More Gamefly goodness

And the saga continues. I sent back Saints Row a few days ago and put Smackdown 07, a game with high availability at the top of my queue. So what game do I get?

Madden 09.

A game that's near the bottom of my queue with LOW availability.

So I have to hear the reasoning for this. So I shoot off an email to their customer disservice. The letter is as follows:

Is the availability status for games even accurate anymore? I remember being told in the past that what's shown on the website and what you guys see are two different things. After a few months I'm inclined to agree. I've complained before about receiving a lesser rated title before and was told it was due to availability. I can understand in some cases, but there is no excuse for a low availability game to be sent over a high availability game unless the levels on the site are incorrect. Yesterday I was sent Madden 09 which was in the middle of my queue and had low availability. I was sent this over Smackdown 07, which was at the top of my queue and had high availability. So can I please get a clear explanation for this? I rent for two systems now and it's getting VERY annoying to have to clear out my queue and put the top games I want for that system every time I want to rent a game for that system.

What happened to you guys? You used to be so accurate when it came to queue positions and such.



It’s civil and to the point. I seriously wanted to know what the hell was up. So after the usual 24 hours, I get this lovely gem in my inbox:



Our apologies for the inconvenience. The availability status on the Web site reflects inventory across all shipping centers. Therefore, although your top ranked game may have reflected high availability on your GameQ, it may have only been available in the shipping center that is more distant from your residence.

We ship games to you from a facility that can best serve you. If we are unable to ship any games from your primary shipping center, we may ship from an alternate one. When this occurs, the shipped email will identify the center your game was shipped from. We pay close attention to the inventory levels across the shipping centers and re-order key titles regularly to minimize the number of unavailable games.

We do realize that it can be disappointing to not receive your top choice. We appreciate your feedback and apologize again for any inconvenience. If we can be of further assistance, please let us know.



Yeah. Smart readers will understand the contradiction right away. But I’m still going to explain it.

It’s all fine and dandy that they try to get games out as quickly as possible. At least it would be if that’s what they did. However, when the reason they give is “Your game isn’t at the primary center” and they end up shipping a game that doesn’t come from your primary center anyway, it’s delves into the realm of non-sensical.

Seriously, this response is a piece of work. It manages to contradict itself. They say “your top ranked game may have reflected high availability on your GameQ, but it may have only been available in the shipping center that is more distance from your residence”. However in the next paragraph, they state that “if we can’t ship any games from your primary center, we may ship from an alternate one.”. Okay....then why the HELL didn’t they do that in the first place. If the game I want isn’t at my primary center, but is at another center then FUCKING SEND IT! I will wait an extra day or two for a game that I really want. But sending a game that is lower on my queue AND unavailable? Who signed off on that stroke of genius?

At any rate, I’m through with gamefly. They’ve gotten terrible in the last year or so and this shit is becoming intolerable.

3 comments:

The Outlaw said...

Just an alternative perspective here... I mean, I get what you're saying and why you're frustrated but then, at the same time, there's so much about gamefly that's worth the investment for anyone who wants to game and avoid going broke I feel like a shipping issue or two is passable.

For one, their deals on used games are ridiculous. I just got an alert today for one of their big game fire sales as a matter of fact. Here's a link for whatever it's worth although you've probably already heard about it. http://dealnews.com/Game-Fly-Pre-Played-Game-Sale-Up-to-50-off-used-video-games/296506.html

On the queue end... I think it gets more complicated the more you keep in there. At least where getting specific games are concerned. I feel like if you want a random experience then filling up your queue is the way to go. If you want only specific titles then those are the titles you put in your queue and keep it small. Sure, you may wait a couple extras days for something this way but you'll ultimately get what you want. Half the battle is queue manipulation.

I dunno, I've been renting from them for so long now I can't imagine life without them. I look at it this way... you invest something in the low hundreds for a year's worth of the service and probably cycle through... what?... 40/50 games?You'd have to spend well into the thousands if you bought that many games in a year. New or used.

Blockbuster is a joke and will most likely not be around much longer and everything is going the way of online distribution anyway so... well... I guess I'm team gamefly. I feel like gamers would do well to support them more honestly. I think they're genuinely trying.

Maximum Dr1ve said...

@Chris: I know how great they can be, which is why I was so frustrated. It isn't so much the shipping, it's the queue management and the stupid response that annoys me.

At anyrate, they actually contacted me because of this blog and did what the idiot CSR that emailed me should have done. They actually explained in detail how the shipping system works. Going by what they said, things make a lot more sense. I'll put up a blog post that explains what happened in detail. It's a wonder why no one on the email side of things bothered to go into detail.

The Outlaw said...

Well that's pretty cool. I'm impressed they're paying attention like that. I'm kind of a shameless gamefly lover and it's little things like that that really make me think they give a shit.