Back in April, video game rental service GameFly filed a formal complaint against the United States Postal Service for supposedly offering preferential treatment and care to Netflix and Blockbuster parcels, and none to its equally fragile mailers. Now, GameFly is petitioning for information relating to "Netflix-only" drop boxes present in certain post offices. Though the USPS filed a directive to employees two years ago mandating that these boxes be taken down to avoid legal ramifications, GameFly presented photo evidence of Netflix slots remaining in two California post offices.
GameFly has also continued its original complaint, claiming parcels from larger DVD rental services were being manually sorted to prevent damage and breakage. The USPS responded with a curt "all DVD mailers are not equal," and suggested that GameFly update its disc packaging to better protect its product.
When asked for comment on the complaint, a GameFly representative said, "Unfortunately, we cannot comment as it is a legal matter."
[Update: For visual aid, we've received the above image from a reader whose post office most certainly does sort Netflix and Blockbuster DVDs separately. He said they don't include GameFly DVDs because the rate at which encounter them "is much lower." Well, look at that.]
[Via GamePolitics]
Reader Comments (55)
Posted: Oct 14th 2009 1:01PM (Unverified) said
I was just thinking earlier today that Gamefly should make a deal with MS and get a digital portion of their service running on xbox live, like Netflix does. I live like an hour from the Tampa center, but it still takes like 2-3 days to get and return games. If they had it on live, I could just download 2 games at a time and "return" those...they'd probably save a lot of money on replacing cracked and missing discs too.
Posted: Oct 14th 2009 1:12PM (Unverified) said
Gamefly is slow! very slow!
Never had any broken games though. Had a very scratched wii game once but not broken.
Never had any broken games though. Had a very scratched wii game once but not broken.
Posted: Oct 14th 2009 4:26PM scratchh said
ill throw in my $0.02 on gamefly.
i had it back in the day, maybe 2004(?) and shipping was so slow because they only had 1 distribution center back then i believe (maybe 2). LA to Seattle made for slow turn-around, plus I wasn't playing enough games to warrant the cost (grad school). so I dropped it.
a friend got me a year as a gift last feb. at first they would consistently ship my stuff with fast return, but lately they have not been scanning anything fast return. i know that is all the USPS's fault, which sucks. turn-around is not great (Denver-Austin), though it could be worse. i find it very difficult to get the games I want, and I'm not even talking new releases. been wanting to try out indigo prophecy and its been at the top of my queue for ages, but no dice. bout the only thing i can reliably get is DS games. i highly doubt I'll be paying for another year when this one runs out.
i had it back in the day, maybe 2004(?) and shipping was so slow because they only had 1 distribution center back then i believe (maybe 2). LA to Seattle made for slow turn-around, plus I wasn't playing enough games to warrant the cost (grad school). so I dropped it.
a friend got me a year as a gift last feb. at first they would consistently ship my stuff with fast return, but lately they have not been scanning anything fast return. i know that is all the USPS's fault, which sucks. turn-around is not great (Denver-Austin), though it could be worse. i find it very difficult to get the games I want, and I'm not even talking new releases. been wanting to try out indigo prophecy and its been at the top of my queue for ages, but no dice. bout the only thing i can reliably get is DS games. i highly doubt I'll be paying for another year when this one runs out.
Posted: Oct 14th 2009 9:41PM (Unverified) said
My two cents...I have had a few problems with Gamefly in the past and I even suspended my account for awhile, but as of late they have been great. I have the 2 game plan and only keep one game in my GameQ at a time.
I returned Ghostbusters about a week and a half ago and added Uncharted 2 to the GameQ as my next selection, I was alerted Monday that it shipped and received it today. I did the same for Infamous in May and received it on the release date.
It is great if you intend to ultimately purchase the game also, I got Infamous on the release date, played it and then purchased it for $32. I will do the same for Uncharted 2 in a few weeks when the price is around $35 or so.
I do think that the service really depends on your geographic location relative to a processing center also.
I returned Ghostbusters about a week and a half ago and added Uncharted 2 to the GameQ as my next selection, I was alerted Monday that it shipped and received it today. I did the same for Infamous in May and received it on the release date.
It is great if you intend to ultimately purchase the game also, I got Infamous on the release date, played it and then purchased it for $32. I will do the same for Uncharted 2 in a few weeks when the price is around $35 or so.
I do think that the service really depends on your geographic location relative to a processing center also.
Posted: Oct 16th 2009 12:36PM (Unverified) said
It is definitely the USPS. I live in Orlando and have both Gamefly and Netflix. Netflix turnaround to the Orlando center and my place is one business day one way. Gamefly to Tampa is two business days one way. I occasionally get DVDs arriving from Tampa from Netflix in a single business day like Orlando, whether receiving or sending. Gamefly is always two business days one way, no matter what. Netflix is probably all automated while Gamefly is manually sorted or throttled on purpose.
Also, only ONCE during this past spring did (my) USPS scan the Gamefly discs which was then forwarded to Gamefly so they could send my new games without my waiting. Wonder what happened to that? Looks like that great idea caused a huge flux in games out which further led to more shortages in as little as a week. Ugh.
I can only hope Netflix launches games soon. If I drop my games off Monday, I'll get my next Gamefly batch Friday, which is okay, but pitiful compared to Netflix. But that's four shipping centers for you.
Also, only ONCE during this past spring did (my) USPS scan the Gamefly discs which was then forwarded to Gamefly so they could send my new games without my waiting. Wonder what happened to that? Looks like that great idea caused a huge flux in games out which further led to more shortages in as little as a week. Ugh.
I can only hope Netflix launches games soon. If I drop my games off Monday, I'll get my next Gamefly batch Friday, which is okay, but pitiful compared to Netflix. But that's four shipping centers for you.




