A bit late to this thread, but I thought I would add my firsthand recent experience of working for Evri as a driver. 

I was badly injured in my previous job. I had to take 14 months away from work to recover. I seen the advert for Evri and thought it would be a laugh and pay for some beer tokens whilst recovering from my injuries. 

I applied and days later I was asked to come in for the induction. 

The depot manager sent me an email with a link for directions to the depot. The directions given takes you to the wrong address. 😃😃😃

The induction consisted of showing me how to use the delivery app and then sent on my way to deliver a small amount of packages. 

The depot was filthy. It did have a toilet, but hand soap, hand towels, and toilet roll were rarely available. 

Health and Safety was nonexistent. No PPE other than a hi-viz vest for some of the depot team.  People were squeezing passed lorries and forklift trucks. 

It was a total shambolic free-for-all. No organisation at all.  

The amount of downtime passed on to the drivers was crazy.  If a lorry was late and you were missing parcels from your manifest, the depot manager refused to allow you to leave. If parcels are missing from your manifest you require to be approved in the app. You can't leave. They force you to wait at your time and expense. 

If parcels were missing, often placed in the wrong cage, it was the driver that had to spend time trying to find them.  You don't get paid for this time. 

When parcels couldn't be found and the depot manager let you go, as you didn't scan all the parcels on your manifest that is a failure for the driver. A driver fails their daily targets for events totally outwith their control. 

If a parcel was damaged, torn, or open during transportation, the parcel was still put into your cage. The driver either had to spend time trying to fix the parcel, or they had to reject the parcel. The sorters never made any effort and passed all the jobs on to the driver.  More unpaid time for the driver. 

It was common to lose between 30mins to 1 hour in the depot waiting for lorries, finding and repairing parcels, or waiting on your cage to be brought over to you. 

You can never recover the amount of time lost at the depot. 

A lot of drivers don't even factor this in. They think they are delivering xx amount of parcels per hour and earn £xx per hour. They don't account for the time waiting and working at the depot. 

It really is awful that Evri can pass on their mistakes and downtime on to the drivers. They pass the cost of their mistakes on to the drivers.

THE PAY. 

How this is even allowed to happen is shocking. A few of the routes held by longer serving drivers are ok. I covered these a few times and the rates of pay were acceptable.

However, the vast majority of routes I had the pay was abysmal. It's humiliating and demoralising working hard and getting paid an absolute pittance. 

I was given a rural route. It was actually really good fun. The overwhelming feedback from customers were they were delighted to finally have a good courier. My feedback was really good. 

The app calculates your route and works out how many parcels you'll deliver per hour. It has 5 speed options for the driver to set to their ability. I could manage my route at the fastest setting. 

Despite doing a good job, despite making all the targets on the fastest setting, I would be lucky to exceed £10 per hour. 

Remember £10 per hour has to cover all my expenses of running my car. No holiday pay, no sick pay, no pension contributions, so I have to somehow find money to pay for those. 

Some days when my route was low on volume I earned as low as £5 per hour. When you factor in the large mileage and petrol costs, I actually lost money. It cost me money to work. 

I complained to the depot manager. They just said to do another round. There wasn't enough hours in the day to take another round. I was already working a full day. They also said rates of pay, and rounds, were set by Evri. Not them.

I complained to Evri. Evri told me it was nothing to do with them. Speak to the depot manager!!!!! 

Both my depot manager and Evri were fully aware what I was being paid was completely unacceptable, but neither would help. 

I even approached the GMB Union Rep for Evri. We had a few emails back and forward, but then he fell silent and won't respond.  The Union knows exactly what happens at Evri, but they aren't interested. 

You are sent offers of rounds out in the app. It tells you the parcel rates in advance. I accepted a round and worked it for a few weeks. The pay was fine on this round. Then without notification I was deducted a significant amount of money. 

It turns out Evri decided to reduce the parcel rate for rounds, and then backdated this too.  Without notifying drivers they just grabbed the money out of their accounts. 

This hit drivers hard. You are told how much you've earned on a daily basis. 50% of your earnings go into a pot that you can remove as you please and then the rest is paid on pay day.  You are charged £1.80 each time you release money from this pot. As the pay is so poor a lot of drivers frequently remove money from this pot. 

Drivers had spent money from their pot and budgeted knowing how much they would be paid on pay day. Then when Evri reduced the parcel rates and backdated it left drivers missing £500+ they thought they had earned and budgeted for. It really was beyond cruel. 

Parcels sizes were routinely wrong. It was not a small issue as Evri claim. Every single day the average pay per parcel ended up consistent within just a few pence. Some days there were a lot of large parcels and you couldn't fit them all in your car, but the average was always the same. Evri are clearly labelling parcels to meet an average cost. 

It's too much effort to ask for parcels to be rebanded. You have to measure and weigh the parcel. If you do that for all the parcels that are wrong you'll ruin your delivery performance. Then you have to use the app to apply for every parcel individually. It is very time consuming. The amount of time it takes makes it pointless spending hours to reclaim earnings you should have been paid. 

