Revealed: One in three parcel customers are unhappy with their 'miserable' service with Evri and Yodel rated the worst firms, survey finds

Parcel firms were yesterday accused of offering a 'miserable' service as figures showed that more than one in three customers experienced delivery problems in the past month.

The results of an annual Citizens Advice survey put Evri and Yodel ranked at the bottom of the league table, both managing an overall score of just two stars out of a possible five.

But none of the major parcel firms managed to secure even a three-star rating, with Royal Mail and Amazon achieving joint best position with a meagre 2.75 stars.

Meanwhile, 13.3 million people - or 34 per cent of consumers - experienced a delivery problem in just the last month, such as parcels left in insecure locations or arriving late, a survey for the charity suggests.

Citizens Advice said there had been no improvements on delivery problem scores since last year, with the rate of parcel problems remaining 'far too high across the board'.

The worst offenders were Yodel, with 40 per cent of customers reporting a problem, DPD (37 per cent), and Evri (34 per cent).

The Citizens Advice parcels league table looks at the top five delivery companies by parcel volume and measures their performance against criteria including customer service, delivery problems and accessibility needs, such as people needing longer to answer the door.

Of those consumers that experienced a problem with their delivery, nearly half (43 per cent) then had a further issue when trying to resolve the problem, such as not being able to find the right company contact details or not receiving a response.

In the end, more than half of those that had further issues (53 per cent) found it difficult to resolve their problem. This figure rose to 60 per cent of people with a disability.

Almost all parcel firms scored two stars or below when it came to meeting the needs of disabled customers or individuals who require adjustments to how they receive parcels.

An estimated 7.2 million people had an accessibility need they would like to share with their parcel delivery company, but 45 per cent of these people were unable to do so, the survey found.

Citizens Advice said its online advice page, titled: 'If something you ordered hasn't arrived' had been viewed almost 222,000 times in the last 12 months, a 78 per cent increase in views since 2019.

It urged regulator Ofcom to review its new complaints and accessibility guidance by April next year, and consider enforcement action on firms if there had been no significant improvements by this date.

Citizens Advice chief executive Dame Clare Moriarty 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.'

Evri chief customer officer Chris Ashworth said yhr company was 'disappointed' at the findings after 'a year of significant investment and listening to our customers to improve our service'.

An Amazon spokesman said: '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.'

A Royal Mail spokesman said the company was 'working hard to further improve our quality of service and continuing to introduce more convenient options for customers to access our services'.

'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.'

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 200 million parcels we handled over the last 12 months were delivered correctly on the first attempt.'

Opinium surveyed 8,164 UK adults online between September 19 and October 13 who had received a parcel in the last month from Royal Mail, DPD, Yodel, Amazon Logistics or Evri.