In the interest of fairness, I have had flawless orders from Autogeek, as well. Excel is amazing, it's one thing for you guys on the left coast to get two-day service from him, but we get it here on the right coast, as well.
The thing that sticks in my craw is when the vendor has a problem and isn't up front about it. If AG is out of stock on something, or they thought they had it but didn't, or someone ordered at the same time, or the warehouseman dropped the last bottle and it broke, these are understandable issues that are explainable to a customer, and then decisions can be made about split shipments, shipping costs, etc.
In the same way that a one-man operation might not ship right away because of vacation, emergency, etc., this is understandable. The problem I had with one of those was I ordered on a weekend, and Tuesday of the next week I still didn't have my order (nine days after I placed it). So I emailed and was told it had shipped a week ago, and was given a tracking number that indicated that shipping info had been received but the package had not been received yet. So I asked again, are you saying that the package was shipped last Tuesday, or that it's shipping today (Tuesday), because tracking is showing it not shipped yet? And I was told again, that absolutely, it was shipped the previous Tuesday. When I got the package, the shipping label was dated the day that I inquired about the order, not a week before. My point is, all the vendor had to say was "Sorry, I was on vacation/I was at a car show/my grandkids were visiting/I'm swamped from the sale I'm running/etc." and I would have been fine with it, instead of lying to me and losing me as a customer.