Evri

Hay has been awaiting a package that was to be delivered by Evri, the new name for Hermes. She's been waiting far longer than expected.

A couple of days ago she received a package via Evri that had the correct address on it, but the name of the recipient was not her. On opening it, she found it was a smoke detector and not the Regatta coat she was expecting.

I suggested she call Evri to get to the bottom of the issue and gave her the customer services phone number I found on the web. She was greeted by an automated voice telling her that the call costs £6 per minute. The call was immediately cut off by Hay.

Now it transpires that scammers are busy creating premium numbers for courier services and promulgating them on the internet, catching the unwary. Beware and check you're actually on the courier company website before accepting a number at face value.

Miracle of miracles, she found the person who should have received the smoke detector on Facebook, but he said he'd been waiting so long for it that she may as well keep it.

How on earth Evri managed to match a wrong name to our address is a mystery, but I believe rather a lot of Evri consignees have been experiencing the same issue. It looks like the name field in their computer has become disassociated from the correct address for that individual and assigned to AN Other. If it has happened to one, then it's highly likely that it has affected thousands.