Mum's anger after Evri parcel took 13 days to arrive in Bath

A mother claims her son's studies were disrupted because he had to wait 13 days for Evri to deliver a parcel.

Nikki Clarke used the company's ParcelShop service to send a keyboard to her son, Jack Clarke, who is in his final year at Bath Spa University.

As a result of the delay, she said he had fallen behind in his dissertation project.

Evri has apologised for the delay and said it was offering compensation for the inconvenience.

A spokesperson for the company said: "Our ambition is that every customer's experience with Evri is a positive one."

Evri said it delivers 720 million parcels every year and more than 99% of them are successfully delivered on time. It also has three million independent five-star reviews on Trustpilot.

But Ms Clarke said her negative experience had deterred her from using the company again.

Before Christmas, Jack Clarke ordered a keyboard to his family home in Camborne, Cornwall, to use for his dissertation project and for rehearsals.

However, the third-year music student forgot to pack the keyboard when returning to Bath.

Ms Clarke sent the keyboard to a OneStop ParcelShop drop-off in Bath on 5 January, saying she thought it would be a "safer" option as he is often out of the house.

She paid extra for express delivery, expecting the parcel to arrive no later than 48 hours after dispatch.

However, when Ms Clarke realised the parcel had not been delivered within the estimated time, she contacted Evri for more information.

For the first few days, she said she attempted to speak to customer services via the online chat bot, which failed to recognise the delivery details.

Days later, Ms Clarke said she received a phone call from Evri and was told the local depot would be contacted in order to locate the parcel.

The following day, she said she was told the parcel had already left the depot and was set to be delivered by 12 January.

When Ms Clarke discovered the parcel had still not been delivered, she said she emailed Evri and was told by another department it needed to be located again.

She said: "I understand packages go missing, but when you're told one thing, and then days later you're told something completely different...

"It frustrates me that [Jack] worked hard to pay for this keyboard. It might not be the most expensive thing in the world, but he paid for it."

She credited her son's "supportive" university lecturers, who were able to lend him a spare keyboard a week into the delay.

"I was angry, but more for him. If [Evri] had said we're really sorry, we've lost it, then that would be fine," Ms Clarke said.

"It's just not fair on him. I feel really bad that he has to struggle because of it. They just don't seem to care," she added.

The parcel was delivered to the ParcelShop in Bath on 18 January.

Follow BBC West on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to: [email protected]