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Metrics type: Key MetricsCategory: Shipping & Courier
Evri’s multi-attempt delivery cap. Anything past 3 attempts = a parcel returning to sender. Each row is a refund + customer trust hit.

At a glance

Alert table listing every Evri parcel that has accumulated more than 3 delivery attempts in the last 7 days. Evri’s standard policy attempts delivery up to 3 times before returning to sender; a parcel still attempting after 3 attempts is on its way to becoming a returned-to-sender event with associated refund cost, customer goodwill credit, and reverse-leg carriage charge. Each row in this card is a parcel that needs intervention before it becomes a loss.

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, around 14,000 parcels per month. Reading taken at 09:00 BST on 12 Mar 26 for the trailing 7 days (06 Mar 26 to 12 Mar 26). The card shows 5 parcels in flight on attempt 4 or higher. Five things to notice:
  1. Each row is a near-loss event, not just a metric reading. The 5 parcels carry £212 in product value plus £10.50 in carriage cost. If all become RTS, the gross loss is ~£222 (product cost is lower, but customer goodwill and reorder rate are also affected).
  2. Three of the five are recipient-side issues (NW3 absent, SE15 invalid address, SW6 access denied). The merchant can intervene: phone or email the customer to confirm address, deliver instructions, or reroute to a ParcelShop. Most customers respond within 24 hours; the parcel can be saved.
  3. The £85 refused parcel (E14) is unrecoverable. The customer rejected delivery; the parcel is now en route back to the merchant. Action: refund the customer, log the order as RTS, write off the carriage. The merchant cannot un-refuse a recipient.
  4. At 14,000 monthly parcels, 5 parcels at 4+ attempts in a week is roughly 0.15 percent. Healthy steady-state for Evri is 0.10 to 0.25 percent. Above 0.5 percent (35 parcels per week at this volume) is structural and needs investigation; usually a postcode area with a courier issue or a customer cohort with bad address data.
  5. The card is a workflow trigger, not a diagnostic. Each row needs an action. Most merchants have a daily customer-service workflow that pulls this card’s table, contacts each customer, and either reroutes or refunds. The cost of customer-service time is much lower than the cost of letting the parcel become RTS.

Sibling cards merchants should reference together

Multi-attempt parcels are a workflow card. Pair with these:

Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard

Where to look in Evri’s own portal: Evri Business PortalTracking → Parcels in Flight → filter by attempt count > 3. The merchant can see the same list of tracking numbers; the card is a more accessible per-merchant table view. Why our number may legitimately differ from Evri’s portal: Internal identity (within Evri): hermes_redelivery_attempts (count) ⊆ her_exception_rate × her_shipments_total. Each multi-attempt parcel threw at least one exception event. Cross-connector reconciliation:
Documentation cross-reference (Evri-specific). Multi-attempt-cap surfacing is unique to Evri among UK couriers because Evri’s specific 3-attempt cap is more visible to merchants than Royal Mail’s similar policy.

Known limitations / merchant FAQs

What is the right action for a parcel on attempt 4? Depends on cause-code. (1) Carded / recipient absent, contact the customer and either reroute to a ParcelShop for self-collection or schedule for a specific day. (2) Address invalid, confirm the address with the customer; if a typo, the parcel may be undeliverable and need re-shipping with a corrected label. (3) Recipient refused, the parcel is going RTS regardless; refund the customer and stop further attempts. (4) Access denied, add gate codes / delivery instructions to Evri’s tracking record and request a re-attempt. (5) Unknown / no scan, escalate via Evri’s customer service to find the parcel. Can I stop further redelivery attempts? Yes via Evri’s portal. Cancel the parcel from in-flight; it will return to sender. Stops the wasted attempts and saves carriage cost. Why do some parcels reach 5+ attempts before RTS? Self-employed-courier model. Different couriers may attempt the same address on different days; the policy is “3 attempts per parcel” but enforcement is loose. Some parcels accumulate 5 or 6 attempts before the system finally classifies them as RTS. Should I worry about a single parcel at attempt 4? Operationally yes, the parcel value is at risk. Statistically across a high-volume book, single multi-attempt parcels are normal noise. The action is per-parcel rescue; the metric to watch is whether the row count is rising. Why is “address invalid” appearing on a parcel that delivered to the same customer last month? Probably a single typo in the latest order’s address field. Spot-check the order data; if the postcode or house number differs from the customer’s previous address, the merchant’s checkout did not preserve / re-validate the address. Common when customers order via a guest-checkout flow with manual entry. My customer says they were home all day but the parcel was carded, what happened? Three possibilities. (1) The driver knocked at the wrong house and carded the wrong door. (2) The driver mis-scanned, recorded carded without attempting. (3) Customer was home but the doorbell was broken / not answered. Pull the photo evidence (Evri couriers should photograph the carded card on the door); if no photo or the door is wrong, escalate. The card shows 0 parcels, is the alert broken? No, this is the healthy state. Most well-run merchant books at typical Evri volume have 0 to 3 multi-attempt parcels at any time. Zero is desirable. How does the 3-attempt cap differ from Royal Mail’s policy? Royal Mail Tracked also caps at 3 attempts then RTS, but the cap is enforced more strictly because of the salaried-postman model. Evri’s self-employed couriers occasionally make 4+ attempts (different couriers on different days) before the system processes RTS; Royal Mail’s process is more disciplined.

Tracked live in Vortex IQ Nerve Centre

Redelivery Attempts > 3 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.