Evri delivered an EMPTY BOX instead of my son’s Christmas present

I’m having problems with parcel delivery company Evri, which means my son still hasn’t received the gift I bought him for Christmas 2021.

Myself and his mother bought him a basic smartphone and a fitness watch, which he was going to use to start his own business as a personal trainer. The total cost of this was just over £250.

But postal delays meant they didn’t arrive until after Christmas – by which time my son had already returned to his home in Norfolk.

We posted it to him there, using the parcel service then known as Hermes, but now renamed Evri.

The package was delivered, but when he opened it, it was completely empty. It was sealed conclusively, so he didn’t realize it had been tampered with when he accepted it.

I’ve talked to Evri about this many times over the past year and a half, but I can’t figure it out.

On occasion it has insinuated that we have had an empty package delivered to try and cheat the company out of money.

The best offer I’ve had is a refund of £20, less than 10 per cent of the value of the items. Can you help? GA, Sussex

Helen Crane from This is Money replies: Unfortunately, you’re not the only one experiencing package pain at the hands of Evri.

It is the UK’s largest parcel carrier, delivering over three million parcels a day and working for 80 per cent of the UK’s largest retailers.

But Evri is plagued with customer complaints about everything from lost and late packages to packages being tossed around by employees – or showing up at car boot sales.

Last year it was voted the worst delivery company in the country by Citizens Advice in a poll of 8,421 people – and in January an MP called for an investigation into Evri after it received 40,000 complaints.

In your case, the company provided your son with an empty box where his Christmas present should have been.

It is shocking that it has taken almost a year and a half, as well as my involvement, to get this sorted out.

You told me you were angry because you were essentially accused of theft by Evri, and rightfully so.

More recently it has told you that it had indeed found a cell phone matching your description in one of its depots.

But to get it, Evri said you’d have to provide the IMEI number – the unique serial number given to all mobile phones, which is usually on a sticker inside the case or on the box of the handset. You can also find it by typing a code into the phone itself.

It’s not surprising that you didn’t write this down – in fact, you didn’t even know what an IMEI number was until this sad saga started. You asked the seller where you bought the phone if it had a record, but he said it couldn’t help.

This is when you contacted me, and I questioned Evri about what was going on. I was asked if you had paid extra to protect your package from loss or theft – which I didn’t think was good enough.

Anyone who pays a delivery company to ship an item should reasonably assume that it will be delivered without incident.

It also said you were asked for an IMEI number but you ‘chosen’ not to provide one.

It looked like we had run into a brick wall. But after I explained the absurdity of these demands to Evri, you heard from the firm again.

This time it said it was willing to pay you a £200 settlement. You still have about £50 out of pocket, but said you’d be happy to accept if it meant the matter was finally brought to a close.

You have been assured that the money will be in your account within five working days – so it seems that this matter is now completely closed.

Bad service on the part of parcel companies is rife, and I feel like they often get away with it because most of their customers have no choice but to take advantage of it.

When we buy something online, we usually can’t choose the company that supplies it – we just get what we get. This means that customers cannot vote with their feet.

That said, it’s always worth complaining to a retailer if you’re unhappy with the delivery company they’ve chosen. If enough people do this, the pressure for them to switch will increase.

First Direct pays out after flight scams

In March I helped reader MT recover £3,005 after she was scammed by someone posing as her bank, First Direct.

The money was used to buy flights from the Flights Guru travel agency, and it was that company that refunded most of the money.

At the time, First Direct said it held MT liable for the fraud because it provided the scammer with a one-time SMS access code to authorize the transaction. It only paid her £155 to top up the money Flights Guru had deducted for administrative costs.

However, MT contacted me again this week to tell me that First Direct had re-examined its case following the publication of my story.

She said: ‘First Direct contacted me on Friday to say it had further investigated my case. It said the case should have been treated as a fraud and they should have refunded my money right away.

“It has given me £350 in compensation for the stress and anxiety this matter has caused me.”