Over 13million people had an issue with the last parcel they received, according to new research, as a league table of the worst offending firms has also been revealed.
A third of shoppers experienced a problem with a parcel in the last month, either because of late delivery or parcels being left in insecure locations, according to Citizens Advice.
The consumer charity has also published its annual parcel delivery rankings, which shows major parcel firms have delivered a dire service for the third year running.
Problems: New research by Citizens Advice found a third of shoppers have had an issue with a parcel delivery in the last month
In its latest parcels league table, which looks at the top five delivery companies by parcel volume, not one major firm secured even a three star rating out of five.
This Is Money has reported extensively on the huge delays facing Royal Mail customers, most notably for first-class post. But it seems Royal Mail is not the only company whose customers are having issues with their deliveries.
Evri and Yodel came bottom of the parcel table, with an overall score of just 2 stars out of a possible 5, followed closely by DPD with a meagre 2.25 stars.
Royal Mail and Amazon jointly came top, but with just 2.75 stars out of 5.
The top five firms have been measured on their performance on delivery problems – of which Yodel, DPD and Evri are the worst performers – as well as customer service, accessibility and trust.
Royal Mail and Amazon scored 2.6 out of 5 on delivery, followed by DPD with 2 out of 5 and Yodel and Evri both scoring 1.8 out of 5.
This Is Money has highlighted that some households up and down the country have received their post weeks late. Some have claimed Royal Mail has prioritised packages at the detriment of letters, something the company denies.
In response to Citizens Advice’s table, a spokesperson for Royal Mail said: ‘We are pleased to come joint first… Our posties are trusted to deliver to all addresses across the UK and do everything they can to accommodate delivery needs and get parcels to customers safely and securely.
‘We are working hard to further improve our quality of service and continuing to introduce more convenient options for customers to access our services, including automatic redelivery and safe place delivery preferences.’
An Amazon spokesperson said: ‘Every day at Amazon, incredible employees and independent delivery partners come together to provide fast, safe, reliable and convenient delivery for our customers.
‘The vast majority of deliveries make it to customers without issue. In the rare case something occurs, we work with customers directly to make it right.’
Poor customer service
When it came to customer service, nearly half of consumers said they faced further issues when they tried to resolve a problem with their delivery – for example not getting a response to their complaint.
Amazon’s customer service was miles ahead of competitors, scoring 3.6 out of 5, while Royal Mail scored 3. Yodel came bottom with 2.3 out of 5 and also scored the lowest on trust.
However, the parcel firms have hit back at Citizens Advice’s research and rankings.
A spokesperson for Yodel said: ‘We welcome feedback and invest heavily to continuously improve our service. However, this report is not reflective of our own parcel data, which indicates that 98.7 per cent of the 200million parcels we handled over the last 12 months were delivered correctly on the first attempt.’
Yodel and Evri scored poorly across the board, with particularly low scores for delivery problems and trust.
Chris Ashworth, Evri’s chief customer officer said: ‘We are disappointed with where Citizens Advice has placed us in its parcels league table – after a year of significant investment and listening to our customers to improve our service…
‘Evri’s performance improvements have been validated this year by Amazon accrediting Evri for Prime delivery for the first time… and our reliability is why the Post Office has started to sell our services.’
He added that Evri is the only parcel delivery firm to mandate proof of delivery photos for every parcel.
Shoppers have turned their back on major retailers that use Evri, formerly called Hermes, to deliver their online orders, according to This Is Money’s sister title Money Mail.
Major firms failing on accessibility
Four of the five major firms scored 2 stars or below when it came to meeting the needs of disabled customers or individuals who required adjustments to deliveries.
Royal Mail came out top with 2.8 out of 5 stars, while Amazon, DPD and Yodel scored 2 out of 5.
Evri scored just 1.6 out of 5 when it came to helping customers with accessibility needs.
A spokesperson for Royal Mail said: ‘We understand the importance of meeting the needs of disabled customers and since this survey was carried out, we have introduced an option for households to register their accessibility needs for parcel deliveries or collections via Parcel Collect.’
They added that customers with a disability or accessibility needs can ask posties to ‘knock louder’ or take more time when waiting for the customer to come to the door.
Citizens Advice said that an estimated 7.2million people have an accessibility need they’d like to share with their delivery firm, but 45 per cent were unable to do so.
It is calling on the regulator Ofcom to conduct a review of its complaints and accessibility guidance by next April, and consider investigations or fines, if improvements aren’t made.
This week, the regulator handed Royal Mail a £5.6million fine for failing to meet its delivery targets.
Dame Clare Moriarty, CEO of Citizens Advice said: ‘For the third year running, our league table reveals online shoppers are being let down by a substandard delivery service. This is an issue we feel has been neglected for far too long.
‘We continue to hear from consumers that are chasing up lost, late or damaged parcel deliveries, it’s become an unfair and at times, costly burden to bear.
‘With a seasonal surge of deliveries on the horizon, parcel companies must take action to protect shoppers and get to the root cause of these persistent failings.’
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