Common issue. Consider how much more time and effort you are willing to put in trying to deal with the uselesness of Packlink.
When you purchase labels via Packlink, you have to make claims via Packlink. eBay will refer you to Packlink, the courier (Evri/Yodel/DPD etc.) will refer you to Packlink.
In my experience Packlink deliberately don't provide much customer service and you will have to chase them repeatedly to hope to get any compensation. Before you do that, first check that the items you have sent are included in the items compensated by the courier - Evri have a very long list of excluded items so if your item isn't covered then Packlink will refuse your claim even if misdelivered (you will at best get the postage cost back).
My advice is don't use Packlink for items of any value, or where you want to be able to have loss/damage claims paid out. I am not convinced that Packlink provide a service that is good enough for eBay to recommend it to private sellers. (It may be suitable for business sellers who can average out losses over large volume, and/or have a legal team to enforce their contractual rights).
I would also agree that in my experience the cheap couriers such as Evri do seem to handle parcels more roughly than other couriers. So if you still want to use Evri (because of cost saving) then package the item how you would normally, then put the whole thing in another box with padding. Or if that's not worth the effort, consider using one of the better couriers, because you don't save money if items are lost or damaged regularly.
