I feel your pain.  They changed RMA shipment of parts a year or more ago.  The first time I had a disk failure and it didn't arrive automatically within the four hours stipulated in the support contract I went on the war path.  I was told that there were excessive parts shipments that were being sent back because of false alarms so they instituted a verification process.  I argued that a message stating there had been a disk "failure" can't be interpreted any other way.  I would have to say this is the only complaint I have with NetApp support services.