Gamefly Complains of Poor Treatment From USPS

Gamefly, the popular video game rental service that operates through the mail, has filed a complaint with the Postal Regulatory Commission about the high number of games that are lost or stolen in the mail. The complaint (PDF) asserts that the postal service's automated sorting machines have a tendency to break a small percentage of discs, and that preferential treatment is given to DVD rental services like Netflix and Blockbuster. "According to Gamefly's numbers, it mails out 590,000 games and receives 510,000 games back from subscribers a month. The company sees, depending on the mailer, between one and two percent of its games broken in transit. ... Even if you assume the number is one percent, and a game costs $50 to replace, that's an astounding $295,000 a month in lost merchandise. ... That's not the only issue — games are also stolen in transit, which has lead to the arrest of 19 Postal Service employees."

Comments

Heh heh.. riiight

[TinBromide]

Those lost game disks were lost in the mail... Heh heh... *hides stack of reported "lost" disks under the couch* Nothing to see here, move along!

Re:Heh heh.. riiight

[digitig]

So how can you tell that the 'high percentage of (disks) lost' in the mail were really 'lost in the mail' and not merely reported as such?

The arrests may be a clue. If they translate into prosecutions they will be an even bigger clue. If they translate into convictions, I reckon they've nailed it.

XXX

[Rick Bentley]

...constant emails like 'have you got XXX yet?' or 'When did you send back XXX?'.

I see we rent the same stuff.

Re:wrong

[cerberusss]

Look, these threads are the same every time:

[...]Because it's all just a bunch of random personal anecdotes, it doesn't mean anything.

Very true. But in my experience, this happens even more at digg.com. I sometimes visit the Ars Technica forums and the problem doesn't seem to exist there.

Of course, YMMV.