Evri-thing, Evri-where, All Over the Place

You have to wonder why Hermes went through the hassle of rebranding themselves to Evri, then you get a parcel delivered by them.

Only a year ago in a desperate, and cynical, attempt to shed their woeful reputation as the worst parcel delivery company in the UK Hermes rebranded themselves as Evri. On the 14^th March 2022 they rolled out their corporate PR machine and made promises.

"The new brand will also see a significant investment in its customer service as part of its commitment to ensuring that its customer service remains responsive, knowledgeable and helpful.

This will include Evri opening a fully UK-based customer service team and adding 200 experts who will be based in local depots, closer to where potential issues are. It will also be upgrading its chatbot and releasing more phone lines for those who prefer to speak directly to someone."

So was it a surprise when I got an e-mail about a parcel I was expecting? Well, most other couriers don't do this and actually the first one was a positive.

Hi Skull Cinema
We've just received your parcel from ITD Meyer Group.
As soon as it's out for delivery we'll let you know.

Along with a tracking number and a link to their tracking system. I was buying a pan from the Circulon website, they are good stuff, but nothing I was urgently needing. OK this is great, I'm in the loop and know what is happening. Also, this was two days before the end of the delivery window that Circulon had given me so no worries.

However, the next day another e-mail arrived.

Hi Skull Cinema
There's a delay with the delivery of your ITD Meyer Group parcel as there was an issue accessing the delivery address today.
Don't worry, we will send you a message on Thursday 23 February 2023 regarding your delivery.

Can't access the delivery address? The door of the house is straight out onto the street. I followed the tracking link from the e-mail. And the story changed.

Your courier has had an issue with getting to the delivery address. If you have any delivery instructions you think might help, visit the help section and use the contact us page.

Now the problem isn't getting access to the address, it is just getting to the address. But they have given me instructions on how to get in contact with them. So I did that and had a pleasant but pointless conversation with a chatbot that said that it would "escalate" it to the local costumer services team. Within a short space of time I had a confirmation e-mail telling me that things were happening.

Hi Skull Cinema,
Thank you for getting in touch with your enquiry which you raised on the Evri website via our Digital Assistant. As soon as you submitted your enquiry details it was sent to your local Customer Services team to look into this, rest assured we have it in hand.

All I wanted to find out was what the problem was, as they couldn't seem to make up their mind about it. If the chatbot had said "Hi, we are going to redeliver tomorrow." I would have just left it at that. But now I have been promised an e-mail on the 23^rd and the local customer services team are "looking into it".

Two days later the parcel arrived with one of our regular local couriers, no doubt subcontracted to Evri as a driver.

Did I get an e-mail on the 23^rd. No.

Did I get a response from the customer "service" team? Yes, here it is,

Support incident update
You recently requested assistance through our online support pages. Below is a summary of your request and our response.
If you have an account, you can log in and track your incident by, clicking here
Auto-Response By (Administrator) (24/02/2023 2:01 PM)
Hi Skull,
Thank you for getting in touch with your parcel enquiry which is being looked into by Priscilla at your local depot, as this is the Customer Services Team in the best place to help resolve your enquiry.
We value your time and patience and we will be in touch as soon as we have more information.
Please wait for us to contact you as we are unable to reply to this email.
Kind regards
Customer Services Team

How bad is this? Well not that bad, but not that great either. At no point was I offered or supplied with a copy of the chatbot discussion. The chatbot generated incident e-mail was OK. But to claim that you have someone looking into the issue and then just generating a cut-and-paste response is poor. OK, the parcel got delivered, but is a one line e-mail to say "Is everything OK?" difficult? Then you can close the ticket knowing that the customer feels like they have been heard.

Obviously I am still waiting for them to contact me, not! Anyone notice a complete lack of a phone number attached to any of these messages? Despite their promises.

Bottom line is that we got the parcel on time, so no issue there. Unlucky for me if I had to wait in for it, but I didn't. The customer facing communications are sloppy though. Let's say 8/10 (9/10 for driver and 5/10 for customer service).

End of story?

As it happened Evri quickly had a second chance to prove their competence as we had an eBay order posted to us using their service.

For various reasons we don't use the front door of the house that often, but as I returned on the 27^th we noticed that there was a cardboard box on top of our porch. I recovered it and found out that it had been "Delivered to a secure location" on the morning of the 25^th, two and a half days earlier. There had been no note through the letter box informing us that it was there. Fortunately there had been no rain and the contents weren't temperature sensitive but anyone could have walked away with it. The only reason that I had any idea when the parcel was delivered was the tracking information on eBay.

