Sports Direct & Evri – The gift that doesn’t give

Have you ever had such a bad customer experience that it becomes a joke? Well, let me tell you a story about my Sports Direct orders that kept on getting “lost” as soon as they arrived at Evri!

The last time I ordered from Sports Direct, my order was thrown into the garden of someone’s house. I don’t know what was going through the delivery driver’s head, but it clearly wasn’t delivering the parcel to the right person!

Luckily, after a bit of detective work (the delivered photo was actually useful), I was able to find the property where it was delivered and get the parcel!

Evri hasn’t earned the title of “worst delivery firm” for nothing has it?

Now, I have a general rule of thumb, that I won’t order from a website that has Evri as the courier service because they are that bad, however, I really wanted these trainers!

The first order

I bought some trainers last year from Sports Direct, and they are really comfy and have become my everyday shoes. Alas, they were falling apart, and the soles started to speak as I walked. After a little repair work, I gave them some life for a while.

I had looked in the local Sports Direct stores, but the trainers weren’t available, however, I did find them online and in other colours too! Yeah, I am that old!

So I decided to treat my some 2 pairs in different colours, as well as some new gym trainers that I needed wanted too. I was really spoiling myself, wasn’t I?

So ordered on 2 March, with Evri confirming they had picked it up on 4 March. Could I be getting the delivery early?

But the interesting part is that as soon as it arrived at the delivery depot, it was reported delayed 4.5 hours later.

I found this interesting as I wasn’t expecting the delivery until Friday (8th), so to say it’s “delayed” so soon got the alarm bells ringing!

On 12th March, and no additional updates From Evri it was clear that this item was no longer getting delivered. So I contacted Sports Direct (via their online chat channel), and was told it could take 48 hours to investigate.

However, by the end of the day, it had been confirmed “lost” and we had agreed to refund the order, and I would get a 10% discount and free next-day delivery. As much as I pleaded, having another courier deliver wasn’t an option!

I even asked if delivering to the local store would be safer, but the impression I got is that even Evri would deliver those orders too. So I just got them re-ordered to home.

I mean, I couldn’t be unlucky and have my second order stolen lost could I?

Missing refund

It should be noted that while order two was happening, I was still waiting for the refund for this order.

While I got the discount code straight away, it took Sports Direct another 4 days to actually cancel the order and issue me a refund. WTF?

Order Two

13 March, with a discount code provided I repurchased all the trainers and a pair of gym shorts. Hey, I got 10% off code, so why not?

Evri confirmed they received the item, and the next day it was back at their delivery depot. This time it lasted a little longer. It was 7 hours before it was updated as “delayed”!

As soon as I noticed this update, I was straight onto Sports Direct, because the alarm bells was in full force. Maybe if we act quickly, then maybe we could undelay the parcel getting stolen lost again!

I was pissed, understandably! On the chat, I explained the situation and asked for this to be investigated straight away because of what had happened. They refused! I repeatedly explained the situation and they said they wouldn’t do anything for another 48 hours!

And then closed the chat! My blood was boiling!

So I tried again, and got someone different to explain the situation but got the same response. When I asked to speak to a manager, they refused and said all complaints are to be emailed to customer service.

Complaint

Not getting anywhere, I sent a complaint to customer services department. As requested.

In fact, I also sent a complaint to both CEOs of Evri & Sports Direct, because I was that pissed!

I am mostly proud of my email to Evri, so here is what I sent. Passive aggressive much?

It should be noted that I never heard from either CEO, which is no surprise really is it?

My complaint with customer services was also ignored. To date this has NEVER been dealt with, even after chasing this up too!

Order is still missing!

48 hours after the conversation on chat, I was back on there again to confirm what we all already knew, the order hadn’t been delivered! By now, I had no more fucks to give, it is what it is now!

It was clear that Sports Direct didn’t give a fuck, so why should I? At the end of the day, the only thing I am losing is patience. Sports Direct are the ones losing money!

Clearly, I’ve pissed Sports Direct off now, and I have a black mark against my name because there was no quick turnarounds into the investigations this time.

The fact that they sent out 3 near identical emails straight after each other just showed the lack of customer service being provided now!

Finally, it was confirmed that the item was “lost”, and whether I would like a refund or replacements. And you know what? I just thought “Fuck it!”, let’s see if it is 3rd time lucky!

Order Three

This time Sports Direct were sending out a replacement order. However, the gym trainers were no longer in stock. Go figure, they were stolen lost by Evri!

I received an email explaining the full order had been cancelled, but when I checked I was only being refunded for the trainers.

I presumed that this was the way it would work. Cancel the order and create a new one for the replacement. I didn’t get any new order details. Nothing appeared in my profile and I got no new emails related to it either.

So I responded asking for clarification if this was correct. And to provide the new order number, because quite frankly the confidence of getting the order was extremely low so I wanted to track it myself!

I received a response, confirming that my understanding of the refund process is correct…but no new order information!

I feel like I am becoming an expert at getting blood out of stone!

So again, I asked for a new order number and the tracking information and it was finally provided.

The question was, would I get this order?

After 22 days from my original order, I finally had the parcel in my hand.

I’m not sure why this was lucky one. Could it have been because it came from Sports Direct? Or the fact that it was only two sets of trainers instead of three?

But they are here, and this third act in the drama brings it to a close!

Encore

I think it’s fair to say, I didn’t have a good experience from Sports Direct, and give them credit they still sent an email (albeit it’s an auto email) asking for me to leave them a review.

Generally, I tend to not leave reviews, but they did ask, so I did. Which is basically an abridged version of this story here.

Sports Direct responded, with the same copy-and-paste response, that I have become very much accustomed to seeing and knowing that they will never respond too!