Villages in North Norfolk were affected by random parcel drop-offs after an Evri driver started leaving deliveries in the undergrowth, in hedges, on bins, and strewn across the streets.
Search parties have been formed by residents to hunt for parcels in a string of Norfolk villages after a delivery driver went rogue and left them in random spots.
Close to a dozen communities in North Norfolk were left affected by the random parcel drop-offs after an Evri driver decided to start leaving deliveries in the undergrowth, in hedges, on bins and even strewn all across the streets, reports MailOnline.
Groups of locals formed search parties to look for their missing parcels, while others turned to Facebook community pages to share photos of items they’d found or to ask others to keep an eye out for the packages they had been notified were ‘delivered’ through mobile alerts.
One driver extraordinaire is said to be behind the chaos caused over the last few weeks, with local Norfolk residents dubbing him the ‘Cavalier Courier’.
Those affected include Simon and Louise Leonard of Blakeney, who were in for a rude surprise when they found their parcel in a planter outside someone else’s house, 200 yards down the road.
Simon told MailOnline: “’In our case, the arrow on the map that you get, which is supposed to show where your parcel is, was not anywhere near the house. It was right at the end of the road.”
20 parcels were found on one road in Holt, and several Evri customers have raised complaints about their deliveries being strewn across the streets “like litter”.
One affected customer called the entire episode “ridiculous” as they shared that they’d left for work around 5am one morning and ended up counting around seven to eight parcels littered across the street, approximately 50 yards apart.
Another affected party shared: “There were parcels all over the road, chucked in people’s driveways.”
This is not the only thing that locals have to complain about. A regular grievance has been that parcels are being left on homeowners’ outside porches.
One misdelivered-parcel victim simply said: “We don’t have an enclosed porch,” while another shared that the nefarious delivery driver had sent them a photo of their package on someone else’s porch as proof of delivery.
Writing online, one local said: “They delivered my parcel at 3am by someone else’s property… a little odd. The delivery proof was so dark you couldn’t make out where it would have been. Thankfully, they were delivered by the person whose front drive it was.’
Kelling, Stiffkey, Weybourne, Holkham, Morston, Cley next the Sea, Holt, Field Dalling, Blakeney and Langham are some of the villages that have been affected by the miscreant delivery driver’s random drop-offs.
Several people who were still awaiting delivery of their packages shared that many of the proof of delivery photos they received were just plain black images, with no further information provided.
Complaints have also been raised by people who argue that they were at home during the time the impudent driver claims to have arrived, however they didn’t hear any knock at the door and had to subsequently go outside their homes looking for their missing items.
In an Ofcom survey conducted in October , it was found that Evri had the worst customer service record for courier firms, with over 39% survey respondents left dissatisfied with the service, and only 32% deeming it satisfactory, an improvement over the previous year’s 26%.
Yodel came in at the second last spot in the survey, with a roaring 31% dissatisfaction score.
The survey’s best performers were FedEx with a 52% satisfaction rating, followed by DHL coming in with 55% satisfied customers, and Amazon taking the top spot with a thunderous 56% of customers left satisfied with the courier service.
Taking measures to rectify the situation, Evri has since apologised about their standard of service and assured customers that the driver in question has been removed from that particular route.
A spokesperson said: “Our ambition is that every customer’s experience is a positive one and we apologise to anyone in the area who has experienced an issue with their delivery.
“These deliveries fall below the high standards we expect and the driver will no longer be delivering on behalf of Evri.”
Additionally, the courier company shared that they handle a whopping 730 million parcels every year, with “99 per cent delivered successfully on time and our couriers have an average star rating of 4.7 out of 5 given to them by people in the communities they deliver to.”