A big thanks to the above poster for the hints about using the Zendesk ticketing system. I was familiar with such systems having used them in other efforts, but they might not be as obvious to everyone. Hints like this can go a long ways toward helping others.
Bitcoin-brokers seems in theory to be a pretty tight system. In practice as well. The most obvious failure mode is if the operator took off with the sellers coins which are in escrow. That he uses a ticketing system like Zendesk is something I considered comforting. I don't know if it is true or not, but hopefully Zendesk has DOX on the operator and would cooperate in hunting him down if he was running an obvious scam using their service.
When I used this service I found the responsiveness of the operator to be similarly impressive. And the results to be fantastic. I now use Coinbase mostly but will not hesitate to use this services again and may do so even if Coinbase remains performant.
Bitcoin-Brokers is the best option for buying bitcoin same day, reliably and without weird business decision risks.
The issues I've had with Coinbase are
1) Arbitrarily reversing trades due to "high risk" despite thousands of trades with them, a too high percentage of purchases get reversed when the price rises between purchase and fulfillment.
2) A major bank cancelled my account shortly after the first Coinbase ACH trade. They bank did not provide a reason (they aren't required to do so), but there was nothing other than those Coinbase transactions that had changed.
Coinbase may be too high-profile for its own good. If US banks decide they don't like bitcoin companies, it stands out. I'm getting an account with Simple.com (which reputedly does like Bitcoin companies) set up with Coinbase to test how that goes, but this still won't resolve the issue #1 of unreliability.
The account closure option doesn't happen to everyone, yet, but it is common enough to be a concern if you want to keep your bank account.
http://www.coindesk.com/capital-one-closes-bank-account-bitcoin/
http://vr-zone.com/articles/bitcoin-businesses-getting-banned-banks-us/64047.html
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/11/15/bitcoin-companies-and-entrepreneurs-cant-get-bank-accounts/
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rytlm/wells_fargo_investigating_use_of_coinbase/
http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Bitcoin-hasn-t-yet-gained-currency-with-banks-5042604.php