Tony Hetherington is the Financial Mail on Sunday’s top researcher, taking on readers’ corners, uncovering the truth that lies behind closed doors and delivering victories for those left out of their own pockets. Below you can read how you can contact him.
Act of Disappearance: Evri couldn’t find the missing laptop
TW writes: I sold my laptop on eBay for £728 and used the delivery company Evri to send it to the buyer.
I paid Evri £25.80, including insurance.
The package never arrived. Evri researched for about twenty days, but by then I had to refund the buyer along with the eBay fees.
Tony Hetherington replies: Conversation about getting the worst of all worlds. Evri told you that she could not find the missing laptop and asked you to fill out a claim form. But when you filed the claim, Evri refused to pay, causing you to lose the delivery fee, the insurance fee, the eBay fee, and the value of the laptop itself.
How could this happen? Evri ruled that the laptop was not covered by the general terms and conditions. You were given a long list of goods that Evri does not accept, and many reasons why the courier company does not pay out, such as poor packaging.
As you told me, Evri knew it was delivering a laptop, it accepted the extra fee you paid to insure it, but when everything went south it refused to pay, leaving you to suspect your property had simply been stolen .
This is very similar to the complaint I investigated two months ago, when Evri ‘lost’ a £175 mobile phone. It told The Mail on Sunday reader that its parcel was damaged beyond repair. Then he said he couldn’t find it. And finally, it said it was too late to make inquiries, even though Evri knew within 48 hours that the phone had not reached its destination.
When I repeatedly pressed for a photo of the damaged phone, Evri admitted that this was impossible. The phone was never damaged beyond repair. That wasn’t true. The final version was that the packaging was ‘damaged’ and the phone was ‘dislodged’ and missing. Evri then handed over £175, but said this was a ‘gesture of goodwill’.
With this in mind, I asked Evri about your missing laptop. If you paid extra for insurance, why was your claim denied? And how can goods just get lost? Doesn’t Evri track them through her own system until they are delivered?
Evri responded: ‘We have apologized to Mr W for his experience and offered to pay the full value the customer provided when booking delivery, along with an additional gesture of goodwill.’
It added that more than 99 percent of packages arrive safely, and the website lists items excluded from compensation. So you have not indicated the contents of your package? Did you misunderstand the value? Did you pack it so poorly that it fell apart in transit – and if so, why was your package accepted in the first place? And where is the laptop now?
Evri ultimately agreed that you had indeed declared the contents of your package. The company blamed a technical error for failing to spot the laptop itself and then refusing to take delivery of it.
I was told that Evri does not offer insurance for the goods it handles, but that it provides ‘coverage’ for loss or damage. I have no idea what the difference is between insurance and Evri ‘coverage’. It certainly seems like insurance to me. Where your laptop ended up remains a mystery.
The closest Evri came to an explanation was to suggest that the label had been delivered with the package, leaving no way to identify who sent it or who would receive it. No wonder my MailOnline colleagues reported a week ago that consumers had voted Evri the worst courier company in the country, with a bad reputation.
The fee you paid should have insured your laptop for £400. Evri has now agreed to pay this, plus a refund of the £25.80 charged, and an additional £100 on top. Wouldn’t it have been easier if Evri had made this decision in the first place, instead of squirming like a worm on a fishing hook? It certainly would have been fairer and much more customer friendly.
You saved your father £7,000 in an art scam
CM writes: I came across your articles on the fraudulent art investment company Smith & Partner Limited.
My father will now be asked for more than £7,000 next week to secure a return on his investment.
Tony Hetherington replies: The letter your father received is a forgery, and so is the contract that goes with it. The letterhead is the property of Legal Access Limited. This is a real company. But the letter is signed by Janice Williams as senior partner, while the real law firm is owned and run by attorney Xenia Thompson.
She told me that she tried to report this scam to the police, but they refused to take action because they did not consider her a victim. But she did ensure that the crooks’ fake website was shut down by the hosting company. The site was registered to a US address in Alexandria, Virginia.
The contract is legally nonsense. The bottom line is that if your father pays £7,280 up front, an American gallery will pay him back and buy his Smith & Partner prints for the £145,600 he paid for them. But the contract was signed by the fake lawyer Janice Williams and therefore does not oblige the American gallery to pay a cent.
Smith & Partner’s customer lists are currently in the hands of scammers who are carrying out follow-up fraud. And you just saved your father from paying out more than £7,000 to one of them.
If you believe you have been a victim of financial misconduct, please write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email tony.hetherington@mailonsunday.co.uk. Due to the large number of questions, personal answers cannot be given. Only send copies of original documents. Unfortunately, these cannot be returned.
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