I sure as sugar know a lot more about both business on the internet and customer service than you do. At the very least I don't publicly flame the community I make my living from, that's for sure. When did that become even remotely a good idea? My customers love me, and the odd one I disagree with, I do so privately. You should be making every effort to groom this community, not piss everyone off. In case it's not clear, that's what you're doing. And you're not winning. What you should've done was sent a private message to the people with problems asking for specifics and assuring them you were going to deal with the issues personally. Not this crazed rant you're doing. There you go, free advice from someone who actually does know more about customer service than you do.
BTW if you're in the middle of another public rant, I'd love to hear the one about about how putting shipping charges online is NASA-level technology. Is that level of perfection beyond you? It's not beyond me - I was doing it in the late 90's.
The really bizarre part of this industry is that this kind of jacked up behavior by vendors seems to be commonplace - almost every vendor I read about here has extensive threads from multiple customers, and the response from vendors seems to be 'it's the consumer's problem'. So I'll tell you something else JOHNONE, that kind of nonsense service leaves a whole a mile wide for someone who actually gives a rip to eat your business alive. At the very least I can't get worse service from cabelas and bass pro - which is why the small vendors apparently can't compete. All someone has to do is offer better service. Apparently impossible in this industry.