Delivery services in the UK have been described as "miserable" by customers for the third year running, according to an annual survey by Citizens Advice.

The two worst-rated services were Evri and Yodel with both managing an overall score of just two stars out of a possible five.

The charity's league table showed that none of the major parcel firms managed to secure even a three-star rating, with Royal Mail and Amazon achieving joint best position with a meagre 2.75 stars.

13.3 million people, experienced a delivery problem in just the last month, such as parcels left in insecure locations or arriving late.

Comparing the latest survey to last year, Citizens Advice said there had been no improvements in delivery problem scores with the rate of parcel problems remaining “far too high across the board”.

Worst delivery services revealed in Citizens Advice survey

Yodel had the lowest scores, with 40% of customers reporting a problem whilst  DPD had 37% and Evri 34%.

The Citizens Advice parcels league table looks at the top five delivery companies by parcel volume and measures their performance against criteria including customer service, delivery problems and accessibility needs, such as people needing longer to answer the door.

Of those consumers who experienced a problem with their delivery, nearly half (43%) then had a further issue when trying to resolve the problem, such as not being able to find the right company contact details or not receiving a response.

In the end, more than half of those who had further issues (53%) found it difficult to resolve their problem. This figure rose to 60% of people with a disability.

Almost all parcel firms scored two stars or below when it came to meeting the needs of disabled customers or individuals who require adjustments to how they receive parcels.

An estimated 7.2 million people had an accessibility need they would like to share with their parcel delivery company, but 45% of these people were unable to do so, the survey found.

It urged regulator Ofcom to review its new complaints and accessibility guidance by April next year and consider enforcement action on firms if there had been no significant improvements by this date.

Discussing the survey, Citizens Advice chief executive Dame Clare Moriarty said: “For the third year running our league table reveals online shoppers are being let down by a substandard delivery service. This is an issue we feel has been neglected for far too long."

Adding: “With a seasonal surge of deliveries on the horizon, parcel companies must take action to protect shoppers and get to the root cause of these persistent failings.”

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “We are pleased to come joint first of Citizens Advice’s parcels league table. We are working hard to further improve our quality of service and continuing to introduce more convenient options for customers to access our services, including automatic redelivery and safe place delivery preferences."

Elsewhere, Yodel responded: "We welcome feedback and invest heavily to continuously improve our service. However, this report is not reflective of our own parcel data, which indicates that 98.7% of the 200 million parcels we handled over the last 12 months were delivered correctly on the first attempt."