This is the moment an Evri courier ‘delivered’ a parcel before picking it up and driving off – as dozens more complaints flooded in about missing or damaged deliveries.
Footage taken on a home security system shows the man walking up to the front door of the house and tapping details into a handheld device. But instead of leaving the box, he tucks it under his arm and walks away with it to his car.
After flabbergasted homeowner Steve Beresford posted the footage on Facebook he was contacted by a woman who lived a few miles away and had footage of what appears to be the same man turning up at her home and acting suspiciously.
He went up to her front door with a package – although she wasn’t expecting a delivery – and walked away with it again.
The individual returned the following day and stopped on her driveway before getting out briefly and then driving off. She now fears he may have been scoping out her house for a burglary.
Details of the incidents, which were reported to police who confirmed they had been linked by the investigating officer, coincide with an influx of further complaints about Evri services.
New complaints the Mail can reveal today alone include –
- Ingrid McNeil, from Glasgow, losing a £200 necklace after selling it on eBay;
- Londoner Ruth Sloneem not receiving a £375 coat bought from Sweaty Betty;
- Conor Cooney, from Maidstone, never receiving four items from Disney;
- Customer in Bournemouth saying four parcels she’d ordered had not turned up.
CCTV footage shows the courier driver walking away with the parcel moments after he appeared to have confirmed delivery on a hand held device. Homeowner Steve Beresford, 61, said notification of the delivery appeared on his wife’s mobile
Kaz Hill believes it’s the same courier who turned up at her house in Frieston with a parcel – but took it with him when he left
Retired BT service engineer Mr Beresford said he felt ‘violated’ by the ‘theft’ – but Evri claims there was a misunderstanding because the courier had a partial address
Ingrid McNeil, who is 56 and works for a housing association, posted a necklace she had sold on eBay on December 8, but the parcel failed to reach its destination.
‘The one and only email I got from Evri was that the parcel was on its way back to me. I have never received it,’ she said.
‘The tracking number gets you nowhere – saying they are experiencing ”technical issues”. I’ve received no necklace or compensation.
‘Out of the goodness of my heart I refunded the buyer as I didn’t want them out of pocket.’
Ms McNeil went on to say she had emailed Evri ‘about 20 times’ – but to no avail, as she has been led to believe the parcel was either lost or stolen on the way to the seller in Warwickshire.
Another customer complained of losing the ‘most expensive coat’ she had ‘ever bought’.
Ruth Sloneem, from Pinner in north London, said: ‘I am so infuriated not to have received my really expensive coat ordered from Sweaty Betty which was promised within 24 hours. That was a week ago.
‘Their message says there was a delivery problem and they would get back to me in 24 hours. I have sent many messages but heard nothing.
‘They are the worst delivery company. Why do companies use them.’
Ms Sloneem said she had ordered the Nimbus Longline Waterproof Puffer Coat for £375. But she has now been left with nothing but an ‘order number and Evri tracking number’ – ‘neither of which allows you to speak to anyone’.
Conor Cooney, from Maidstone, Kent, said he had been expecting four items from Disney this month.
However, Mr Cooney was disappointed to discover the gifts, which he had bought for his children and other family members for Christmas, ‘only contained two items’ – despite the fact he had ordered four.
He said: ‘I called Disney customer service and the first question they asked is “was the branded box at all damaged or tampered with”.
‘The problem is, the delivery hadn’t arrived in a branded box. It looked as though someone at Evri had opened the box, taken a couple of items and then wrapped the others in a black plastic delivery bag and stuck a label on it.’
Mr Cooney said it was the two ‘cheaper’ items that had been repackaged and redelivered.
He added, ironically: ‘Nice to know that Christmas orders are safe with one of the biggest delivery firms in the country!’
Louis Tremblay, nine, (centre, pictured with dad Adam, left, and mum Lauren, right) was left distraught after a rogue delivery driver threw his Christmas present in the bin
Tish Burbridge, a pensioner in Salisbury, has complained of missing ‘six or seven deliveries’ over the last eight months
In Bournemouth, one customer claimed none of four parcels she had ordered over the past two and a half months had turned up.
Overall, ‘£1,000’ worth of items had ‘gone missing this time’, she said.
The buyer, who wished to remain anonymous, said: ‘Essentially, every parcel I’ve ordered that is then passed to Evri has not been delivered since October.
‘I’ve raised it with Evri each time that multiple parcels are going missing, but the situation has obviously not improved or been remedied.’
Earlier this week, the Mail revealed how one of Evri’s drivers had been sacked after he was caught on camera hurling fragile packages into the back of his van.
Customers complained he laughed when they complained about crumpled parcels.
Around 30 current and former couriers also told BBC Panorama how they were under pressure to deliver more and more items.
And the firm came bottom of a customer satisfaction survey of parcel delivery companies conducted by Ofcom in October.
Steve Beresford, 61, who lives in Sibsey, Lincolnshire, had bought a £21 candy cane infinity light for his wife, Beverley, 62, as she had decorated the Christmas tree with candy canes.
Describing the moment he discovered what had happened to the gift, he told the Mail: ‘I felt violated. I felt sick.
‘I’m disabled and have fibromyalgia [a chronic condition causing widespread musculoskeletal pain] and this triggered it, so I started having panic attacks and anxiety.
‘It’s not just stealing people’s Christmas presents. It’s all the upset and stress that goes with it.’
The couple were out for lunch when they received a notification on Mrs Beresford’s mobile phone that the delivery had been made on Monday.