Delivered
10:49 - Sat Feb 25
We've delivered your parcel to a secure location at the delivery address

Back to the Evri chatbot again.

I will make a complaint but primarily I am interested in sending them a note to protect myself from the consequences of any future poor behaviour on their part. If they persist someone will walk away with a parcel and when that happens I want to be able to point to a conversation that I have had with Evri to stop them from trying to shift the blame for a missing parcel onto us.

I had the parcel tracking number so entered that into their tracking form and followed the link to Get Help. I then followed the chain Receiving a parcel->I've received my parcel->My parcel wasn't left in the right place. Which brought me to a Rate your courier page.

Evri Rate Your Driver bunker

Completing it returned "Your feedback has been submitted for approval", and that's it. What does "submitted for approval" mean exactly? Are Evri forwarding ratings to another site? I don't know and until they make another hash I won't be able to look at this in more detail. With the chatbot having shepherded you away from actually using the term complaint and downgrading your issue to "feedback" status, the procedure is terminated.

Err, not quite thank you. To the Complaints procedure and back to the Chatbot again. By the way you won't find a link to the Complaints Procedure page from the Get Help or FAQ pages but need to use the Help drop-down menu at the top of the header bar. This time It's something else->Start a chat.

Rex who? Rex Brown are a customer fulfilment service with a flashy website but a poor grasp of how to use an apostrophe. Also note that making a complaint isn't actually an option, you have to specifically state that is what you want to do.

See proof of delivery should be interesting.

Presumably because the delivery driver wasn't tall enough to take a picture once he had flung the parcel onto the roof? And what's with "your safe place"? I haven't told them that there was a safe place for them to deliver to. Why are their delivery drivers even given that option on the tracking system that Evri must make its contract drivers work from if it hasn't been set?

Let's try More help with this parcel. Now I can't write free text but only follow options buttons, so I chose "I'm unhappy where you left the parcel" and followed the white rabbit.

Finally I got to a text box - hurrah! Made my point and can now state that I have written to inform them that they can't dump parcels and walk away without taking the responsibility for the package. The text is a bit officious but I wanted it to sound that way. Another auto-response recording the incident came within seconds.

So now we wait.

On the next working day, to be fair, I got another auto response but this one was followed up by a real person, I think.

Hi Skull,
Thank you for getting in touch with us regarding parcel H00XXXXXXXXX.
I am very sorry to hear you are unhappy with your delivery.
Please could you provide me more information regarding your delivery so I am able to assist you further?
If you need anything in the future, please contact your Evri Customer Service Team and we’ll be happy to help.
Kind regards,
Jodie
Evri Customer Services

Anyhow, I sent a reply describing the circumstances of the delivery and re-iterating that any parcel that doesn't come across the door won't count as delivered.

And we wait again. What is the correct response to make in their situation? I would say sorry and we try and ensure that it doesn't happen again and then apologise again.

The next day I got a response that I am certain was from a human.

Response By E-mail (Tracy) (07/03/2023 01.28 PM)
Good afternoon Skull,
Thank you for your email, I am very sorry the driver left your parcel on the top of your porch and did not leave no card to advise of this.
I can also see it was not added to tracking or a photo taken due to the parcel was delivered by one on the depot staff.
This has been reported to the manager of the driver, and thank you for updating us that you now have the parcel.
If you need anything in the future, please contact your Evri Customer Service Team and we’ll be happy to help.
Kind regards,
Tracy
Evri Customer Services

OK, so message received; this time 0/10 for the delivery driver for dumping the parcel and walking away and 5/10 for the customer service as it was too long a process. Making about 3/10 overall as someone did apologise properly in the end.

Overall, A) it is obvious that Evri is trying to deflect complaints by the design of their customer service procedures; B) what's with pretending that the bots/automated e-mails are actually from people?; C) Why no external telephone number/e-mail address/twitter account? For some reason Evri are only interested in Facebook and Instagram accounts (on which they can control the content).

In the end it only took four e-mails, two trips to their help centre and a quarter of an hour talking to their bot, but I have my stake nailed into the ground for any future problems. Let's hope it isn't required. Fingers crossed. I must make sure to file the e-mails properly…