It's well known that I am someone who loves gadgets and I've always had an interest in consumer electronics and computers.

As a result, I have quite a few toys around my house and, having children, I am also forever turning things off after them. The biggest areas of forgetfulness being the entertainment system and their computer, both often left on long after the play has stopped.

They are getting better though, remembering to turn off the TV after watching but many an evening I have come home to find the house in darkness but the lounge room faintly lit by the glow coming from the display on the amplifier.

On the weekend I was in the hardware shop and was wandering through the electrical section looking for something that would allow me to turn off all the power to the various componants attached to the television but I didn't expect to find something as cool as this..

A powerboard with a master socket and four slave sockets which, when power is cut to the main one (ie. by turning the device attached off) the slave ones also lose their power.

Genius!

It was market as a "green" device designed to save you around $70 a year based on shutting down items that normally have a standby mode, such as audio visual equipment but conceivably it's going to save more than that because, once set up it shuts down all the equipment that forgetful people leave when they turn the TV off. 

I have the TV now plugged into the master socket and when it goes onto standby mode it shuts off power to everything else. 

Now.. to get them to turn their computer off! 

Last Thursday my monitor unexpectedly died and, while it's still got six months of a three year warranty left it's going to take three weeks before the repair company can even look at it so on Friday I ended up having to go shopping.

LCD monitors have definitely improved both in performance and price and was happy to find a nice 22 inch widescreen monitor online (only) at Officework for less that $300 which the company promised same day delivery if ordered before 11.30am.

A nice little countdown clock was letting me know I still had over an hour to do so but I wanted to check first that it would indeed be same day delivery so I called them up and they confirmed.

I put forth my credit card information and got the confirmation email and everything looked good but a little later on when I checked the website I noticed that the delivery time was saying Monday so I called back.

Officeworks confirmed the order but said that their transport contractor was unable to do same day delivery as I am in a regional area but they could do next day delivery which for some reason has suddenly become Tuesday.

Regional?

I'm in suburban Perth. I am 12 kilometres from the city centre which, in sprawling Australian cities is not very far at all. I am also walking distance from one of Perth's fastest growing industrial areas and, ironically only ten minutes drive from one of Officeworks stores.

The company have clearly spent a lot of money developing their site. It is effective and easy to use but that is not any use if their third party service providers cannot deliver (in this case, literally).

This is what I explained to them as I cancelled my order and they were very understanding. The fault here clearly lies with distribution company Toll.

I ended up driving into Morley to buy a monitor from the place where I often get computer parts which (ironically) is directly opposite Officeworks.

Officeworks said that the monitor would still go out but that I should refuse the delivery. Toll attempted delivery on Thursday afternoon, nearly one week after I was originally promised.