GameFly rant

To: support@gamefly.com

Subject: FastReturn?

In my "Game Shipped" email, I was informed that my game "was shipped via FastReturn". Now, I would not have contacted you like this, but that statement just hit me as being SO ironic that I had to. The experience returning my last game, was such a bad experience for me, that I was SO close to cancelling my GameFly account on the spot last night. I was even billed one day before and would be throwing away $23. I didn't care. I did not cancel last night but I'm so upset about it that I still might cancel as soon as I receive the shipped games, or shortly after. I have not decided.

And the thing is, I actually really love the GameFly concept; and have had an excellent experience with the service for the most part. I really would like to continue the service. It's just getting to the point where I have to decide: for my recurring monthly membership fee, do all the benefits outweigh this frustration? I don't know how much longer I can answer that question with a "yes". Every time I have returned a game I have had this "problem".

Let me describe this last experience to you. I read some reviews on two recently released games. With the games at the top of my queue, I excitedly pack up my current games and put them in the mail Tuesday August 29. The mailman picks them up that day. I should have known better from my previous experiences, but I still check the web site each day for an update in status, realizing that the process does take time. One week later, Tuesday September 5, my games have been acknowledged as having been mailed, and the next games start to ship out. What? I thought that was the point of FastReturn? You get the FastReturn confirmation when the post office receives the game (Tuesday August 29) and the next game ships immediately? This whole time I thought my local post office didn't offer "FastReturn". But no, this WAS FastReturn. Fast is the last word I would have used to describe it.

Even worse, I see that the games being shipped are not the ones I wanted, #1 and #2 in my queue, but #3 and #4 that I have lost all interest for in my excitement over #1 and #2. I would have preferred to wait a couple days for #1 and #2, but there is no functionality to do this.

I know, it's not the end of the world. It's all pretty silly really. I'm not angry about it. You're doing a reasonable job of shipping. There was a weekend in there, one of the days was a holiday, it's not a huge number of business days. I know I'm being somewhat unreasonable in my expectations. But the fact remains... this piece of the service just isn't working out for me. And I really wish it could, somehow. Because then GameFly would seriously be perfect... ! It's awesome to be able to rent a game and play it all the way through with no time limits, and the potential to try new and different games. But a week with no games period... that's 1/4 of the time I'm paying for, that I'm unable to use the service... a week, and I haven't even received the games yet. I have to go through this every time I return a game. Each time I'm more convinced that it's not worth it.

Considering the turnaround time with FastReturn, it doesn't even make sense to return games more than once a month. Which sucks if you pick a crappy game, and defeats the purpose of being able to try new games. In fact, I don't think GameFly even works for new releases at all... at least I haven't figured out a "strategy" that works for new releases.

I still don't know where I am at with this. Writing this isn't going to accomplish anything. But, because there are aspects of the service that I like so much, I am taking some time to provide this feedback instead of silently pressing the cancel button and GameFly losing one insignificant customer. This one small exception unfortunately has a large impact on an otherwise excellent experience.

Sincerely,
Dan Puza