Are your shipments arriving on time?

I meant to post this a couple of days ago but since I have time today, I'm getting around to it.  Why do I have time?  Well, because I am fixing the virtual machine from hell and some of those copies and installs take a long time.   

So back to the topic... I was wondering if you are seeing excellent, good, ok, or bad service from the shipping companies you use?  I started to notice over the course of the past year that every time I specified overnight shipping, I never got my goodies overnight.  To be fair, I'm talking about overnight from the time the shipping company picks up the package, to delivery of my door.  The last time this occurred was a few weeks ago when I ordered some stuff through our internal procurement website.

That was the last time I'll ever use overnight shipping.

I talked to the shipper customer service and they are of course very sympathetic.  I asked why the package didn't arrive on time, where it was, when to expect it, etc.  I mentioned that none of the overnight packages for the past year arrived on time.  I didn't ask for a refund, and guess what, one wasn't offered.  It was almost as if they were treating this as business as usual.

Is it? Is this what you are seeing?

Last week, I ordered a new laptop SATA drive from newegg.com.  I ordered it on Monday because the drive was finally in stock.  It shipped the next day, although it shipped pretty late in the day.  I specified 3 day shipping on the order.  I still don't have the drive.  If you look at the tracking there was a delay.  It says, "A LATE TRAIN CAUSED THIS DELAY".

Well, at least they're starting to get creative.  I called newegg on Friday and asked for a shipping refund.  They obliged without issue.  So when this occurs, who is penalized?  I certainly don't want this to hurt newegg.

Does that refund end up coming from the shipping company?  How are shipping service level agreements tracked and measured?  Does someone have the skinny?