In December 2025, I sent a parcel containing make-up and other items for two teenagers I know as a Christmas present. I sent it using the delivery company Evri, with a label I purchased at the Post Office counter. It cost £12.70. The toys were worth about £500.Two days later I received a text saying the driver couldn't find the address. I was told delivery would be attempted the next day but it never arrived. I followed up with several emails and Evri told me in February that the parcel had been delivered to the 'doorstep' on 30 December. I was then told in March the parcel had been 'returned back to sender due to damage caused throughout the process' - but I never received it. Is there any way for me to get back this £500 worth of items? Name and address supplied Failure to deliver: Evri did not get this reader's Christmas parcel to the intended recipients Helen Crane, This is Money's consumer champion, replies: Yours is by no means the first complaint I have heard about Evri, and I'm sure it won't be the last. From losing a box of precious baby items and a rare vintage sign, to damaging a valuable Pokemon video game, I have held the courier's feet to the fire many times over the four years I have been writing this column. In October, Ofcom named it the worst courier out of nine it investigated in terms of customer service - though admittedly the rest hardly covered themselves in glory.With all that said, I do have some sympathy for the courier in this case - as there is an interesting twist in this tale which I will get to later. You know these teenagers through a charity you used to volunteer for. You send them presents at Christmas and on birthdays as they have sadly lost their parents. However, this year your good deed did not go to plan as the package, which included expensive make-up items, appeared to get lost on route. CRANE ON THE CASE Our weekly column sees This is Money consumer expert Helen Crane tackle reader problems and shine the light on companies doing both good and bad.Want her to investigate a problem, or do you want to praise a firm for going that extra mile? Get in touch:helen.crane@thisismoney.co.ukFirst, you were told it couldn't be delivered to the teenagers' address, but that the courier would try again the next day. After that, you told me you didn't hear from Evri again and assumed the package had been received. However, you later learned that it never had been, and contacted Evri several times via email to ask what had happened. Eventually, the firm told you it had been returned to your home address, which you had provided as the sender when you posted the parcel. But this happened on 30 December, and Evri didn't tell you until February. You had since purchased and sent replacement gifts. You had been on holiday over Christmas and say you were none the wiser that delivery was being attempted. You can only assume the package was stolen, but whatever happened it is clearly long gone. It is not clear whether its contents was 'damaged' as Evri suggested. This was when you contacted me. If the story was as you had described, I felt that Evri owed you something for not getting the package to its rightful recipients. But things were not quite as they seemed. First of all, when you told me the parcel couldn't be delivered to the teenagers' address, I assumed that it was because they were not at home and there was no safe place to leave it in (though admittedly, Evri didn't seem to care about a 'safe place' when it left the parcel outside your door). But in reality, Evri explained to me that you had given an incomplete address when you purchased the label, making it undeliverable.Evri said the address was missing a line, which made it impossible to know which building on the street it was intended for. This could have been flagged by the Post Office when it accepted the parcel and affixed the Evri label, but ultimately the onus is on the customer to get it right. As such, the parcel was returned to the sender address. Because you were away, it was left outside in your designated safe place. Evri has a photo of this as well as 'geo tagging' proving that the courier was at your address. It is always disappointing when a courier dumps a parcel outside, but with no address for the recipients and with you being on holiday they were left with little option. It does seem that you weren't well enough informed about what was happening to the parcel, and Evri admitted to me that its customer service agents could have explained this more clearly at the time.However, what I heard next made me change my mind about helping you to get your money back. Evri told me that you verbally abused its staff on the phone - something you declined to mention when you asked for my help. You deny that you spoke to Evri on the phone, saying you only ever contacted the firm by email. After I confronted you with this, you did still thank me for my help. Evri said staff have tried to contact you again since I intervened in order to offer further support. However, it said you haven't responded. When I relayed this to you, you said that Evri has not tried to contact you. I don't know which of these accounts is the truth. I'm sorry the parcel was mislaid, but I don't think it's right to insist that Evri pays you back for the contents given firstly that the parcel was delivered back to you, and secondly given your conduct towards its staff. An Evri spokesman said: 'Evri handles more than 1 billion parcels each year, with the vast majority delivered successfully and on time.'Our couriers have more than four million five-star Trustpilot reviews, and independent data has recognised us as having the highest on-time delivery rate of all carriers. '[The customer's] parcel was missing crucial address information, so we were unable to deliver it and returned it to him in December.'We have since made several attempts to contact him to offer further support, but we have not yet received a response.'