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Metrics type: Key MetricsCategory: Shipping & Courier

At a glance

Live count of Evri claims still in open / pending state. Includes lost-parcel claims (the dominant Evri claim type), damage claims, and overcharge disputes. Evri’s claim volume is structurally higher than Royal Mail’s because Evri’s lost-parcel rate runs around 1.5 to 2 percent vs Royal Mail’s 0.5 percent. The card surfaces the workload pipeline so the merchant can chase, escalate, or absorb appropriately.

Calculation

Calculated automatically from your Evri (formerly Hermes UK) data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.

Worked example

A UK DTC clothing brand running Evri Standard for 9,800 parcels per month. £35 average parcel value, business open-parcel-claims process is centralised in customer service. Reading taken at 11:00 BST on 12 Mar 26 (real-time pulse). The card reads 34. The alert at >0 unresolved >7d is tripped, 18 of 34 are over 7 days old. Five things to notice:
  1. Lost-in-transit at 24 open claims is consistent with Evri’s structural loss rate. At ~1.5 to 2 percent loss rate × 9,800 monthly parcels × 28-day filing window, expect ~25 to 30 open lost-parcel claims at any time. The merchant is roughly at baseline; not a crisis.
  2. Median age of 9 days for lost claims is on the boundary. Evri’s published claim turnaround is 14 working days for lost; the merchant’s pipeline is sitting just under that. Healthy ageing distribution: most claims close inside 14 days, a tail ages beyond 21.
  3. Total claimed value at £1,150. That is the cash recovery pipeline. At a typical 60 to 75 percent payout rate (Evri pays out at lower rates than Royal Mail because more claims are declined for missing tracking events), expect ~£700 to £860 to land in the next 4 to 6 weeks.
  4. The 6 damage claims are the highest-friction subset. Damage claims need photo evidence and original packaging; the merchant has to chase the warehouse for photos, which adds days. The 11-day median reflects internal documentation delay, not Evri delay. Pair with the Customer Service playbook.
  5. Overcharge claims at 14 days median are slow but low-value. Evri’s finance-team review queue runs to a 21-working-day SLA on overcharge resolution. Expect resolution as invoice credit, not cash refund. The £85 total is small enough to absorb if the chase cost exceeds the recovery value.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Open claims is a workflow metric. Pair with these:

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Evri’s own portal: Evri Business PortalClaims → Open Claim Register. The aggregate count at the top of the filtered Open / Pending view should reconcile with this card. Why our number may legitimately differ from Evri’s portal: Internal identity (within Evri): her_open_claims and her_claim_value move together; if count rises but value stays flat, new claims are low-value (small overcharge disputes rather than lost parcels). Cross-connector reconciliation:
Documentation cross-reference (UK carrier peers).

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

Why is my Evri open-claims count higher than Royal Mail’s? Structural. Evri’s lost-parcel rate is roughly 3-4x Royal Mail’s. At similar parcel volumes the Evri claim pipeline will be 3-4x larger. The cost-vs-reliability trade-off includes the claims-handling workload as part of the cost equation. Why was my Evri lost-parcel claim declined? Common reasons in order. (1) Last-tracking-event was “Delivered”, customer says they did not receive but Evri’s POD scan shows delivered. Evri’s default response is to side with the POD; appeals require photo evidence of an empty doorstep or recipient signature dispute. (2) Outside the 28-day filing window. (3) Insufficient declared value at booking, Evri’s default compensation cap is £20 per parcel; uplift to £100 or higher requires explicit purchase at booking, not after the fact. (4) No dispatch evidence, the merchant did not retain CCTV / dispatch logs proving the parcel was handed over. How does Evri’s compensation cap work? Default is £20 per parcel. Uplift options at booking: £25, £50, £100, £250, £500. The uplift cost is small (£0.40 to £2.00) but must be selected at label generation; cannot be added retroactively. For high-AOV products always select the relevant uplift. My Evri open-claims count is 50 percent higher this month, what changed? Three usual causes. (1) Volume rose, claim volume scales with parcel volume; check whether shipment count has grown proportionally. (2) A specific batch of products is shipping with under-declared values, customer claims succeed where merchant cannot prove higher value. (3) A regional courier event, a depot consolidation or capacity issue often produces a spike of LOST_AT_DEPOT exceptions that flow into claims 1 to 2 weeks later. Should I file a claim for every lost parcel? Yes if the parcel value is above the filing-cost threshold. For small-value parcels (£10 to £20) the time cost of filing exceeds the recovery; many merchants accept the loss as part of carrier cost. For £30+ parcels always file. Track whether claim filing rate keeps pace with Lost-Parcel Rate. How does this card interact with parcel insurance? Most merchants carry a third-party parcel-insurance policy on top of Evri’s basic compensation. The Evri claim and insurance claim are sequential: file the Evri claim first, insurance picks up the gap. Some policies require the Evri claim to be closed before they will pay; check policy wording. Why does Evri pay out claims as invoice credit not cash? Default is invoice credit (faster, no cheque clearance). Cash refund can be requested but takes longer. My damage claims have a higher decline rate than my lost claims, why? Damage claims need photo evidence of the damage AND the original packaging AND a statement of value. Evri declines damage claims where any of those three is missing. Lost claims need only filing-and-tracking-event evidence, much simpler. Tighten the warehouse process to retain damaged parcels for 30 days with photo evidence; that lifts damage-claim payout rates from ~50 percent to ~80 percent.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Open Claims is one of hundreds of KPI pulses Vortex IQ tracks across Evri (formerly Hermes UK) and 70+ other ecommerce connectors. Nerve Centre runs the detection layer; Vortex Mind investigates the cause when something moves; Ask Viq lets you interrogate any number in plain English. Start for free or book a demo to see this metric running on your own data.