Evri – New name for Hermes, same terrible service in 2022 Standard So you might have noticed that notoriously bad courier company Hermes have changed name to Evri, but besides a rebranding, has anything actually changed? I originally said about Hermes in a review I was invited to write on TrustPilot: No matter how much I try and avoid Hermes, you can’t. Sellers on eBay that say they use Royal Mail are sending out with Hermes and when you call them out on that, they say it’s because “Hermes are better because of the pandemic”.I have experienced nothing but problems with them and they don’t have any contact point for the end customer so all enquiries have to go via the supplier/seller/business, they will lose parcels and say they are still “on their way” regularly. Joe Lycett (the comedian) did an exposé on them last year in his “Got Your Back” series on Channel 4 that they send perfectly labelled parcels to auction houses that they could have returned to sender or ultimately delivered.Many sellers on eBay so far that are advertising the fact they use a different courier than Hermes are sending with Hermes now and citing the pandemic for the change yet haven’t updated the listing.I would typically have gone elsewhere as the only way to send a message (to Hermes) about how bad Hermes is for the end customer is to speak the only way we can – Financially since they have no other way to contact them although they are making this incredibly difficult.You can’t contact hermes at all as an end customer, and I certainly wouldn’t ever use them for deliveries I would make from my company. I don’t mind paying for delivery, since it’s a justified expense however a lot of people feel that they shouldnt’ pay for delivery. I’d prefer to pay for quality. You can get better service for the same or better prices from most other couriers.Typically at one of my clients, they use Royal Mail for anything that is affordable for Royal Mail Second Class Recorded and everything else through Parcelforce 48, and it’s only around £6. DPD also offer a significantly more reliable delivery service. UPS is good but confusing for end customers as tracking timings on their page are sometimes not local.There are delivery companies that do a massively better job than Hermes and the prices aren’t much different… and they have customer help desks and won’t fail to deliver a parcel that they’ve already accepted that needs “sending with a specialist courier because it’s too big”, since they are told the sizes of parcels in the first place.I am now actively avoiding Hermes and will not use sellers who use Hermes. I am willing to pay to avoid having parcel delivery turned from excitement to fear and disappointment. Did I ever get a reply, and what’s happened since? Well, as to be expected, I never got a reply from the company when they were known as Hermes or now that they’re known as Evri. I have tried contacting them numerous times but nothing has changed. On the new Evri site, they still have the same useless fake “chatbox” that they treat as if it is a real online customer interaction mechanism, but it isn’t. You can’t speak to anyone in customer services directly, as a customer of Evri or as someone receiving a parcel. There is also no contact telephone number for receiving or sending parcels either. It’s an entirely disappointing experience with them, and despite a new name, it doesn’t appear that anything has changed on the outside other than a lick of paint. Can the Evri Model work? It’s not like the Evri model couldn’t work. I can see the advantages of having a well managed central operation and hiring self employed couriers. You don’t have to have an entire workforce to manage and the people that are doing deliveries for you are self employed and could feel empowered. The problem with Evri is the central service isn’t well managed, not by a long shot. That’s not to say that some of the couriers that actually do the work for them aren’t good – the opposite in-fact. Some of them are quite excellent but lack the support of the centralised company. Speaking with our local courier, she has been let down many times by them. Once she had 54 Amazon parcels to deliver and she did not get the manifest sheet from them. If you don’t have the manifest you end up taking personal responsibility for the parcels because you can’t prove the history at that point. It’s personal risk that she took to benefit the people receiving the parcels. If she followed exact procedure, not a single person would have gotten their Amazon parcel that day, so it’s easy to see why some of the other people who do their deliveries don’t want that level of personal risk if the correct paperwork is not made available by Evri. Conclusions and final thoughts Joe Lycett did an exposé a while ago (back while they were known as Hermes) showing how many parcels they could have successfully delivered but didn’t (with clearly readable addresses) and ended up at auction houses, even when the online tracking said it was still on it’s way. The item I was talking about in my original TrustPilot review was listed as “on it’s way” months afterwards, and it’s no surprise it still hasn’t turned up. I’m glad more eBay sellers are being honest about which couriers they are using now, although many of them still use “Other 24 Hour Courier” to hide the fact they’re using Evri, even though the old Hermes delivery option is one you can show on your listings. Looking at the Evri – About Us page on the ‘new’ Evri site, the entirety of their history condensed into about a paragraph, less effort has been put into this text than this entire post. Not to mention their choice of fonts for the new logo clash horrifically. My conclusion is… totally new name, slightly rebranded website but same terrible company.
New Playlist Standard I made a new playlist of songs I currently like. 52 tracks in playlist, average track length: 3:51 Playlist length: 3 hours 20 minutes 46 seconds Playlist files: Postal Service, The – Nothing Better (3:46) Frank Turner – Worse Things Happen At Sea (3:43) Avril Lavigne – Nobody’s Home (3:32) Weepies, The – World Spins Madly On (2:39) Pierre Belmonde – Forever Autumn (3:17) Icon For Hire – Iodine (2:32) DHT – Driver’s Seat (2:51) Jem – Just a Ride (3:20) Halestorm – Freak Like Me (3:38) Reuben – Horrorshow (2:58) Rachel McGoye – Late Night Lover (4:07) Akon – Never Took The Time (3:57) Vanessa Carlton – Paint It Black (3:30) Green Day – Jesus Of Suburbia (9:08) Ed Sheeran – Drunk (3:19) Bad Religion – Let Them Eat War (2:57) Kelly Clarkson – Einstein (2:59) Tool – 10,000 Days (Wings, Pt. 2) (11:13) Evanescence – Good Enough (5:31) Death Cab For Cutie – I Will Follow You Into The Dark (3:09) +44 – Make You Smile (3:44) Halestorm – What Sober Couldn’t Say (3:33) Halestorm – I Like It Heavy (4:55) Halestorm – Here’s To Us (2:57) Muse – Uprising (5:02) Blue Swamp – Jumper On The Line (3:04) Ed Sheeran – I’m a Mess (4:04) Newton Faulkner – I Need Something (2:57) Kelly Clarkson – Since U Been Gone (3:08) Placebo – You Don’t Care About Us (3:58) Tom McRae – A Day Like Today (3:48) Siouxsie And The Banshees – This Wheel’s On Fire (5:42) Bad Religion – Social Suicide (1:35) Against Me! – Dead Friend (3:02) Placebo – Special Needs (5:15) Seether – Remedy (3:27) Halestorm – Dear Daughter (4:46) Bad Religion – God’s Love (2:32) Ed Sheeran – Small Bump (4:18) Reuben – Good Luck (3:35) Android Lust – The Body (5:23) Icon For Hire – Get Well (2:57) Ed Sheeran – Little Bird (3:45) Halestorm – Love Bites (So Do I) (3:11) Jay Nash – Over You (4:00) Kelly Clarkson – Behind These Hazel Eyes (3:18) Fightstar – Unfamiliar Ceilings (4:06) Placebo – English Summer Rain (4:01) Jewel – Hands (3:55) Kelly Clarkson – Miss Independent (3:34) Against Me! – True Trans Soul Rebel (3:12) Weepies, The – Nobody Knows Me At All (1:56)
