Gumtree, Facebook Marketplace and eBay Furniture Delivery in London

Most marketplace deliveries that go wrong go wrong before the van is booked, because the buyer measured the item and not the way in. A standard internal door in a London flat is 762mm wide, older conversions often have 686mm doors to the bedrooms, and a three seater sofa is usually 850mm to 950mm deep, so it goes through on its side or not at all. The half landing on a Victorian or Georgian staircase is where long pieces stop: a wardrobe or a corner sofa that would fit the room cannot turn the stairs to reach it.

So ask the seller for three things before you agree a price: the height, width and depth, whether the legs, feet or back cushions come off, and which floor it is on and whether there is a lift. Send those to us with a photograph of your own narrowest door or turn, and we will tell you honestly whether it goes in. It is far cheaper to walk away from a listing than to pay for a sofa that ends up living in your hallway.

Private sellers are not a shop with a collection desk. They go out, they sell the same wardrobe twice, and they describe a fifth floor walk-up as "a few stairs". A van that arrives at a locked door still costs money, and most of the wasted trips in this work come from a collection time agreed in a Facebook message three days earlier and never confirmed.

Give us the seller's number when you book and we confirm a window with them directly the day before, and again when the crew is on the way. If the seller cannot be there, they can leave the item with a neighbour or a concierge, but the arrangement has to be agreed in advance rather than improvised on the doorstep. Tell us if the seller's end is upstairs too, because that makes it a two person carry at both ends rather than one.

Pay the seller yourself, before collection day, by bank transfer or through the platform where it offers that. The crew does not carry cash for the item or hand money over on your behalf. It keeps the sale between you and the seller, which is where it belongs if anything about the item turns out not to match the listing.

If you cannot be at the collection, we can send photographs of the item at the seller's door before it is loaded, so you see the condition for yourself rather than finding out at your end. We are movers rather than inspectors, and we cannot vouch for whether a mechanism works or a fabric is original. What we can do is show you what is in front of us and wait while you decide.

Bed bugs travel in second-hand upholstered furniture, and London has plenty of them. They hide in the seams and piping of mattresses, sofa bases, headboards and the joints of bed frames, and the signs are small dark spots, shed skins or the bugs themselves. Ask the seller to send close photographs of the seams and underside before you commit, and look properly at the collection if you are there.

If an item has visible signs of an infestation, we will not load it. That is not squeamishness: the next job goes in the same van, and a sofa that brings bed bugs into your flat would be a far more expensive purchase than the listing suggested. Hard furniture such as tables, chests of drawers and wardrobes carries much less risk than anything with padding.

Furnishing a flat second-hand usually means a table from one seller, chairs from another and a bookcase from a third, all in different postcodes. Booked as one run, those collections share the van, the crew and the Congestion Charge, and the route is planned so we are not crossing the river three times. It costs far less than three separate jobs.

Send every address in the order that suits the sellers, with each item's size and floor, and we will build the route and come back with one fixed price for the lot. A marketplace pickup on the way back from an IKEA collection is one of the most common pairings we do.

Collection-only eBay listings are often bigger and cheaper than anything that can be posted, which is exactly why they are collection only. The seller will usually want the item paid for through eBay first and collected within a set number of days. Give us the collection deadline along with the address and we will work to it.

Auction houses and dealers, including the salerooms around Mayfair, Chelsea and Islington, have their own rules: a paid invoice, a lot number, a fixed collection window and sometimes a goods entrance at the back rather than the front door. Tell us the house and the lot and we will arrive with what they need to release it.