Voice of London

This year’s parcel league table by Citizens Advice revealed that Evri, formerly known as Hermes, ranked as UK’s worst-performing parcel company for a second year running.

All of the UK’s major parcel companies continue to disappoint their customers. Evri, DPD, Yodel and Amazon Logistics failed to secure a three-star out of five overall rating after being scored against criteria including parcel problems, customer service and accessibility needs.

Citizens Advice measured the performance of the top five companies using data from its Costumer Service, consumer polling and social media complaints.

Citizens Advice chief executive Dame Clare Moriarty said: “One year on and parcel firms haven’t got their act together, with nobody delivering a four or five-star service.”

Evri, despite general improvement from a score of 1.5 to 1.75, came last for a second year running. Yodel scored the lowest on a single criteria of all the firms, with a score of just 1.7 for customer service.

Royal Mail, who scored highest overall, still only managed to get a mere three stars.

As much as 43% of Yodel customers polled by Citizens Advice reported a problem with their last delivery, compared to 23% of Royal Mail customers who noted delivery issues on their last order.

Citizens Advice also revealed that a link to its advice page ‘If something you ordered hasn’t arrived’ had been viewed almost 211,000 times in the last 12 months and as much as 52,000 times in the three months leading up to Christmas.

The parcels market regulator, Ofcom, recently reviewed its regulations of the parcels market and announced improvements for disabled people and people needing to complain.

An Ofcom spokesperson said: “We agree that some parcel companies are failing the customers…we’re strengthening our regulations next year to make sure people are treated fairly by parcel firms.”

“If we are not satisfied with how the companies respond when our new protections come into force, they might face enforcement action or tighter rules in the future.”

Yodel spokesperson said: “We are fully committed to continuously improving…we disagree with the methodology and findings of this report. Our own parcel data and Have Your Say feedback programmes show that 84% of our customers had a positive experience with us over the last six months.”

An Evri spokeswoman said: “As the UK’s leading dedicated parcel company, Evri delivers over two million parcels each day and we pride ourselves on offering a fast, reliable, sustainable service which doesn’t cost the earth for consumers and businesses alike.”

Words: Aleksandra Martynow | Subbing: Lumi Leinonen