How you CAN get a refund if your parcel never arrives: Force firms to cough up with our six simple steps
- Hundreds of thousands left out of pocket every year after orders never arrive
- Retailers and delivery firms are routinely washing their hands of responsibility
- Many parcels supposedly delivered to a 'safe place' are never found
- It can leave shoppers suspecting neighbours — or opportunists — of theft
Shoppers who are refused refunds for missing parcels will soon be able to demand photographic evidence that the package was delivered, Money Mail can reveal.
Giant delivery firm Hermes is trialling technology that allows drivers to take photos of where they leave parcels.
It could help hundreds of thousands of people who are left out of pocket every year after online and telephone orders never arrive.
Retailers and delivery firms are routinely washing their hands of responsibility when parcels go missing, claiming it was 'signed for' or put in a 'safe place', such as a shed or porch.
Breakthrough: Giant delivery firm Hermes is trialling technology that allows drivers to take photos of where they leave parcels
Customers have accused couriers of forging their signatures and stealing or dumping their packages everywhere from garage roofs to wheelie bins.
Some found parcels supposedly delivered to a 'safe place' were not there, leaving them suspecting neighbours — or opportunists — of theft.
Other packages have been sent to the wrong address and never returned.
Customers end up forced into lengthy battles with retailers to prove their package never arrived.
Many retailers then side with the delivery firm. Experts say shops that refuse refunds or replacements could be breaking the law if they fail to provide evidence that the parcel arrived, as the onus is on them to show it did, rather than the customer to prove it did not.
Hermes has invested £18 million in 20,000 state-of-the-art hand-held scanners to help resolve these disputes.
The scanners, which will be available later this year, will enable drivers' movements to be tracked with 'pinpoint accuracy', says Hermes.
'We will also be utilising the built-in camera so we can capture high-quality photographs of parcels left in a selected safe place,' it says.
It is unclear whether the cameras could be used by delivery firms to photograph the person signing for a parcel.
Resolver, a free complaints website, says it received 3,800 complaints about missing parcels last year — an 80 per cent rise on the previous year.
And it thinks this may just be the tip of the iceberg, with 'hundreds of thousands' of people affected each year.
The technology being trialled by Hermes might have helped teacher Jo Pilgrim, who bought a £30 plastic hut for her pet cat from eBay in December.
A few days after she placed the order, she received an email from delivery firm Yodel claiming she had signed for the parcel. But she was miles away teaching a class of schoolchildren.
The eBay seller refused to refund her and the eBay resolution centre took the seller's side.
It said tracking technology showed the driver had been outside her home. It also sent her a picture of an unidentifiable 'squiggle' as evidence, which she says did not resemble her signature.
Jo, 43, of Cannock, Staffordshire, persisted with the seller and finally received a refund.
She says: 'I have a complete lack of faith in anything you order over the internet. It turns out they can just forge a signature and flout the law.'
Experts say shops that refuse refunds or replacements could be breaking the law if they fail to provide evidence that the parcel arrived
Francesca Found also had to fight for a refund when £26 worth of children's clothes from Mothercare failed to arrive.
The retail merchandiser, 29, from North London, was at work when she received a message from Yodel to say her parcel had been delivered.
She contacted Yodel, which said the courier remembered the parcel being signed for by a white man in his 40s with two children.
No one fitting that description lives at her house.
Mothercare eventually refunded the money. She believes the driver went to the wrong address or forged her signature himself and then dumped or kept the package.
Francesca Found had to fight for a refund when a Mothercare parcel failed to arrive
In some cases, couriers claim to have left packages in a safe place that does not exist.
Jack Baldry tweeted: 'Left securely in my shed. Would be cracking if I had a shed.' Retailers are legally obliged to deliver your parcel to the address you give.
If it goes missing or is damaged, it is their responsibility to investigate. If it is dumped in a garden, a front porch or with a nasty neighbour, they are also liable.
James Walker, of Resolver, says: 'If you're at war with a neighbour, you're not going to want to go round and nor should you have to.
'The retailer should ask the courier to collect the parcel from the neighbour and re-deliver it, or just send a replacement.'
This even applies with companies such as Amazon, where you are allowed to designate a so-called 'safe place' as your preferred delivery option, experts say.
James Daley, of Fairer Finance, says: 'If a customer says, 'please leave my parcel behind the dustbin', then the retailer has to know that they are taking a risk.
'If it is happy to do so, then it has to be ready to bear the cost when things go wrong.'
A spokesman for Yodel says: 'We take any allegation of misconduct very seriously and will investigate.'
Like Hermes, it says it is also using technology that allows it to track exactly where parcels are with pinpoint accuracy.
l.eccles@dailymail.co.uk
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