The turnover of drivers was incredible. Once drivers realise the pay is so bad, and they can't afford to keep working, they leave. There is an endless amount of drivers filling their space. 

This is what leads to the poor service. Drivers don't know their route, they don't know the area, they don't know their customers. 

You don't get paid unless the parcel is "delivered"..  This is why drivers are forced to leave parcels on doorsteps and cut every corner.  If you don't know your route you'll never keep up with the targets. 

Even if you do meet your targets the pay is still abysmal. It is no wonder the service ends up so poor when the drivers are desperately trying to make a little bit of money. 

Some of my rounds the average parcel pay was barely over 50p. Using a car you simply can't take enough parcels and make deliveries fast enough to claw back all the time at the depot and traveling to your first delivery. 

BONUS PAYMENTS

Despite having 100% on time deliveries and 100% deliveries, and 5 out of 5 ratings most weeks, I never once received a performance bonus. 

The receipt scan was often my failure. These are parcels that were on my manifest, but couldn't be found for me to deliver. Someone else's failure cost me my bonus. 

Then some weeks when my receipt scan was high, I'd get a random negative review. Often I was left questioning if the negative reviews were genuine, or added to stop me getting a performance bonus. 

I never received the new driver bonus to subsidise my pay until I got up to speed.

I was often asked to do an additional round with the promise of a bonus payment. The bonus payment wouldn't materialise. 

SELF EMPLOYED AND FLEXIBLE WORKING?

Despite what Evri claim there was nothing flexible about it. You are allocated a round and it's made clear it is your responsibility that all the parcels are delivered without fail. 

If you are unwell, need time off, or your workload is too high,  it's your responsibility to find someone else to help you.  They say you can use your friends and family to help you. 

You are told what time to be at the depot for your collection time. 

If workload is high there will be demands that you have to work additional days. 

It really is not flexible at all. The depot manager is controlling. 

This self employed nonsense has to stop. Nearly all the drivers are working full time. 

Evri has to be forced to be a proper company and offer their drivers benefits and conditions of a real job. It is time they are forced to provide the tools needed for the driver to do the job. Drivers should not be using their own cars. 

RISK AND INSURANCE 

Evri offers a 3rd party insurance top up(that drivers have to pay for) when you are working for them. However, most insurance companies won't allow you to do this. They know if you're only third party and have an accident at work, you'll try to claim off your fully comprehensive policy. 

If your crash your car you are at best insured third party. That means if you crash your car working for Evri you will not have your car repaired. You lose your ability to earn and you have to pay for repairs to your car. 

If you are working for Evri they should be covering drivers fully comprehensive. The driver should not be left risking their car.

I'll bet that the amount of Evri drivers that are actually insured properly is tiny. They can't afford to pay for hire and reward insurance as it's so expensive. 

You have to use you own mobile phone. My phone was ruined. Your phone is constantly on so I ended up with screen burn and very poor battery life. An expensive smart phone ruined.

UNREASONABLE CUSTOMERS

It was always the same customers that were difficult. Customers could makes drivers job easier. 

It is the same customers who are never at home to receive their deliveries and no safe place to leave the parcel.  They would never divert, delay and would wait until their third attempt to take action.  It is impossible to make a living when you deliver first time every time. Having to attempt a delivery three times to the same people all the time costs the driver money. 

Blocks of flats with broken intercoms was common. You can't gain access to their flats and somehow that is the driver's fault. 

People would message to demand their parcels were delivered at a specific time and date suitable for them. Late in the evening, on Sunday, or hold the parcel until they get back from holiday. 

I got a few one star reviews for  things 

1) Stopping on someone's driveway. 

I'm delivering a parcel to your house and stopping on your drive upsets you? 

2) For posting a postabale through their letterbox

Although postables are the lowest paid as you can quickly post through the letterbox, they still expected me to ring their doorbell and wait for them to answer. 

3) People happy with my delivery, but reviewing Evri as a whole. 

4) Not happy with the product they've ordered. 

These unreasonable people cost drivers bonus payments. They are hard enough to achieve without people not understanding they are reviewing the driver, not the product they ordered, or unreasonable demands. 

In the most awful of weathers I've stood at doors for an excessive amount of time. Through their intercom or Ring doorbells I've been asked to wait until they finish their Teams video call, get dressed coming out of the shower,  or watch them finish what they were doing first. 

They expect you to wait on them. We really don't have the time for them to take their time. When they intentionally go slow they are costing us money. Money we can't afford to lose. 

When you realise how bad an Evri driver gets it from both Evri and their customers, it probably isn't so hard to understand why a lot of Evri drivers end up leaving, or treating their Evri job exactly the way they are treated. 

It really is a demoralising job. 

I didn't think the Panorama programmer was bad, but it could have gone a lot deeper. 

Evri need to be stopped from what they are doing. They need to be forced to operate as a proper company with real employees..