Customers have been left fuming on Skye after the Evri home delivery service asked customers to pick up parcels.
In some cases that’s a 40-mile round trip from home to collection points.
A breakdown in the Evri delivery service on Skye, Raasay and Ornsay is leaving customers without parcels, and pupils without uniforms for the start of the new school term.
Evri uses a self-employed driver to take parcels from companies such as Matalan, Next, Vinted, Amazon and Asda to customer’s homes on the island.
The problem arose after the Evri driver on the island gave notice that they would cease deliveries “for personal reasons” after providing 20 years of service.
Evri says the issue is temporary until a new delivery driver for the island can be found.
Instead of being taken to people’s homes, parcels are now being dropped at central collection points in post offices.
Text messages to pick up parcels from Evri
Customers found out about the change when they started to receive text messages asking them to pick up parcels.
Parcels arrive in bulk on the island and are redistributed to Post Offices in Portree, An Crubh (Ornsay), Struan, Glendale, Broadford, Raasay and Ardvasar.
In a land mass the size of South Wales, that means some people have to drive miles to get their purchases.
Evri has thousands of parcels every day for Skye and the neighbouring islands of Raasay and Oronsay.
One postmaster described having to take hundreds of parcels out of baskets to scan them – before customers would get a notification their parcel had arrived.
When the post office counter was not open for the afternoon in Portree – many parcels were re-routed to the next nearest post office on Raasay, a ferry journey away.
In one post office, we’ve heard that more than 600 parcels are still waiting to be collected.
Mum, Emma-Sìne Mhoireasdan, told The Press and Journal, that she is still waiting for her children’s school uniform.
The clothes are needed ahead of the new school term.
She said: “I had ordered over a fortnight ago.
“It would be here in plenty of time, and with time to spare to return anything that didn’t fit and get other sizes.
“To go to Inverness, it’s a six-hour round trip, and that’s on a good day, but height of summer the roads are really busy.”
“We are charged a fortune in postage, which to a degree I can accept, but to not get it delivered to our door is ridiculous.”
A local Facebook group has been started, and plans are in the pipeline to start a petition.
It is cataloguing the huge number of concerns locals have about the lack of deliveries on the island.
It cites concerns about people who do not have their own transport collecting parcels.
And if they are not collected they are returned to the sender.
Lisa Madigan, who lives on Skye, said: “Our parcel shop wasn’t far away.
“I managed to connect one parcel but the second one they said they’d turned away.
“It is now no longer listed as a drop-off point.
“I know of someone who drove 30 plus miles round-trip to be told yes we have your parcel but we can’t let you have it because it’s marked ‘return to courier’.”
Broadford resident, Abby Blair, said: “I work all day and I cannot get to the collection point.
“By the time I got to the collection point, the parcel had been returned.”
Others complain that parcels have been “lost”, and are now having to wait until their items are refunded.
In some cases that will take up to 28 days.
Constituency MSP Kate Forbes has raised the matter with Evri.
She said: “As the previous distribution contract was terminated at short notice, exacerbated by ongoing recruitment challenges, there has been significant disruption.
“I have made it very clear to Evri that residents in Skye and Lochalsh should receive the same level of service as those elsewhere in Scotland.
“I understand Evri are continuing daily negotiations in a bid to resolve what they believe to be a temporary situation.”
A spokesperson for Evri said: “ We apologise to any customers who have been inconvenienced by the temporary parcel diversion scheme.
“We are urgently seeking self-employed couriers to join and serve the local community. The role offers great flexibility and competitive earnings with a bonus to join.”