Shipping Catastrophies

Since I got the barracks all spiffed up and functioning as it was designed now with the drip emitters, I decided it was time to buy a few new fish to restock up from the losses I've been having. I won 1 auction from a forum member - very gorgeous black copper pair. I also won 3 auctions from BettaDreams. Both boxes arrived DOA. I am very upset with the local post office or the postal system in general, I'm not really sure which yet but I do not trust them to ship my fish Priority anymore, no matter how they're packed, unfortunately. I'm having Sherri reship Express. Aznb0i is having to await the arrival of more fish to get some black coppers in, so I will be getting a replacement pair of those. What happened there was that his cousin was doing some shipping for him, and got the boxes mixed up. Mine was supposed to go Priority but it did not. The end result was this:

Whatever must they do to those poor boxes?? What I would give to be a fly on the wall for just a day.. with a tiny tiny camera to record what must surely be some mighty mean mail abuse.

I am going to buy a few more fish from Marianne, and have been talking with her on what she can do for me in the range and selection I'm looking for (1. cheap, and 2. matches for some other stock I have), but I really doubt shipping will be a problem there. She always ships FedEx. They come all the way from Canada but with the exception of my first order when it was cold and there was no heat pack (it was warm here, didn't think we needed one), I have had excellent arrivals from her, no deaths. (She re-shipped on the first DOA and with the heat pack all the fish were totally fine).

Geeze, what a week in fish land.