Snake shipping question

[whistlepig]

So after searching for quite some time, I finally found a speckled kingsnake on kingsnake.com to purchase. The breeder lived in California (I'm in Illinois) and so he shipped it yesterday overnight and it arrived today, but was not alive. I had thought from reading on here that shipping snakes was fairly routine, does this happen with a regular frequency or was I just extremely unlucky? I would like to know before I ever try it again. Thanks.