Jordan Brough drove all the way from Stoke-on-Trent to retrieve the gift for his girlfriend – but is now boycotting EVRI after what happened
EVRI have issued a refund after Jordan tracked his AirPods to an auction house
An angry customer has blasted one of the biggest parcel delivery companies after tracking his missing parcel down to an auction house in Sandwell.
Jordan Brough, of Meir, Stoke-on-Trent, had sent a pair of Apple AirPods and a protein shake to his girlfriend at her Newcastle Upon Tyne home via EVRI.
But they never arrived, instead ending up at an auction house in Cradley Heath – some 200 miles away from their intended destination.
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Now, Jordan has been reunited with the AirPods, received an apology, a gesture of goodwill, and a refund after StokeonTrentLive intervened in the case. However, he vowed to boycott the company after having to drive down to the auction house himself.
He said: “It’s shocking. I’ll never use EVRI again. For the people who are thinking about using them, I would tell them to be very cautious. Make sure you get an AirTag or something to keep track of your parcel.”
Jordan used the ‘Find My’ app to track the parcel’s location via his own AirPods.
He said: “I was only doing it because the parcels weren’t being scanned anywhere on the EVRI system once they’d been collected.
“I watched my package go to Crewe, Barnsley and Rugby, before it finally came to a stop in Cradley Heath. It ended up sitting there for a while. I contacted EVRI to ask for an update on my parcel. They said that they couldn’t find it on their system, but that they’d investigate it.
“I sent them screenshots of my parcel’s location so there couldn’t be any confusion as to where it was. But they were just telling me they were looking into it over and over again.”
Jordan was so frustrated by EVRI that he drove to Cradley Heath to collect the item from John Pye Auctions.
He added: “It had been 10 days and I wasn’t getting any updates from EVRI. So my neighbour and I drove down to Cradley Heath, where we discovered it was in a John Pye auction house.
“The workers at the auction house told me they’d had 125 pallets delivered by EVRI in the past week. For health and safety reasons, I wasn’t allowed to go into the auction house. So I got a manager to come out, and gave him my phone, so he could use the tracking app to locate my AirPods.
“He found my AirPods and brought them out to me. But he didn’t bring any of the other items from my packages. When I asked him about it, he said the items from the parcels aren’t kept together. They are catalogued individually and kept separately, before they’re listed on the auction website.”
EVRI has issued Jordan with a £20 claim settlement, a £30 gesture of goodwill, and a refund of the postage costs. The delivery giant stresses it only sends items to auction as a last resort to avoid sending them to landfill – while sentimental goods are held onto for a longer period of time.
An EVRI spokesperson said: “Our ambition is that every customer’s experience is a positive one. We have apologised to Jordan, whose earphones were wrapped inside a jumper, making them harder to identify. We have made a goodwill payment for the inconvenience.
“We handle almost 900 million parcels a year and the vast majority are delivered successfully on time. Unfortunately, a small number of parcels can’t be delivered, typically this is a result of poor packaging or missing labels, meaning the sender or recipient can’t be identified. We have a dedicated team who work hard to repatriate these items.”