Councillor forced to wander streets looking in bins for missing Evri delivery

A councillor says he was forced to wander the streets looking through bins in a desperate effort to find a parcel that Evri failed to deliver.

Stephen Lambert, a Labour councillor for Kenton, Newcastle upon Tyne, had ordered a blazer in the January sales but the item never arrived.

Instead, Evri had marked it as delivered in a back lane a few streets away from his house in Gosforth.

He resorted to combing the streets and searching in neighbours' bins, but couldn't find the package.

Delivery company Evri has apologised and said the parcel was incorrectly scanned.

The company has been under fire in recent months after a number of customers complained they did not receive their Christmas orders on time or at all.

Evri apologised last week for the delays, putting them down to staff shortages, Royal Mail strikes and bad weather.

Lambert said he was notified by Evri on 8 January that the cotton linen navy blue blazer he purchased from COS, reduced from £160 to £90 in the sale, would be delivered between 3.30pm and 5.30pm that day.

He said he stayed at home waiting for the delivery but "no van turned up and nobody delivered any parcel".

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He said Evri "claimed that they had delivered it, but according to the map which they use to prove they delivered it, it was dumped in a back lane down West Avenue and I'm having a right carry on trying to get some sort of recourse on this."

When he checked the tracking information on the Evri website later that day he discovered that the parcel had been marked as delivered at 4.41pm and the "verified GPS location" showed that the parcel had been taken to the middle of Back West Avenue.

There was no accompanying photo to show the parcel's location. Instead a black box appeared in the section where a delivery photo should have been uploaded.

"I went out that night looking for it," said Lambert. "I went down the back lane and was looking inside all the bins in case it had been put there, but I couldn't find it.

"What I've found really puzzling is that the van has gone up a back lane behind West Avenue where there are no houses, it's offices there."

Lambert said he is not the only resident to report an issue with Evri, saying neighbours have complained about "parcels being left in inappropriate places", including footpaths and the wrong property.

A spokesperson for Evri said: "We have been in touch with Councillor Stephen Lambert to apologise as his parcel appears to be missing in our network after having been incorrectly scanned.

"We have offered him a goodwill gesture of £90 and advised him to contact his retailer to request a refund or replacement. In the meantime we are continuing a search."