I can see both sides of the coin. I buy some stuff from one of my LHBSes and some stuff from someone else's LHBS. While I appreciate the value in doing business face to face and having actual conversation, supporting local wages, etc., there is a limit to that value and it's not always wrong to choose another option.
My "local" HBSes are either downtown (15 minutes drive each way + cost of parking) or 18 miles away (35 minute drive each way) so they are not always convenient. I work full time, have an active lifestyle including training for endurance sports, cooking most of my meals, butchering & curing meats, maintaining a house, gardens, etc. so getting brewing ingredients and equipment can be a real pain, especially when I'm already taking at least one precious day a month and dedicating it as a brew day.
I'm not going to repent and say that I didn't do enough to help out ma and pa when I take 5 minutes to order something online rather than taking an hour (at least) out of my schedule to get something from the LHBS.
I thought I had the best of both worlds when one of my LHBSes started ramping up and offering online shopping, shipping, etc. If I couldn't get to the store due to a jammed schedule, I could just order online a few days in advance and since it's nearby, the shipping would be reasonably fast, the same guys I already know from the store and homebrew club would be filling my order, etc. Win-Win, right? Well they aren't quite up to speed with the order fulfillment and shipping departments, so while they "strive" for 2-day shipping in the immediate area, I didn't get my first order until the 5th day after ordering, one item was wrong (they sent an ordinary 6.5 gal fermenter instead of the 7.9 gal I ordered) and one of the critical specialty ingredients was out of stock even though the website had no indication as such.
Honest mistakes on their part, and they did rectify them, but it ended up pushing my brew day back a full week and requiring a substitution in the ingredients--frustrating to say the least. The next time I find myself pressed for time and unable to get to the LHBS, I'll be ordering from one of the other big online vendors several states away because I know they'll get it right 99% of the time, and they'll ship a lot faster. They may be cheaper on some things or they may not... that's not the critical factor to me. Maybe in a few months when the LHBS gets up to speed with online ordering and shipping, I'll consider that a viable option.
In the meantime I'm not losing any sleep over bypassing the LHBS, and I'm certainly not going to give anyone else grief for doing the same.