Gamefly Files Complaint with Postal Regulatory Commission for Unfair Treatment

Gamefly has filed a complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission for "Preferential treatment for other DVD mailers." Gamefly is especially worried because Blockbuster is adding games to Total Access in Q2 of 2009, and will have an unfair advantage due to manual processing of discs. A 2007 OIG report said that "...70 percent of the two-way DVD mailers from one unnamed DVD rental company received manual processing for this reason."

GameFly is not the only mailer to experience significant DVD breakage  rates on automated mail processing equipment.  In response to this phenomenon, the Postal Service has adopted a practice of manually culling out the DVD mailers of two high-volume shippers of DVDs, Netflix and Blockbuster, for special processing. 

Tidbits from the filing: 

• Gamefly mails about 590,000 discs per month, and receives about 510,000.   
• Breakage rate is about 1% per mailing.
• 19 Postal workers have been arrested for allegedly stealing Gamefly discs.

You can view the full text of the complaint at the Postal Regulatory Commission website.

Comments

[PLB]

The US Postal Service has always been vulnerable to preferential treatment for certain customers. I worked my way through college as a postal clerk in the sixties.

In those days Time-Life's congressional lobbying got preferential treatment for Time magazine. Publicly runned enterprises are easy to corrupt.

NetFlix should buy itself a congressman or senator. Dianne Feinstein seems to be available.

[Smoke]

PLB speaks the sad truth.

In my post office, there is actually a special mail slot that says "Netflix Discs."

That's good for Netflix but not really fair to competitors.

One could argue that achieving a certain volume would make a case for priority treatment over smaller customers, but sometimes USPS just favors certain companies because of their ability to schmooze with the right public officials.

I think Gamefly has a case.

[NetflixTVboxguy]

Anything that improves turnaround for Gamefly will be a good move. Being a loyal Netflix customer I wouldn't consider switching to Blockbuster, but I may consider signing up for Gamefly again if it didn't take so long to get games in and out.

[Patrick]

I'm not sure how preferential the "Netflix Discs" slots are.
I believe that Netflix comes and picks up the contents of that bin with its own truck, at least in some areas.

[ZeroCorpse]

But GameFly sucks, anyway. Why bother with renting when you can using a trading service and have no money involved?

Goozex is the way to go if you're a gamer, and bonus: Your disc will probably arrive in its original case packed in a padded envelope.

If you don't like a game, just put it up for trade and get something else. Simple. Easy. No monthly fees required (unless you want to spend more to get more).

Even when I worked at Best Buy and was told to push GameFly, I couldn't do it in good conscience. It's just not that good a service.

[Mr. Pelican Pants]

Zero, you haven't tried Gamefly in a while. They have improved turn around time to 2 days out for most customers and 2-3 days in, depending on where you live. They are opening a distribution center in Seattle soon and they will continue to add dc's to fill in the gaps over the next few years. And, their selection has never been better--I'm getting all new releases if not on the day they come out, then within that same week. Trading games sucks--you can't guarantee the quality of what you get, and if you don't like the game you just received it can take weeks for someone else to take it off your hands. Gamefly is the only way to go! I'm glad they are standing up to the USPS--all they are asking for is the same treatment NF and BB are getting--which is reasonable to me.

[Edward R Murrow]

Naïveté in adults is rather silly. Am I really the only one who knows that the delivery game (pardon the pun) is fixed in favor of Netflix? Netflix didn't even try to hide the fact when they hired former U.S. postmaster general Bill Henderson as it's new COO back in 2006. That one move alone put Netflix on par with Russian politburo corruption.

[ZeroCorpse]

At the end of a month, I have games that are MINE TO KEEP with trade via Goozex, and I've spent nothing.

At the end of a one-month subscription, you have NO GAMES from GameFly that belong to you, and you've spent about $20.

I'm pretty happy with Goozex, thanks.

[Zonex]

@ZeroCorpse

Gamefly is just higher level of service (convenient shipping and faster service, for example) for those of us with jobs. Also, what's the big deal about keeping games? 95% of games I never play again after finishing. For games I know will have some life to them, like Fallout 3 or an Elder Scrolls, I just buy the thing.

In one month Gamefly has saved me $180 by letting me play three games I would have bought and turned out not liking. Madworld, for example, which was a one trick pony with clunky controls.

A gaming friend who tried Goozex ran into all the typical "Ebay style" problems you might expect from peer to peer situations. One game arrive tossed into a cheap gray envelope. No manual. Not even a cardboard backer. That's when he gave up.

[tsrblke]

Gamefly may be able to argue this for blockbuster, but they're going to have trouble getting the postal service to turn over about netflix. Politics and hiring aside (smart move by Netflix BTW) if every customer averages 1 DVD out and back per month, netflix ships 20 times the number of DVDs Gamefly does, that alone is going to allow the postal service to say "Listen, they make us more money than you, so we give them a hand every now and then." I'm not sure how that would legally play out, but with the postal service running in the black, I doubt they're going to piss off a major customer right now. (Plus is Gamefly really wasting our tax dollars by calling a hearing on this?)

[phatso]

are you people morons?

there is a preferential treatment for Netflix because obviously they pay EXTRA for it

Netflix pays more for better service and the outcome is that netflix customers have a better quality service

why would you want to destroy that?

[NeTFlIxSuCkS]

cuz netflix suckssss

[Elle Chong]

Actually phatso you are pretty much wrong! Netflix receives a pretty nice DISCOUNT. And that's typical for a company that does part of the processing themselves which cuts Postal costs... but the key here is: They are NOT doing any processing and actually should be paying Non-Machineable rates. Look it up. Then you will figure out who the moron in the room is.