Living in the cocoon-like environment of an apartment complex usually means being protected from unsolicited callers.

Unless your apartment has its own off-street entrance, the chances are you won't be bothered by a stream of sales people on cold calls, ticket sellers, charity collectors or religious organisations hoping to make a conversion.

While the determined infiltrator may get into a complex with relative ease, the extra buffer layers of lobbies, corridors, security gates and cameras and intercom systems act as a deterrent to the casual visitor.

And only the most determined cold-caller would be prepared to traipse around all of the 100 to 200-odd apartments in a big scheme.

The flip side of not having a front door accessible from the street and being cossetted from the outside world is that while shielded from the masses to an extent, you can also be deprived of some conveniences house owners take for granted.

Getting bulky furniture delivered can be a nightmare, says Chloe Ryan who lives in a two-bedroom third-floor apartment off Lower Mount Street.

"The first problem arises when they hum and haw about delivering because they know there may be difficulty finding somewhere close by to park and unload the van.

"When they do deliver, you usually have to beg them to carry something up the four flights of stairs, particularly if the lift is too small to accommodate it."

Ben O'Reilly, who lives in Temple Bar, recently had what he refers to as "a furniture fiasco".

He was impressed when the delivery man called him from his mobile phone to say he was in the lobby with the bed he had ordered for the guest bedroom of his second-floor apartment.

"When I went down to meet him and help him upstairs with the bed, he was gone and there was a pile of wood and a king-size mattress deposited in the lobby. I had to get a friend of mine to come over and help me drag the mattress up the stairs because it wouldn't fit in the lift."

Even seemingly straightforward deliveries - like that of pizza or take-away - can be turned into a major production, says Chloe Ryan.

"The delivery guys generally won't come up to the door, so you have to go looking for your keys, throw on some clothes and shoes if you're slobbing around semi-naked on the couch and then go down several floors to collect it. It can take the good out of having the pizza delivered."

James Daly lives in a block in Dublin 6, and says deliveries are not a problem during the day when the security gates are open.

Residents are advised "to only let persons into the block if they know the caller and the call relates to their apartment".

Generally, the resident will come to the front door to meet visitors or accept deliveries.

"At night the gates are closed and visitors leave their cars on the road, but can enter the complex grounds via the pedestrian gate."

Getting tradesmen or repair men to do a job in an apartment "is definitely a huge problem", according to Enda McDonnell of RF Property Management, particularly if it is in the city centre and has limited, if any, visitor parking spaces.

"The traffic in the city centre and lack of parking can put them off making the journey, especially for small jobs when they can't find a parking space and risk being clamped.

"We use the same group of contractors all the time to do jobs for us in the blocks we manage but for individual apartment owners, it is a big headache ."

Sharing an entrance to a block has its own disadvantages.

James Daly says the lobby of his complex is regularly besieged with junk mail coming through the letterboxes. "They come in from fast-food outlets, pizza deliveries, politicians and liquidation sales. Most come through the communal letterboxes rather than the individual boxes. Any such mail in the communal boxes is binned immediately.

"We are concerned about them being visible from the outside, as it can be an invitation to burgle, but we have inserted flaps over the individual boxes so it is not immediately obvious."

Chloe Ryan says there are no individual postal boxes in the lobby of her apartment block and residents have to rummage through a pile of letters and parcels each day. "It's just thrown there and there's no point having subscriptions for magazines because they have a habit of vanishing. It's easy to miss dockets in the pile which are left in for parcels or registered post to be collected at the sorting office.

"I was once walking through the lobby with a friend and we saw a big bunch of flowers lying in the lobby. My friend was being nosy and was wondering who received such a nice bunch of flowers. It turned out they were for me and they just left them there because nobody was in."

Barry Walsh, who lives in a block in Dublin 1, believes those city centre apartment dwellers who avail of delivery services must be either "old, disabled or extremely lazy" .

"There is a launderette underneath our block so I collect my dry cleaning. As for food deliveries, there are pizza parlours, chippers and Chinese takeaways only two minutes' walk away.

"When I do get a Chinese delivery they ring the buzzer at the front door and I go down and pay for it there.

"I've never seen anybody letting a delivery man in to drop a delivery right to the door."

emorgan@irish-times.ie