The arrived home an hour later and ‘searched high and low’ but couldn’t find the package, so they contacted Evri by email.
Former BT service engineer Mr Beresford said apart from an automated response – which said they would be contacted within 24 hours – no one had been in touch with them.
‘So we thought we’d check the CCTV footage and you could have knocked me down with a feather,’ he added.
‘We couldn’t believe that we were seeing. We’d caught him [taking the package] as clear as day.
‘I told the police ‘I hope you find him and he’s behind bars for Christmas’. The officer agreed with me and said ‘Wouldn’t that be nice?’
After putting the footage on Facebook because he was so ‘livid’ about what had happened, he was contacted by Kaz Hill, who lives a few miles away in Frieston.
Ms Hill explained the same man turned up at her house on December 9 with a package, went up to her front door, and then left with the box.
An Evri subcontractor was arrested by Hampshire Police on Monday after up to 120 parcels were stolen just days before Christmas. Pictured is a photo of the stash
CCTV footage showed him standing outside her property. It cut out before he walked away but she said she was in at the time and saw what happened.
He returned in his silver car the following day, parked in her driveway before briefly getting out, then drove off again.
‘It looks like he pretends to put it down, then makes it look like no one is home, then takes it back. But he doesn’t even ring the doorbell,’ said Ms Hill, who was in at the time.
‘The second time he scared me, as he was just in his car on the drive for quite a while and then just before he left he got out of the car and looked back at the house.’
She contacted police, who issued an incident number but told her they couldn’t take any further action.
‘Technically it was not a crime as nothing was stolen as I wasn’t expecting a package,’ Ms Hill said.
‘However, the guy is clearly pretending to deliver, then pocketing the goods. The police can’t do anything but have said that they will just keep compiling info on him.’
Extraordinary footage taken on December 10 in the Norfolk village of Watton showed another EVRI delivery driver hurling parcels into the back of his van.
Astonished recipients described how the man ‘laughed off’ complaints when he handed over crumpled boxes.
The driver is also said to have abandoned a pile of items in a high street before he crossed the road to deliver a package.
The incidents happened in the same county where people waiting for Evri deliveries had to search for items themselves earlier this year when the courier left them in undergrowth, on bins, in hedges and in the street.
MPs representing a number of constituencies have raised concerns about the company’s service recently.
Caroline Dinenage, who represent Gosport in Hampshire, said she knew of ‘numerous’ cases of Evri parcels being ‘dumped or marked as delivered with no attempt made to actually reach the recipient’.
In a letter to chief executive Martijn de Lange, she wrote: ‘With Christmas fast-approaching, residents are understandably distressed and frustrated by these failures, particularly where valuable gifts are involved.’
Evri registered 41 per cent dissatisfaction among customers in a poll conducted by Ofcom in October. The next worst was Yodel on 33 per cent and DPD with 26 per cent.
Amazon came top with a 16 per cent dissatisfaction rate, with FedEx and UPS second on 18 per cent.
Video filmed in Timsbury, Hampshire captured the moment an Evri delivery driver appeared to steal a Christmas present from a customer’s doorstep. Evri said it was investigating the incident
The survey found 4.2 billion parcels had been delivered by all firms in the previous year – higher than the pandemic peak of four billion.
The company, which rebranded from Hermes UK in 2022, has been owned by American investment firm Apollo Global Management since last year.
In the financial year 2023-24, Evri’s pre-tax profit almost doubled to nearly £120m.
New footage this week showed one courier putting a nine-year-old Louis Tremblay’s Christmas present in a bin without putting a note through his family’s door.
After receiving a message saying the present – a flip book US YouTuber Andymation – had been delivered, his parents checked their CCTV to see the driver opening the lid of a bin on their drive before putting the parcel inside. The bin was later collected.
In Salisbury, a courier has been sacked after a pensioner complained of missing ‘six or seven deliveries’ over the last eight months.
Tish Burbridge, a pensioner in the Wiltshire city, told the Salisbury Journal: ‘It’s extraordinarily annoying and also, you know, I’m now on a pension and money is tight, and I can’t afford to lose money like that. It’s just, it’s just not practicable.’
Meanwhile, an Evri subcontractor was arrested on Monday in Southampton after up to 120 parcels were stolen just days before Christmas.
In nearby Timsbury, footage appeared to show a driver swipe a parcel from a family’s doorstep – before allegedly making off with it under her coat.
Toni Fryer, 47, vowed to ‘never use Evri again’ after her son’s Christmas present disappeared on December 15. Evri confirmed it was investigating the incident.
Elsewhere, in Manchester, a delivery driver working for the phone was filmed on a Ring doorbell throwing packages containing glassware onto the ground before referring to the recipients as ‘dirty c***s’.
A Lincolnshire Police spokeswoman said they had received a report of a theft in Sibsey, adding: ‘A parcel was reportedly delivered to the address by a delivery man and the man left the scene taking the parcel with him. Enquiries are ongoing.’
The spokeswoman confirmed the force had also received ‘a report of a man acting suspiciously in the Old Leake area of Boston’.
An Evri spokesman said of the incident at Mr Beresford’s house: ‘Unfortunately, this parcel didn’t have a house number or name, which understandably confused the courier who was new to delivering in the area.
‘The courier followed our guidance and took the parcel away with them as they were unsure if they were delivering to the correct address.’
Attempts had been made to contact the customer, he added.
