Gamefly is one of the few internet game services that I genuinely like; as a poor college student, it’s always nice to be able to play the newest games without having to pay full retail price. So it pains me to see that Gamefly is having trouble with what should be an unbiased, government-provided service.
Gamefly has lodged a formal complaint against the US Postal service in regards to treatment of Gamefly discs making it through the mail. Apparently, the US Postal Service has a track record of stealing the discs; about 1-2% of the Gamefly discs are reported lost or damaged in the mail. This number might seem fairly insignificant, however according to WebProNews, this is a larger monetary loss than you’d expect:
Gamefly mails 590,000 video games monthly, and between one and two percent of those games is broken in transit or stolen along the way… at $50 per game that could be upwards of $600,000 lost in a month…
According to the complaint, the investigation also found that competitors Blockbuster and Netflix DVDs were manually removed from bulk mail and not processed through machines. This led to the company’s allegations of discriminatory treatment.
I also feel that this is far more common than people might think. One of my neighbors in my last apartment building received two games from Gamefly that had already been opened upon delivery. I guess after seeing that the titles were Too Human and Unreal Tournament III the perpetrator lost interest, since the games were still in their cardboard envelopes. Hopefully Gamefly’s complaint will be acknowledged. It is shameful to think that Blockbuster and Netflix, who offer primarily movies, would get preferential treatment. Video games have a significantly higher retail value than movies, and as a result Gamefly stands to suffer from larger profit loss than either of these companies.
iTunes
It’s a shame that human interference has to ruin such a good idea. I’d probably cancel the service if my game got stolen. I don’t really trust the mail for a lot of stuff, and a game in a cardboard envelope is one of the last things I’d want shipped to me.