The manager of a village shop says she is ‘devastated’ after Evri unexpectedly withdrew her services from the store.
Sevie Ashby, who runs Cobham Community Stores in Cobham, near Gravesend, says she only found out the store had been decommissioned when customers told her last month.
Last April, Evri began monitoring the store after the number of packages they were receiving reportedly started to decrease.
Sevie said: “For the past year we have been fighting and fighting but we have received absolutely no news from them.
“We were told by incoming customers that we were no longer online, so I finally called the head office.
mpu1
“They said they had no information, but their computer said we were decommissioned on April 30.”
Despite trying to contact her local representative, Sevie says she didn’t hear from Evri until they came to collect the equipment from the store a few weeks ago.
She explained: “They said our average was 191 parcels a week and they wanted 200.
“So I just said, ‘I’m not fighting this anymore.’ We have provided the best customer service we could, we have done everything we can to maintain the service.
“All independent stores are being phased out in favor of large corporate contracts with Tesco and the Post Office.
“We are small and we cannot compete. I’ve had to turn people away this week. It’s just really terrible.”
She says that discontinuing Evri’s services will have a “huge impact” on the store, explaining: “The store is really going to suffer because people are coming in to drop off their parcels and then a few other buy stuff.
mpu2
“We’re really a small community store, so it’s not even for personal gain, it’s a service to the community.
‘We have people in the village who don’t drive and elderly people.
“So the fact that we could print labels in-store made it really easy for them. They didn’t have to use computers or anything like that.
“It’s a great service to the community that has been taken away. I understand that they want money and figures, but that is not what this is about.”
The store in De Straat is the only one in the village and is run almost entirely by volunteers.
It has been an Evri agent since 2014 and earns between £2,000 and £3,000 a year running the service in the store.
Sevie said while this figure may be a “drop in the bucket” for the larger retailers, it was a “big deal” for the community store.
She understands that the German company would prefer to set up shop in Tesco Express stores rather than independent retailers – the nearest for Cobham customers would be 2.4 miles away in Meopham.
She has now contacted a number of parcel providers, including DHL, DPD and InPost, to offer services at Cobham Community Stores so villagers still have somewhere to go.
“It just isolates people. We no longer have a post office.
“I want to try to turn this situation into something positive for people who will appreciate the efforts we are making to help people here.
“The store as a whole is a bit of a social hub. Socially, it feels like we’re a bit disconnected right now.
“We’re always on the cusp of this, we’ve got rent and all kinds of other things, and we’re never swimming in gold.
“It now feels like this is a bit of a blow to us. It is a local store and we try to keep our prices as low as possible.
“Losing that kind of income will make a big difference, so fingers crossed we can bring in someone else.
“We are a bit upset by the lack of communication from Evri and to find out from customers is a bit boring.
“We will bounce back and we will find someone else and life will go on.”
Evri said the service at Cobham Community Stores was “not viable” after parcel numbers reportedly fell by 40% in recent months.
A spokesperson said: “We recognize what a difficult time it has been for Cobham Community stores generally and in terms of our partnership with them we have worked closely with the store for over a year to try to increase the number of consumers within the to increase community. use of our service.
“Our decision to no longer offer services at this store is not something we have taken lightly. We continually review our locations and strive to retain the most used locations within communities.”