By Friday, having received no dispatch confirmation, I phoned to ask what was up. Was told it was stuck on "processing" for an unknown reason. I would get notification by end of day or early tomorrow (i.e. by Saturday morning), because they needed to check with the warehouse. I got the impression the CS agent was fobbing me off, so was unsurprised by the not having received any email.

The Asus Store is operated by "FiveTech Ltd", which is a trading name for "Laptop Outlet", and if I had thought to check before ordering I would have seen large numbers of bad reviews, and ordered from elsewhere instead.

So now I guess I wait until Monday to see if they actually dispatch it, or I start the hassle of getting a refund and go somewhere reliable.

As expected, still no shipping notification, so I called to ask what was up, and was ultimately told it would be 2-4 working days from dispatch, and as that hasn't happened it wouldn't be with me tomorrow.

So I said I wanted to cancel, and they said they would get back to me later today, after they have confirmed with the warehouse team that it hasn't been dispatched. Uh... well, maybe they happen to have a courier pickup at that exact time or something, I dunno. This guy didn't seem as useless as the one I spoke to on Friday, but didn't fill me with confidence either.

A few hours later, realising it was almost 5pm and I hadn't heard anything, I phoned back, and this time spoke to a helpful and polite CS agent who was able to reassure me that it will be cancelled, said it takes 3-5 working days to refund, and so to call back if that hasn't happened by this time next week.

Meanwhile, I ordered from CCL who will deliver tomorrow, and took 38 minutes from order acknowledgement to send dispatch notification and tracking code.

Always so much smarter than everyone else, never needing to worry about what's around the next corner, nothing I couldn't do.

The other monitor arrived from CCL and (despite a scuffed box that made me paranoid) appears new and works adequately.