Rewind a few years to the former Telecom and the Postmaster General, there were payphones dotted at regular intervals.

Mobile phones and the internet didn’t exist, milk was delivered by horse-driven carriages and television was black and white.

Fast forward to the modern era and nearly everyone has a mobile phone.

Admittedly there are some people who haven’t adopted mobile technology, some who can’t afford it and some who are too young to use it.

For these people, public payphones may occasionally be necessary.

Fortunately, many service stations, shopping centres and hotels provide public phones as a commercial service.

When it comes to maintaining payphones on residential streets, the cost needs to be balanced against the need.

Unfortunately, increasing vandalism has escalated the cost in many cases while the demand is diminishing.

It is unreasonable to expect Telstra to provide this service in residential areas where it cannot recover costs and vandalism is rife.

A more realistic view is that Telstra should be required to maintain payphones at post offices and postal agencies, where security is more easily assured.

While there may be a sentimental attachment to having payphones on street corners, like delivering milk to the doorstep, commonsense suggests it is time to move on and face reality.

Telstra is not the villain in this case. If communities want payphones in areas where they aren’t viable, it should be a government responsibility.

As at June 30, 2009, Telstra operated 20,683 payphones across Australia. There were also 18,645 payphones operated by private businesses, generally using Telstra payphone access lines.

Examples of such payphones include the Blue and Gold payphones located in service stations, hotels and shopping centres.

The more we collect the more we stand to lose.

That’s very true of electronic gadgets. In a household with four kids, there are numerous mobile phones, digital cameras and laptops.

Discarded models get handed down to the youngest ones, who are less reliable than adults at keeping the associated paraphernalia.

Throw in a couple of recent shifts and the problem is compounded.

Battery chargers are the worst.

The twins are currently missing the charger for a small netbook computer. We have no idea where it might be.

There are a couple of old digital cameras missing their chargers. I often struggle to find (but usually do) the chargers for a small video camera and compact camera, which don’t get used often.

There’s an old mobile phone missing a charger and it may as well be thrown out.

While at one level it may be careless to lose these items, it’s frustrating that industry standards are non-existent.

Why can’t there be a single standard each for laptop computers, mobile phones and digital cameras? Instead, every brand has its own unique size for the adapters.

New chargers are expensive too. A cynic might suggest there is profit to be made in selling accessories.

On July 21, I completed an online order for a Samsung GalaxyS II handset on a $29 per month cap plan over 12 months.

After receiving no communications regarding delivery in three business days, I called Vodafone customer service on July 26 and was told my credit reference had failed.

As a result, I asked that my order be cancelled. I was told by the customer service officer that my order would be cancelled because it had not yet been processed. I have subsequently purchased a handset outright.

However, also on July 26, I received an invoice for zero, which suggests an account was created for me.

I immediately submitted an online instruction to cancel the order (copy attached). I never received a response.

I also wrote to Vodafone on July 26 (copy attached) instructing:

• Cancel the online order, which had not been fulfilled; and
• Close the account that was created.

However, on Tuesday, August 2 the handset and a SIM arrived at my designated delivery address.

I immediately visited the Vodafone store in Rundle Mall, Adelaide, and spoke to Andrew. I explained the situation and showed him copies of the correspondence. I asked him to take back the phone and SIM. He said this was not possible, that I should have received a return satchel from the online department.

Andrew called a manager to organise this. She spoke to me on the phone for several minutes, offering a discount in exchange for me accepting the product and service.

I declined, explaining that I had been told the order would be cancelled because at that time it had not been fulfilled.

She eventually accepted my request and said a return delivery pack would be despatched to my home address. I was asked to return the phone and SIM via Australia Post and to retain the consignment note.

Now on Friday, August 5 the delivery pack has still not arrived and I am about to leave Adelaide on a week’s holiday.

If it arrives next week I’ll endeavor to have my wife return the phone and SIM.

If it hasn’t arrived by the time I return to Adelaide on August 13, I will complain to the Telecommunications Ombudsman.

Please resolve this matter immediately.

Update (December 2011): I received another account from Vodafone after writing this letter. I then complained to Telecommunications Ombudsman and received a call from Vodafone within days to settle the matter.

• Color television
• Video recorder
• Electric typewriter
• Desktop computer
• FM radio
• Facsimile machine
• Air conditioning
• Telephone answering machine
• Windows 3.1, 95
• Internet and email
• Mobile phone
• Personal organiser
• Pay television
• Windows 98, XP, Vista
• Smartphone
• Plasma television
• iPad

Considering I started work in 1985 without computers, fax machines or mobile phones, that’s a lot of changes.

Twins James and Maggie, aged 7, took a netbook computer to the match. They played games on it and listened to music.

When I was seven years old, the high-tech gadgets in our house were a television (black and white), a wireless (that’s what we called the radio), an LP player and (unusually) a tape recorder.

The tape recorder was a bulky thing with two reels. Dad used it to record and play some of his music.

We kids were allowed to play with it sometimes, but I recall that winding the tape was often a tricky exercise.

The new battery struggled as well after I installed and ran a GPS app, which I have since removed. Lesson noted.

They said it might be three weeks before I get it back!

At the unit I used a Telstra Turbo wireless modem to connect to the internet.

Now I have a desktop PC and a wireless network. With the twins moving to Adelaide soon I thought I’d get the mini ready for them to use.

Initially it failed to identify any wireless networks, despite being six feet away from the router.

Thanks to Google, I found that I had to activate the wireless switch using the FN and F2 keys. That tip didn’t rank highly in the search, so I’m posting it here for the potential benefit of others.

My next problem was that a connection couldn’t be established to the home network. It kept failing to validate.

The solution was to change the network security from WEP to WPA. I don’t know why that was necessary, but it worked.