When the screen on my PC died horribly (see recent post) I looked up what to replace it with and came up with the Benq G2220HD: 22" 1920×1024 that doesn't do HDMI (but then neither does anything here), doesn't have speakers (so what), but the actual display is very very good for the price.
Look around, see that once more someone on Amazon is the cheapest (in this case, there are at least four different listings with up to four different vendors on each for the same thing!) and order it late on the Wednesday 23rd.
On Friday 26th, it hasn't turned up, so I email them and wonder when it will arrive.
This morning (Monday 29th), I look at the vendor's feedback and go 'oh'. (Annoyingly, you can't do that on the mobile version of the site.) Most of the time, when selling batteries and other small stuff, they're very good. But there's about 5% feedback complaining about larger stuff being late / never sent etc. And checking, they no longer offer this model.
I send another email noting this and asking if it will be arriving by Wednesday 1st, the last day of the estimated delivery period. No reply by 4pm, so I look for an alternative source and find one offering next day delivery for slightly less. Order it on the basis that I can always reject the first delivery should it actually arrive.
Then I get this from the first lot:
Sorry for the delay in replying to your email. This particular monitor from Benq is not available now until the middle of January 2011. However they do have a G2222HDL monitor which is 2ms response time instead of 5ms (so slightly better) and Benq are saying that this is due in on 1st December (although this is only an eta).
.. and the second lot email to say that next day means 'Wednesday', because they've already been to the Post Office, is that ok?
What to do? At the moment, I am tempted to say ok to the G2222HDL (which does appear to be better thanks to a different backlight system even if the difference in response time is meaningless) IFF it is the same price. Or I could say that, naive person that I am, I think 'in stock' should mean 'we have some' and not 'we think we might be able to get some from a supplier, but we're not sure', and go with the second company.
Thoughts?