63% of people surveyed from Greater London have received a strange or a large delivery in the post, according to a survey conducted by delivery service SoonAs.

The on-demand delivery provider has conducted a survey of just over 2,000 Brits to find out about what people think about online delivery services and the strangest item they’ve ever received.

While the usual suspects of sofas, beds and fridge-freezers were the largest items to be delivered, some of the stand-out strangest items included a taxidermy monkey, life-sized dinosaur and a 22-pound cake.

Bizarre competition wins recorded by those surveyed also included a horse’s saddle and two large boxes of potatoes, whilst weird celebrity merchandise like a 6ft tall Miley Cyrus cut-out and blow-up doll with a Nicholas Cage mask are also finding their ways to Brits doorsteps.

The less said about “a freeze-dried Zebra from Africa, that came with its own barcode” the better, with 63% of people admitting to receiving a strange or a large delivery in Greater London, compared to 53% in the South West.

It was also revealed that the most common delivery blunder by people in Greater London is underestimating the size of an item (29%), but Wales is the most likely region for that to happen with 38% of its respondents admitting to doing so.

The results have also shown that nearly half of Brits (42%) do not take old furniture or household items to tips or landfill, and of those who do a massive 40% only take one to five items a year. The Greater London region throws away the most waste (67%), with only 33% of its respondents not disposing of anything at the tip or landfill.

With 33% of people from Greater London not taking old furniture or household items to landfill, the survey found that eBay is the most popular platform, with 45% of people adopting their services, followed by Facebook Marketplace at 21%. Across the country, male respondents (43%) are more likely to choose eBay to shift their unwanted goods, but Facebook marketplace is the most common choice for females (39%).

Clothes (50%) and household items (43%) are the most frequently bought or sold items online for those living in Greater London, followed by books at 40% and furniture and appliances at 31%.

SoonAs is aiming to make the process of shifting your large, awkward, or peculiar items both simpler and more convenient so that customers no longer have to leave their homes, with a driver picking up and delivering preloved items directly from door to door.

Drivers select and then bid to deliver a customer’s item – from three-piece suits to life-sized dinosaurs – giving the customer flexibility with cost, by providing them with quotes from numerous delivery providers all in one location.

It’s hoped the revolutionary system and added convenience will support the public to live more sustainable lifestyles by making it easy to purchase preloved items.

The survey also showed that reliability is a very important feature of a delivery service for people in Greater London (55%), alongside security and safety (54%) and cost (48%). In fact, text messages and emails are the preferred method of communication when receiving information about a delivery (both 32%).

Whilst 19% of respondents from Greater London care about who their delivery driver is, 27% said that they felt updated parcel tracking was missing. Delivery being too expensive is the most common reason to put someone off both buying or selling an item online, with 24% having been put off selling and 35% having been put off buying an item due to high costs.

The majority of people in Greater London felt that services are missing estimated arrival time or slimmer delivery periods (40%), convenience, such as not having to collect missed parcels (33%) and more open or better lines of communication (32%).

With SoonAs, gone are the days of half-day time slots, collecting parcels from your neighbours, following instructions from a small piece of card or queuing at the post office on a Saturday because you missed a mid-week delivery. SoonAs works to suit you with a reliable and flexible platform, removing the fuss we’ve become accustomed to with deliveries.

Sharon Watts, Business Manager at SoonAs said: “SoonAs is disrupting the delivery sector by taking the complexities out of organising deliveries with an easy-to-use service that is accessible for everyone.

“We want to showcase to people all over the nation that they can easily organise independent deliveries of any item, unloved or strange, without needing to know complex product or logistical information.

“SoonAs works to suit customer lifestyles, with the best delivery prices conveniently compiled in one place, rather than the traditional way of trawling the internet for quotes – we look forward to supporting more of Britain’s weird and wonderful deliveries!”