One Year Later, USPS Looks Into Gamefly Complaint

Last April, we discussed news that video game rental service GameFly had complained to the USPS that a large quantity of their game discs were broken in transit, accusing the postal service of giving preferential treatment to more traditional DVD rental companies like Netflix. Now, just over a year later, an anonymous reader sends word that the USPS has responded with a detailed inquiry into GameFly's situation (PDF). The inquiry's 46 questions (many of which are multi-part) cover just about everything you could imagine concerning GameFly's distribution methods. Most of them are simple, yet painstaking, in a way only government agencies can manage. Here are a few of them: "What threshold does GameFly consider to be an acceptable loss/theft rate? Please provide the research that determined this rate. ... What is the transportation cost incurred by GameFly to transport its mail from each GameFly distribution center to the postal facility used by that distribution center? ... Please describe the total cost that GameFly would incur if it expanded its distribution network to sixty or one hundred twenty locations. In your answer, please itemize costs separately. ... Does the age of a gaming DVD or the number of times played have more effect on the average life cycle of a gaming DVD?"

Comments

Re:Is it me?

[stephanruby]

Some of the questions look valid, but others are completely obtuse and look like they are designed to waste GameFly's time and resources, not resolve the problem.

I agree. That being said, as a Netflix customer, I can pretty much testify to the fact that my mail man used to break an awful lot of DVDs trying to shove them in my mailbox and then try to close it (so he could get back his keys, I live in a four apartment building so it's a set of four mailboxes he opens together). It became such a problem, I took down my subscription from 4 DVDs to only 1 DVD at-a-time. Usually, it's when there was more than one DVD in there, that at least one of them would break (or at least warp so badly, that it became completely unplayable).

One fix would have been to ask my landlord that he install a bigger set of mailboxes, but the space in the brick wall is so limited, that any change would become a major construction project to replace anything (so I didn't even ask). Another fix is to try to talk to the mail man, but for some reason, my route is not considered a good one (although, it's still a good neighborhood), so it's nearly a different person delivering the mail every week. Another fix would be to have an additional mailbox made especially for DVDs (that, assuming there was an easy way to attach it to my existing mailbox, I would buy in a jiffy).

Re:netflix vs gamefly

[Sycraft-fu]

Well couple things may be in play, other than the USPS being meanies:

1) Netflix may well consider a fairly high rate of loss acceptable. Depending on the prices they have to pay for the discs, it might not matter to them. Remember that the media itself is cheap. In large runs I'd be surprised if you could get a disc to cost $0.10. So if they have a situation with the studios where they can buy the discs cheap, separate of the rental rights, it might not matter to them.

2) Video discs may be able to take more damage. If there's an error on a video disc, it isn't necessarily a show stopper. Could manifest as a minor visual glitch, maybe a couple frames get dropped. Whatever, movie still works, most people won't bitch. With data DVDs, doesn't work like that. Either everything reads 100% and passes the verification or it says "Shit is broke, we can't install."

Not saying the post office might not be causing problems, but there are plenty of other possibilities. Netflix may have accounted for breakage in their business model and Gamefly may not have

Well, I can attest to the losses

[AnswerIs42]

When I use to have a gamefly account, I would loose 3 out of every 5 disks in transit (had something like 30 games not show up over the 5 years I had an account). I would get ripped open envelopes that were taped shut.. I had cut open ones show up. I had one envelope show up so badly mangled they put it inside another envelope. ALL of them had the disks missing.. sometimes I would get the empty game holding envelope.

I looked into the transfer route after the first few are missing.. Gamefly center -> receiving office -> transfer location 1 -> transfer location 2 -> local post office

The post office tried to tell me that is was AFTER the mail was delivered that the thefts happened. I had a PO Box... so that still tells me it is within the system they went missing.

When gamefly went to the current packaging, the missing disk numbers did drop back to 1 in 10 or so. but when they did go missing, I would not even get an envelope in the mail.