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A Scots grandmother has blasted delivery courier Evri after £500 worth of presents for her grandchildren failed to arrive before Christmas.
Eleanor Vanko, from Kirriemuir in Angus, paid £20 to post two parcels worth £200 and £300 to her grandchildren Essex and Milngavie on December 15th and 17th. The gifts included perfumes worth £100, and sentimental items which the 77-year-old and her husband Michael had hoped would be opened on Christmas morning.
Evri told customers the cut off for Christmas delivery was December 18th, but the presents have still not arrived. Eleanor now fears the gifts have been lost – for the second time in a row – after former company Hermes failed to deliver on time last year.
She said: “My family didn’t get their presents in time last year and now it’s happened again.
“We’re just so upset that my grandchildren weren’t able to open their gifts on Christmas. One had specifically asked me for this lovely perfume and she still hadn’t got it, and the presents for the younger ones were supposed to be from Santa.
“How are we supposed to explain this to them. We didn’t get to see the grandkids on Christmas Day so it would have meant a lot for them to arrive on time. That special moment is now gone. It’s not on.
“The parcels were sent more than a week before Christmas and I was told they would arrive within 3-5 days. I never expected them not to show up.
“Now it’s days after Christmas and I don’t know where the parcels are.”
(Image: Supplied)
The grandmother-of-eight claims she received an email to say a delivery driver named Stacey would deliver the parcel destined for Essex on Wednesday, December 21, but it never arrived. Eleanor has since tried to track the parcel but says the system “didn’t recognise” their tracking numbers or the postcodes.
She said: “I’ve been messaging my family everyday to ask them to make sure they are in so they don’t miss the delivery. Two or three times a day I’ve been checking in with them to see if the parcels have arrived but there’s still been nothing. It’s so disappointing.”
Last year Hermes failed to deliver Christmas presents Eleanor posted on December 16 – with the gifts arriving five days after Christmas. The grandmother has vowed to never use Evri again.
She added: “Why I used them this year I’ll never know. The customer service is awful. I’ll never use them again.”
Evri admitted the gifts hadn’t arrived on time and claimed one parcel hasn’t arrived because it was “sent so close to Christmas” while the other parcel is delayed after a problem with the address on the box.
A spokesperson for Evri said: “We are sorry there has been a short delay with these parcels. Like everyone in the sector we experienced higher than normal volumes in the weeks before Christmas, driven in part by the Royal Mail strikes as well as final-mile staffing shortages in some local areas.
“We have invested over £60 million in our network infrastructure so our service remains strong and we successfully delivered over 3 million parcels every day with no delays or backlogs in the majority of our network. Unfortunately, one of these parcels had incorrect address information causing a delay. Our hard-working teams searched for the correct address before relabelling the parcel and sending it on to be delivered.”
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