Texts and calls

The fake Evri redelivery text, October 2026

Updated 6 October 2026

You assume the £1.99 redelivery fee is a tiny, ignorable charge, and that is exactly what the scammer is counting on. The small amount is the bait, the link is the trap, and by the time the bank calls the number on the back of your card you have already typed your card details into a copy of the Evri checkout.

What the fake Evri redelivery text actually says

The texts landing on UK phones in October 2026 follow a tight script. The opening line claims a parcel is waiting, that a redelivery attempt failed, and that a small fee, usually £1.99 or £2.49, will release it. The sender is often a random mobile number or a short code, and the link points at a domain that looks like Evri but is not. Common variants spotted this month include evri-redelivery.top, evri-parcel-fee.click, and tracking-evri.shop. None of them belong to Evri.

The grammar is usually clean because the templates have been polished. What gives the scam away is the combination of a fee for redelivery, a sense of urgency, and a link that does not match the official evri.com domain. Real Evri redelivery messages do not ask for card details by SMS. They direct you to the Evri app or to a tracking page on evri.com where you sign in, and any fee is handled inside the app, not through a one-off payment link.

If you tap the link, you land on a near-perfect copy of the Evri tracking page. It pulls the Evri logo, the purple and yellow colour scheme, and even the same font. The first field is a postcode, the next is a card number, expiry, and security code. The page then asks for the full name on the card and the billing address, which is everything a thief needs to run card-not-present transactions. Some versions bounce you to a second screen that asks for a one-time passcode that the real bank sends you, and that is the moment the scammer drains the account in real time.

Why the fee is so small, and why that is the point

A £1.99 charge works because your brain files it as trivial. You tap, you type your card, you shrug. The fee is small enough that you do not call the bank, small enough that your card issuer's fraud system is less likely to block the first transaction, and small enough that the fake page feels plausible. Real redelivery fees on Evri, when they apply, are taken through the official app, not as a standalone card payment to a fresh website.

The other trick is the postcode. The scam page asks for it first, which makes the rest of the form feel like a normal delivery flow. Postcode is also a soft verification step for some card processors, so giving it up front lets the scammer weed out dead card numbers before they bother with the rest. By the time you reach the card screen, the page already behaves like a real checkout, and your guard is down.

The fee amount is also tuned to your bank. Some of the templates in circulation in October 2026 vary the figure between £1.49 and £3.99 depending on the issuing bank detected from your IP, because card processors treat sub-£2 transactions differently from larger ones. The point is never the fee. The point is your full card details plus the address tied to them, which is a complete identity-and-payment package you hand over for the price of a Freddo.

How to tell a real Evri message from a fake one

Real Evri messages come from a short code or from Evri's own sender ID, and they never include a payment link. They tell you a parcel is on the way, that a delivery attempt was missed, or that a parcel has been delivered, and they point you to the Evri app or to evri.com. If a redelivery fee is genuinely owed, you see it in the app under the parcel's tracking page, not in a text.

The first check is the link. Long-tap or copy it and read it carefully. Real links from Evri end in evri.com, and most often look like evri.com/track/xxxxx or evri.com/redeliver. Anything with a country-code top-level domain you do not recognise, anything that adds a word like redelivery, parcel, fee, or track to the start of the domain, and anything that uses .top, .click, .shop, .xyz, or .live is a scam by default until proven otherwise.

The second check is the ask. A real delivery firm does not need your card number to redeliver a parcel. They have your address on file, the parcel is sitting in the depot, and any fee is attached to the specific consignment. If a text is asking for card details at all, it is a scam. That one rule alone catches most delivery cons this year.

The third check is timing. If you are not expecting a parcel, the text is fake. If you are expecting one, open the Evri app from your home screen, not from the link in the text, and check the tracking there. The few extra seconds cost you nothing; the wrong link costs you the lot.

What to do if you tapped the link and typed your card

Move fast, because the scammer usually tries the card within minutes. Call the number on the back of your card from a different phone if you can, because the scam site can keep your bank app open in a background tab and intercept one-time passcodes. Tell the fraud team your card details have been phished and ask for the card to be stopped and reissued, with new card numbers and CVV.

Ask your bank to check for any authorisations since the moment you typed the card in. Some banks will refund card-not-present fraud under the Consumer Credit Act or the FCA's Authorised Push Payment rules if you acted on a clear scam, but the clock starts when you first contact them. Get the crime reference number, the name of the agent, and a written confirmation that the card has been blocked.

Change the password on your email account and on any shopping account that uses the same password. Scammers who get card details often test the email-password combination on PayPal, Amazon, and the major supermarkets, and a working email login is the key that unlocks everything else. Turn on two-factor authentication everywhere that supports it, and prefer an authenticator app over SMS where you can, because SIM-swap fraud is a separate but related risk.

Then report the message. Forward the original text to 7726, which routes it to your mobile provider's spam team. Report the website to the National Cyber Security Centre at ncsc.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails, and report the loss to Action Fraud at actionfraud.police.uk or 0300 123 2040. You do not need a police officer at the door, but you do need a crime reference number for the bank.

The wider pattern: delivery cons in October 2026

Evri is the busiest delivery name in this month's batch, but the same template is being run under Royal Mail, DHL, UPS, Yodel, and Amazon. The structure is identical, a small fee, a sense of urgency, a copycat domain, and a checkout that harvests your full card details. The reason these cons keep working is that the assumption of a small fee feels safer than the assumption of a large one.

The same pattern has shown up this year as a fake USPS redelivery fee, a fake Cap Tow text, and the recurring unpaid toll and DMV cons, all of which use a tiny charge to soften your guard. The defence is the same in every case. Real delivery and government bodies do not collect fees by SMS link, and the only safe way to pay any real charge is through the app or the official website you typed yourself.

If you want to harden your phone against this whole family, turn on the built-in spam filter that every major UK network now offers. EE, O2, Vodafone, and Three all have a free service that screens obvious scam texts before they reach you, and the settings live in the messaging app or in your online account. It will not catch everything, but it removes the lazy copycat versions before they ever land in your inbox.

This is general safety information, not legal advice. Scams change. If you need an official desk: FTC ReportFraud or IC3.