Everyone either knows someone who’s got a shocking parcel delivery story or has one themselves. Here’s mine: I posted a valuable piece of collectable music merch via courier, who helpfully left the parcel out in the pouring rain. The contents got soaked and damaged in the process. My appeals to the delivery company’s customer service department fell on deaf ears (not that I’m convinced I was even speaking to a human in the first place), and they offered zero compensation.
Other tales include packages being shunted into recycling wheelie bins (which are inevitably collected), stuffed under doormats, or flung over fences. Ellie, from Manchester, had one parcel left in her food waste bin – which contained food waste at the time. She can’t wear the contents, a sports bra, without remembering the smell as she fished out the package. Glasgow-based Harvey had a tablet delivered to his outdoor bin, which was described as a “safe space”. When he asked the delivery company why this was designated a secure spot, he was told: “Nobody goes looking in other people’s bins.”
“You know an industry’s in trouble if it passes the ‘Your mum, your mates’ test,” says consumer rights expert Martyn James. “If you ask, ‘Have you had a problem with a package delivery?’ Every single one of them, I guarantee you, will say yes, and then launch into a rant.” One woman he spoke to ordered £300 worth of rare books, which never arrived despite the company’s insistence they’d been delivered. Two months later, while pruning her wisteria, she found it had been lobbed on top of her garage.
But why do delivery companies now leave parcels anywhere and everywhere? Almost 15 million people experienced a problem with a parcel delivery in November 2024. Evri admitted that it will lose eight million packages this year to theft and damage – a staggering 22,000 per day. Citizens Advice published a league table of the worst delivery companies, with Yodel and Evri ranked the worst, and Amazon and Royal Mail joint best (though none of the brands covered themselves in glory).
Doorstep parcel theft is a serious problem – the rise in “porch piracy” saw the theft of £376.6m worth of UK packages in 2024. It’s far worse for those in major cities and blocks of flats, where thieves take advantage of communal areas. Some deliverers don’t ring the bell when dropping off packages, and customers have reported receiving “missed you” notes when they were at home the entire time. Not to mention those with accessibility issues, who might take longer to reach the door.
The issue, James says, originates from a societal change caused by the pandemic, where “we were all stuck at home and basically adapted to just buying stuff online and it being delivered to us”. Although there was a multibillion-dollar industry already in place, ready to deliver our air fryers and Pelotons, companies had to ramp up their business models to match demand.
This led to a “kind of tit-for-tat discounting, to get as many big contracts through. But of course, when you cut the bottom line, you cut the service,” James explains. He’s spoken to drivers who said they were expected to deliver 20 packages per hour. “It’s technically possible, but when you put that pressure on people, the service goes out of the window.” Some delivery companies set limits on the number of parcels they’d accept back at the depot, so drivers have no choice but to abandon them outside people’s homes.
Many online stores are writing off the value of parcels if they go missing as a result, and simply refunding consumers. Since the retailers won’t put pressure on the courier companies to ensure correct deliveries, “it’s only when there’s a tipping point in costs for retailers that the rules will change”, claims James. Some companies are pushing back on this, including Amazon (which is both a retailer and delivery company), stipulating that it will no longer write off deliveries under the value of £30.
The difficulty is that it’s nigh-on impossible for consumers to prove when a package has been snatched. You can’t, of course, take a photo of a missing parcel. The flaw in this whole business is that people can theoretically game the system, “stealing” their own packages. (One plausible future outlined by James would see our high streets filled with rows of parcel pickup lockers, rather than shops – a dystopian-sounding prospect.)
It doesn’t help that the customer service for courier companies seems – at times – deliberately bad. “It’s pretty outrageous that, despite the fact they’re supposed to have a complaints procedure in place, and they are regulated by Ofcom, believe it or not, it’s virtually impossible to speak to them, or get past the chat bots,” James says. He adds that retailers often fob the customer off to the courier, who can’t actually help solve the problem, sending them on a “wild goose chase” that creates an added headache for the consumer.
A spokesperson for Evri addressed the question of parcels being left in inconvenient places and the surge in parcel piracy. “If a customer knows they might not be home, we would recommend using the Evri app, which is free to download on both iOS and Android, or visiting our website,” they said. “Here, customers can nominate a preferred safe place, select a trusted neighbour, or divert their parcel to one of our ParcelShops or lockers. With 96 per cent of the UK’s population in urban areas living within one mile of a ParcelShop, these options offer convenience and peace of mind.”
When you put that pressure on people, the service goes out of the window
Martyn James, consumer rights expert
So what do you do if your package goes missing? The responsibility lies with the retailer, not the courier, essentially. The Consumer Rights Act 2015 says that if your parcel is stolen after being delivered, and you did not provide specific delivery instructions, the retailer is responsible for either replacing the goods or providing a refund. “If they say, ‘Well, here’s a picture of a parcel outside your door or in a wheelie bin or whatever’ – not your problem, because that proves nothing,” James says. Consumer experts advise against contacting the police for stolen items, as you’ll only be wasting their time (if it is a theft, it’s up to the retailer to report that). And if you do have an issue with a certain delivery company, you’re within your rights to cancel your order within 14 days, based on who’s delivering it.
Evri says it’s taken measures to prevent porch piracy, including a “My Places” area of their app or website to set preferences for one or all of their future deliveries. Customers can also use a What3Words address or a map pin for harder-to-reach addresses.
But James and other consumer experts continue to call for urgent change to our delivery systems. “It’s not practical for parcels to be left outside people’s doors while they’re at work. When you look at the scale of the problem, there’s a massive issue here, but nobody’s actually blinking first and coming up with solutions.”