How to complain about EVRi Delivery Services
I was forwarded this letter by a friend who had, like many people, a terrible interaction with the company EVRi before Christmas. I read the letter and could feel the anger and frustration coming through, but at no point did it step over the line and become a personal attack. If you are looking to pen a letter to the head of EVRi then you can do using his email address Martijn.deLange@hermes-europe.co.uk
I believe there are too many big businesses that hide behind chat bots on their websites. That's why I would never use them personally to deliver goods from any of my e-commerce businesses. That's also why I'm disclosing this letter and his contact details in this post. I encourage you to write your own letters, with your own stories in a professional manner. Feel free to use this as a template.
Re: Legitimized theft in your organization?
Dear Martijn,
I hope you take this letter in the spirit that it has been intended, i.e. as a sincere feedback from a peer executive rather than just a letter of complaint.
With over 20 years of experience across investment banking, PE and corporate I am now part of the founder team and I run a finance organization at an AIM listed energy company.
Having recently been let down by your organization I was directed to you by one of your major industry partners, Ebay, in the hopes that you can help resolve my issue, but more importantly that potentially you can finally put a stop to the ongoing theft and damage incidents with EVRi deliveries that Ebay is very well aware of but not in a position to address.
I have to confess, when I first contacted your organization after someone at your local depot at 2:25am on a Tuesday night 25th October decided that a 925 silver Stephen Webster bracelet with declared value of £200 (irresponsible of me to declare value and not pay for the insurance of it, I know) is better off in her or his pocket or wrist than being delivered to the rightful owner, I was very upset.
I am not going to bore you with the details of agony of trying to reach anyone human in your customer services and the time waste. In the end £200 are not going to change the course of my life, however, there is a bit of a story to it if you were to indulge me.
I have recently lost my mother to an aggressive form of cancer. I hope your folks are still around and I hope they will still be around for many years, but if not I do not need to tell you the pain and the shock and the disbelief you experience.
My mom had a couple of valuable bracelets I have gifted her over the years. I thought – what the heck, I am still faced with hefty burial fees so I might as well see if I can recoup some of the costs. So I list the bracelets on Ebay and I ship them with your company’s friendly service.
The first bracelet makes it to the other end. I declared a value of £20. The second one only made it to the depot and then got lost. How often do items just disappear? With everything being tracked to a minute? They don’t. Unless someone takes them knowing full well there are no repercussions.
So my real question for you Martijn is this – imagine your lost someone dear to your heart. And imagine you only have a couple of valuable items that you want to pass on to someone to have a second life.
How would you feel sending them with EVRi knowing it is a gamble that they would make it to the other end?
And the theft is entirely legitimized and goes unpunished. A sorting clerk, or the driver or the gentleman named Ian M, Evri Claims, Payments and Refunds Team, Manager (who would not tell me what his last name is because “Martijn knows my surname so that’s not something you need to provide to him as part of your contact”) have nothing to lose, but everything to gain from pocketing / covering up a theft of a valuable item.
If you were a small “mom-and-pop” operation I would say – ok fair enough, cost of living crisis, things happen, but you are a multi-billion dollar organization, Martijn. To quote yourself “Hermes UK has doubled in size over the last 5 years and is now a £1 billion revenue business.“
As you say, you are a CEO of “the second largest carrier in the UK, delivering more than 400 million parcels”. You then go on to say “I have a passion for motivating people, innovation and caring for customer”. If you do have a duty of care for customers how do you then feel when your people steal from your customers? If you don’t have customers you don’t have a business.
You have a well-regarded majority shareholder. Folks of utmost integrity and also folks who surely care deeply about public image of their own organization. How do you tell your board members that your customers do not return to use your services because EVRi employees damage and steal?
And where people like myself need to go to get the rightful compensation? Both for loss of the item but also for all the time loss and the anxiety caused by the incident? I know Ian M. won’t help me, but hopefully someone else will as theft should not go unpunished.
I do hope there are ways to fix it. This might sound overly simplistic or naive, but you know precisely the amount of loss and damage caused at every sorting location. Someone has to pay for it. If no one’s pocket is affected it is unlikely there will be any change. Why not rank all sorting depots by the amount of loss and damage. Depos with the least amount of damage get bonuses awarded, the ones with the largest get no bonuses paid. Anyone caught stealing no longer has a job. Make sure the entire organization knows who is the leader of the pack and who is the laggard.
Big businesses with powerful owners have to take responsibility for their actions. I very much hope you can turn EVRi’s reputation around, I really do.
Martijn, I do appreciate your taking the time to read this letter to the end and I do hope to hear back from you to understand how my grievance is going to be addressed by your organization, but also to hopefully hear there are bigger plans in place now to address a broader reputational issue at EVRi.
Best regards and best of luck,
ANON
Founder of this eponymous blog, focusing on men's fashion & lifestyle.
