d be working from 7am to 11pm, and still have undelivered parcels left to deal with the following day.

    Eventually Bev broke, and we didn’t get any deliveries for weeks – the depot is in the next market town, about 15 mins drive away, but there were not enough drivers to take over Bev’s patch.

    The current Evri fella is from the school of “two short planks”.

  23. They are all fairly dreadful, but our local Evri delivery girl is actually pretty good. She drives a small hatchback packed to the gunnels with packages – quite how she sorts them out is a mystery.

    The nicest by far are Parcel Force…Royal Mail….whatever they are called now, I got confused ages ago. Our posties are fine too, but the service is now so irregular – everyone says the same thing, i.e. that we only get deliveries every four days or so. They drive a beaten up old van, and also collect from the local post box, so they are hard pressed. I remember when I was a kid we got two deliveries a day and one on Sundays – the world has gone to hell in a handcart.

  24. Trouble is, people have become conditioned by Amazon Prime and others to get delivery on the cheap.Fornusre, some drivers are very good, as highlighted in previous comments. But if people are having to make 150 to 250 drops a day to make a living, something is inevitably going to give. There are occasions when I would happily pay considerably more for a better service, but I wonder how many other people would truthfully do the same ?

  25. Evri deliveries are pretty good for me, but dropping them off is not so great.

    Presumably due to Evri not making it worth their while most of the drop off points have stopped dealing with them. Those that are left are not reliable “we can’t take any more parcels at the moment, come back in an hour” or awkward to get to.

    • I’ve been selling clothes on Vinted recently and the buyer picks the method of posting. Of the main companies, Inpost is by far and away the most convenient. The drop off lockers are plentiful and nearly always in car parks. They work really well. Having to actually go into a shop is much more faff – especially a post office who seem to be mainly there to make you queue and then be a bit surly at you.

      • There’s only one locker in range really and it’s at a petrol station. It is not that convenient but is my best option so that is where I now go.

        Hopefully there will be more soon. There is one around the corner from me, but it doesn’t do Evri AFAIK, but the Evri web page is never up to date and still helpfully lists the shops and post offices that no longer take their parcels.

  26. I’ve always found Amazon to be the best at the deliveries but over the last 6 months or so even they have changed and where they would always put the parcel into our unlocked porch (as per our written delivery instructions) now almost all of them just leave them on the doorstep and don’t even ring the bell. I have no problem with them not waiting around to hand the parcel over but the rest is just BS. I’m considering always going for the locker option which may be more secure but then, of course, you have to go out to get them.

    This happens, btw, even when the parcel WOULD fit through the letterbox!

    Evri are OK round our way and I like DPD as you can at least track it to the last minute if you want to. Royal Mail/Parcelforce are very unreliable in terms of delivery times

  27. Meanwhile, this appeared in my inbox from change.org today. It’s part of a long-running saga, which gives some context to the poor service some receive.

    “Here we go again, folks. Evri strikes again. As you all know, they removed my work without notice two to three months ago. Now, they’ve gone even lower. After agreeing for me to continue my service, they’ve reduced four of my five parcel bands by 72% without communicating with me. They allowed me to work a full month only to find out on invoice day when I was over £1000 down.
    Basically, there are five bands (sizes) I cover: postable, small packet, packet, standard, and heavy/large. They’ve reduced all by 72% except heavy/large, which is around70% of my daily deliveries. I’ve been on the same rates for over eight years without an increase, and for them to reduce the rates after eight years is totally unacceptable.
    After how costs have risen in that time, whoever is making these decisions needs to be investigated. And to do it without even telling the person it’s going to affect is really unprofessional and, to be honest, dam right disgusting.
    I’ve spoken to many other couriers, and similar things have happened to them. This can really affect a family’s life, especially with the financial strain we’re all under in the UK today. I think the UK government should start an investigation into this type of thing.
    Evri hit an astounding £119 million profit last year. Why would that surprise you when they’re taking from the little guys on the ground who go door to door, get bitten by dogs, take all the vehicle costs, breakdown fuel insurances, and so on? And if you’re unable to service through a breakdown, they expect you to rent a vehicle to deliver your parcels, so you earn nothing? They just squeeze the life out of you so they can show how big their profit margin is. This can’t be right in 2025. I would hate to think how many people suffer from their mental health because of the financials and the relentless pressure to service your round even when you’re ill, broken down, even admitted in hospital. This is a real big issue, especially when they threaten to remove your work if you can’t do it for whatever reason. Even a friend of mine who worked for them had parcels dropped on her mum’s front door step when she was dying because she rang and said couldn’t do the round that day How disgusting! The way they operate is unbelievable.

    Please, please, please share and sign the petition. Let’s stop this happening to others. “

    • Indisputably, it has to be this lot:

      ภารกิจหลักของเราคือการประสบความสำเร็จในการบรรลุความพึงพอใจของลูกค้าที่ยอดเยี่ยมเสมอ จุดมุ่งหมายของ Dragon Courier คือการให้บริการและโซลูชั่นที่เหมาะกับฐานลูกค้าที่มีความต้องการและหลากหลาย

      เรามีความภาคภูมิใจในการให้บริการระดับบุคคลโดยเฉพาะตลอดเวลาไม่ว่าจะกลางวันหรือกลางคืน, ตลอด 24 ชั่วโมงต่อวันและ 365 วันต่อปี ที่สำคัญ Dragon Courier เป็นเจ้าของสถานที่ประกอบธุรกิจทั้งหมดโดยมีกรรมสิทธิ์และไม่มีหนี้สินโดยนำเสนอรูปแบบธุรกิจที่มีเสถียรภาพและต้นทุนต่ำในตลาดการแข่งขันที่เพิ่มขึ้นเรื่อย ๆ เราอาจไม่เคยเป็นคนที่ยิ่งใหญ่ที่สุด แต่เรามุ่งมั่นที่จะทำให้ดีที่สุด

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