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

Dying industry

[mc1138]

Seems like this is just one more nail in the coffin for the USPS. Seriously, without services like this, they'd probably already be out of business. Since 1973 they've been a state sponsored monopoly rather than an actual branch of the government. I don't see it being too much longer that they're allowed sole right to transfer first class mail with both UPS and FedEx waiting in the wings to offer better more reliable service.

Re:Dying industry

[BitZtream]

You really should hope they stick around. For all its 'crappiness' USPS isn't THAT bad, and if they disappear it'll get ridiculously expensive to mail a simple letter via UPS/DHL/FedEx/Whoever. Look at the cost to send a normal one page letter via the USPS versus anyone else. Do you want your phone bill to go up $4 every month because it costs them that much to send it to you? And water, electric, cable, ect? You can probably get most of them electronically, but not all and I'd rather keep my money thanks to the USPS charging them a quarter rather than 4 bucks. If UPS charged them 4, they'll raise the bill 6 or 7.

I bet it would cut down on the number of incorrectly addressed items I get. Maybe whoever keeps mailing 'Current Resident' would finally have to get a real business model instead.

Re:Dying industry

[chewedtoothpick]

There is nothing which prevents any person from installing a secondary mailbox similar to those used by us in more rural areas for newspapers.

I hate government sponsored monopolies as much as anyone else, but the USPS actually provides a rather critical service even in these days of easily accessible alternatives such as e-mail. Without the pressure of the USPS being able to provide affordable prices for shipping to more poorly covered or less easily accessed areas (such as Alaska and Hawaii) only the people in major metropolitan areas would receive reasonable parcel and letter services. As much as that may not affect you there are still many millions of other people who are equally as valuable and important to you who would be royally bunged if things happened the way you obviously wish.

Re:Dying industry

[uofitorn]

Because as we all know, personal anecdotes are indicative of the industry as a whole.

USPS sucks.

[aussersterne]

I live in NYC (Astoria, Queens) and we often have our mail lost or damaged (they'll simply snap a CD in two or fold a book in half to fit it into our mailbox). At times, especially with packages, our postman doesn't even try. We'll have a tracking number to check the status and the system will show three "Delivery attempt" notices and we won't get a slip OR a package, and it will simply disappear into the ether.

And both I and my wife teach at the university level, with alternating schedules, so one of us is almost always home.

We've complained to our local post office (the Long Island City office at 11105) about losses and damage and the manager told us it was a "problem they were aware of" and that there were "investigations" and people would be laid off. A year later, no change. Last thing was a reasonably expensive wristwatch (not a Rolex or anything, just a garden variety $150 or so mechanical watch with a Citizen/Miyota movement that I hope will last a long time) and the company would only deliver USPS, so I took a chance.

Sure enough, it was "lost" without any delivery attempts the first time around and the shipper, happily, agreed to ship an alternate via UPS and to pursue USPS themselves for reimbursement. UPS, of course, had it here two days later, no problems.

Lesson: this is the age of email and global shipping services that actually work. There is no need for USPS. I wish we could do away with piracy controls already so that we could avoid this hassle and have all things like communications and games delivered electronically as should be the case naturally. For solid goods, everybody should just use UPS and/or FedEx. Yes, they have their own problems, but they're not as notoriously shitty as USPS, which has been the butt of jokes in major cities in the U.S. stretching back to the mid-'20th century, and which only got tracking capability for regular mail a decade or more after everyone else on the planet did.

Re:That's why I quit Zip.ca

[rm999]

Or a single bad postal employee...

Re:I've had lost games..

[actionbastard]

Another solution...plain brown envelope with a USB flash drive inside that is encrypted with a key that is e-mailed to you. Nothing to break. Useless without the key.

Re:wrong

[afabbro]

Look, these threads are the same every time:

• "UPS sucks, but FedEx has been great for me"
• "USPS loses my stuff every day, but UPS is perfect"
• "I used to work for UPS and I would never ship with them"
• "my brother works for FedEx and HE says use USPS"
• "Over here in $COUNTRY our stuff works fine"
• "Oh yeah, I visited $COUNTRY and my postcard to my mother never made it back home and I had to pay two euros to send it"

Etcetera. Look, you open up a public forum and you're going to hear horror stories about each major carrier and stories of wonderful service about each major carrier. Because it's all just a bunch of random personal anecdotes, it doesn't mean anything.

Do a statistically-valid survey of a significant percentage of each major carrier's customers and get back to me.

Re:mc1138 got it all wrong..

[Mr. Underbridge]

Remind me again why you'd need a physical disk?

So those assholes don't decide they don't want me playing it anymore. So I don't accidentally delete it. So I can loan it to a friend. Same reason I still buy CD's (well, the once a year I find something worth listening to), rip them, and throw them in a storage tub.

Re:mc1138 got it all wrong..

[Anonymous Coward]

1. Revisit this post three years from now
2. Laugh heartily
3. Profit?

simple plan

[TRRosen]

reduce losses by not using a bright orange envelope that screams expensive game. hell just make it red like Netflix and people will assume its just a DVD.

its the same reason you never send a birthday card in a colored envelope.

one to two percent breakage?

[Darth Cider]

I worked for the Postal Service for 13 years. I can't believe that 1 in 1000 disks would be broken as a result of normal mail processing, even OCR machined mail, much less 1 in 100 or 1 in 50. If that is truly happening, there can be only one reason - the disks are packaged improperly. That is, the packaging is especially designed to be chewed up in mail processing equipment. Is there one Postal worker here who could comment on Gamefly's packaging?

I would not be surprised if the packaging were unsuitable and Gamefly knew it, too. Where I worked, there were three large accounts - both with headquarters nearby - that simply would not listen to USPS feedback about how poorly suited their packaging was to the requirements of processing. One of them moved its headquarters to a different state, rather than simply change the kinds of envelopes it used. Their mail wasn't machinable (but could have been) and moved too slowly, but there was nothing the USPS could do about that, because hand-sorting is, well, slow. Another of the companies printed its catalogs with a highly glossy paper that was so slippery that catalogs would slide from their chutes in the sorting machine and go into the wrong outgoing containers, resulting in delays. The third had envelopes that were incredibly flimsy and incompatible with machining.

I just have to call bullshit on Gamefly. The Postal Service is an easy fall guy. Theft of such a magnitude is just not possible, not within the confines of the mail service. These people are honest and proud of it, except for the few inevitable bad apples.

Re:Heh heh.. riiight

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps it's the price difference between the games and the movies. You could probably pick up the same random Netflix disk in your local Walmart for under $5. Even a new movie on DVD would only cost $30 tops.

Now consider that the console games are routinely selling for $50. If you were to chose therefore between stealing a Neflix package and a Gamefly package, which one would you take?

Re:Heh heh.. riiight

[KDR_11k]

Stolen games run on unmodded consoles.