Related, yes — identical, no. The UK arm was rebranded as Evri, while the wider Hermes group carries on across Europe under Hermes and related names, and cross-border shipments often travel under the international side of that group. So a package moving between European countries can show Hermes at one end and Evri at the other without anything being wrong. Worth clearing up a third confusion while we’re here: none of this has any connection to the French luxury house, which shares the name and nothing else. For practical purposes, what matters is which company physically holds your package right now, because that’s who arranges the delivery — and your timeline tells you that it is far better than the brand on the shipping email.

Usually a local partner rather than Hermes itself. Cross-border deliveries within Europe generally travel through the sending country’s network to a hub, then pass to a delivery company at your end — your national post, or a domestic parcel carrier, depending where you live and what the sender chose. That’s the standard shape of these journeys, so an unfamiliar name appearing late in the timeline is routine rather than a warning. It also settles who you deal with about the delivery itself: a missed attempt, a pickup point, a safe place instruction all belong to that local company. Watch for the point where scans start naming a carrier in your own country, because from then on they’re running the show.

That pause is the crossing, and it’s the least informative stretch of any European delivery. Once a package leaves the origin network it travels to a border hub, waits to be sorted with everything else heading your way, and is then handed to the delivery company at your end — very little of which produces public scans. A few days is ordinary, longer around peaks and public holidays, which differ country to country and catch people out. What comes next is usually an arrival scan from a carrier in your own country, often under a fresh number. If a week passes with nothing at all after the border, the sender is the one to ask, since they can raise it with the carrier they booked.

Your tracking names the shop holding it, and that’s where you go. Bring photo ID and either the tracking number or the collection code you were sent, since most shops want to match one of those against the parcel on their shelf. These are ordinary local businesses — a newsagent, a convenience store, a dry cleaner — so the opening hours are the shop’s rather than a courier’s, and checking before you travel saves a wasted trip. If your parcel went to a shop without you asking, that generally means the driver couldn’t complete the delivery, so there may be a card at your door carrying the same details. Go sooner rather than later, for reasons the next answer covers.

Shops hold parcels for a limited window before sending them back — usually 10 days for standard ParcelShops or 3 days for automated Lockers. Your collection message or the card left at your door carries the exact deadline that applies to your delivery. Missing it turns a five-minute errand into a return-to-sender process and a full refund conversation, which on a cross-border order can take weeks to resolve. If you cannot collect it in time, contact the shop directly; some local store owners may agree to hold it briefly, though they are under no obligation to do so.

Inside the EU, generally nothing — goods moving between member states cross without customs or fresh VAT, so a package from Germany to Spain arrives much like a domestic one. A bill appears when a real border sits between two customs territories: an order arriving into the UK from the EU, or into Switzerland or Norway, gets assessed on arrival, and the same happens in reverse. Whoever handles the clearance is who bills you, and that’s usually the delivery company at your end rather than the sender’s carrier — they’ll ask for the tax owed plus a handling charge of their own before releasing the parcel. If the shop collected tax at checkout, keep that confirmation, since it’s your evidence the bill has already been paid once.

Follow the local one from the moment it exists. The original covers the journey out of the sending country and tends to freeze at the handover, while the new number belongs to the carrier physically holding your parcel — which makes it the useful one for everything that matters now: the delivery date, a missed attempt, a pickup point, a safe place. The old number isn’t wrong, it has simply finished its part of the story. Keep it anyway, because if the parcel goes missing the two numbers together show where it was last confirmed and who had it at the time. For day-to-day watching, though, the local number is the one.

Frustrating, and there’s a way to cut through it: go to the sender instead. Whoever shipped your parcel booked the delivery, holds the contract with the carrier, and can raise a formal enquiry that gets a real answer — which neither carrier is obliged to give a recipient. The sender is also who receives any compensation, so involving them isn’t optional if the parcel is genuinely lost. Before you contact them, gather what you have: both tracking numbers, the last confirmed scan and its date. That combination usually settles the argument about which side had it last. If the parcel has already reached your country and the dispute is about delivery rather than transit, your local carrier is the one that can actually check, since the record lives with them.

Linking them is the whole point here — and the reason cross-border parcels are worth tracking with us rather than on either carrier’s own site. Neither company shows you the whole trip: the sending network’s page stops at the border, and the local carrier’s page starts mid-journey with no context for how the parcel got there. Add both numbers and we’ll join them into one timeline in the right order, so the story reads from collection to doorstep. Turn alerts on and you’ll hear when the handover happens — which is exactly the moment a parcel usually seems to have vanished.

You may also want to explore tracking for these other destinations:

• Track parcels going to or from Germany

• Check on your France delivery

• Your Austria orders, all in one place

• Waiting on something from Netherlands?

• Keep an eye on Belgium deliveries

• Tracking made easy for Italy

These carrier pages are worth a look too:

• Track your Asendia Germany parcels

• Following a DHL Express delivery?

• FedEx tracking, step by step

• See where your UPS package is

• Got a China Post number? Start here

• Check your AliExpress Standard Shipping shipment