Most of the livestock within my aquarium came from an online vendor. Actually, with the exception of a few fish, everything for my aquariums was ordered online and delivered to my door. The competition for online ordering of fish and corals couldn’t be higher. There are small basement vendors, which I’ve consistently criticized for offering extraordinarily high prices. For example, I saw a 6” rainbow chalice (one of many names randomly applied to coral) for sale on a Facebook post earlier today. The seller wanted $650 for the coral, saying they were very firm on that price. I have the exact same coral in my aquarium. I paid $79 for 3” of chalice years ago, and now it’s well in excess of 7”. If I were to sell the colony, I would probably ask around $200 for it, or less. Basement vendors often lead the charge when it comes to over-hyping coral; manipulating species in photo editing software and making otherwise ordinary pieces appear rare or exotic. Then you have large aquaculture outlets; usually well run facilities that are constantly sparring for the consumer dollar, with offers like free shipping or reduced cost. All this leads to the topic of guarantee policy. Most aquarists who shop online know the golden rule; Live Aquaria offers by far the best guarantee policy in the industry. In fact, it’s too good to be true. Purchase a fish or coral and it dies within 14 days, you either get a store credit or money back, the total cost of the livestock minus shipping, which is usually free. It’s hard to beat, and aquarists have wondered if this policy didn’t lead the Wisconsin based company to end up on the auction block, eventually getting swallowed up by Petco Inc. There are a variety of guarantee policies in the middle, some seven days, some several hours and a few vendors offer nothing, not even live arrival. 
Whenever you ship something alive or perishable, there has to be some sort of guarantee policy. On top of that, livestock can be packaged to survive in a variety of shipping conditions, even arriving healthy after a delay. I’ve ordered from enough online vendors to know which ones can package their livestock, and which ones cannot. So if the vendor is doing their job, your livestock should arrive in good condition, even if it’s delayed 24 hours, right?… More:
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