Independent retailers are not happy with parcel carrier Evri after being told they may need to manually input customers’ details when parcels are being dropped off.
The change has been revealed in emails sent out to Evri’s network of retailers this week.
Mo Razzaq, National President of the Federation of Independent Retailers (the Fed), said that this new process will obviously take more time at the till point.
He added, “In a busy store this could cause chaos, with queues building if you have to input a customer’s email address. We have to think about the negative impact of the service we provide to our other customers.”
In its full year of accounts to February 29,2024, Evri recorded a revenue of £1.7 billion and a record-breaking profit of £117million, which was more than double of the previous year.
Razzaq said, “And all this is on the back of recently reducing our bonus payments too. With Evri announcing record profits and aknowledging the key role that retailers play in this, it’s us that are being forced to do more, for less.”
This comes weeks after it was first reported that Evri will merge with DHL's UK parcel delivery business to create a combined courier firm handling more than a billion parcels and a billion letters a year.
DHL focuses on faster, secure higher-value deliveries of items such as computers or phones, whereas Evri handles much larger volumes of lower-value goods such as clothing.
Evri's deliveries are handled by self-employed couriers using their own vehicles, while DHL's parcels are delivered by a combination of couriers and the company's own fleet of vehicles.
The companies hope that combining the two operations will offer "greater choice" and "cost-competitive solutions" in the UK.
With about a billion parcels a year, the merged business would get closer to Royal Mail's parcel volumes. It delivered 1.3 billion parcels and 6.7 billion letters last year, according to its annual report.
