I think everyone who follows this site regularly knows I'm generally a pretty big fan of the service Gamefly provides, but I really have to wonder what the hell is going on over at their headquarters following their latest move.
About a week back, I received my rental of Dead Rising for the Xbox 360 in the mail and noticed that the usual hard cardboard protective sleeve the games are sent in was missing. At the time, I figured it was just a mistake and that there hadn't been a change in Gamefly shipping procedures...
Moving right along, this afternoon, Forza 2 arrived in the mail and once again there was no protective cardboard sleeve... what the game did have was a noticeable scratch across the surface of the disc. While I haven't had a chance to see if the game is affected in any way by the scratch, it's certainly something that really shouldn't be happening.
As a long time member of Gamefly, and as someone who regularly buys games from them, I can only see this as hurting their business model in the long run. Why would I want to buy games from them that I know are probably not going to be in anything close to ideal condition? More importantly, given their somewhat slow shipping times, I sure as hell won't be willing to put up with delays from them when they have to replace games that are scratched and unplayable while I'm paying their monthly fees.
You know, if the added shipping cost of using cardboard sleeves is killing them, then raise the damn monthly rate by $1 a month or the like, but don't take your core service and diminish it. Better yet, here's an idea - stop running those annoying commercials during every single commercial break on some channels. Guess what? If I'm watching the show, odds are I saw the first one - save your money for keeping me as a member once I join.
I'll be shooting an e-mail over to their customer support team once I determine whether or not the game is damaged, and I'll be sure to report back on any reply I get. For now though, you may want to keep this in mind if you plan on using their services.
