Gamefly Impressions

[Freeko]

Living in LA gamefly is pretty sweet to have, I live close to one of their shipping centers so I get my games real fast. Send 1 game in monday they get it tuesday ship the next game the same day I get the new one at home wednesday. Their customer service is probably one of the best I have dealt with as well. Purchased God of War 3 it came damaged ( not their fault, shipping messed it up) they were quick to refund my money and send me a RMA# and package to send the game back, they even refunded the the gamefly dollars I used to buy it.

[Qalbert]

dumb question, but if none of the games in the queue are out, order shouldn't matter right? first one I get would be the first one out and so on correct?
edit: asking because on the advice of whoever said add things as early as you can I went through the coming soon section and added anything I was interested in and now have 20 some odd unreleased games in my queue lol

[Ivaden]

It's always worked out that way for me, but there was one instance where I received the second game in my queue instead of the first one. Probably human error or something, who knows, didn't care enough to ask their customer service what happened.

[Qalbert]

ok, just didn't wanna have to manually prioritize them in queue according to release date if it wasn't needed

[Doombear]

Sorry, what I was implying is that Gamefly has responded to a few of my 'WTF DOODS?" emails stating that the 'length the game has been in your queue' factors on when they ship to you versus some other guy that is waiting for the game. They imply that if I added Mafia II to my queue 3 days ago, but Other Guy has had it in his queue for 3 months, it is going to ship to him first. That is what I meant by saying to add games to your list as soon as you know you want them. Of course, it could have all been a load of shit from the Customer Service Rep just fed to me when I wanted to know why it took 2 weeks to send me a Medium Availability game in my Queue.

Oh and I suppose another thing, if the first 3 games in your queue are Low availablity, but Crazy Taxi is High... but 10th in your list, you are gonna get Crazy Taxi =P Yet another reason why the only games in my queue are either not out yet, or the only ones available.

[Qalbert]

another question, someone mentioned adding multiplat games on both systems, they won't send both if you do that? (assuming 2 game plan)

[Freeko]

Yeah they will send you both if you have no games out ( assuming 2 game plan). They would count it as separate games. It's a good way to get new games though.

[Qalbert]

another question, 2 game plan, 1 game out atm, and Spiderman is showing up as Low Availability for Xbox and Now Available for PS3. Both are in my queue. Is it safe to assume I will be getting the PS3 one soon and it just hasn't been changed to shipping yet?

[Eticket]

Most likely. They'll try to fill the 360 one for you first. If they can't track one down then they'll send the PS3 version.

[Souj]

Gonna bump this. This 5th post above is related to what I'm asking.
I have the 2Game plan. Right now I only have 1 game, which I plan to play for awhile, so I sent one of my games back and like the top 5 games in my queue are newish games that I really want to play, but are either medium/high/low demand. My reasoning was that while I had only 1 game, the second game slot would stay unused until I would get one of the higher demand games.

The problem is, apparently no matter how far down a "available now" game is, once they get that 2nd game, they will give you the next "available now" game. So I just got sent a game that was #8 on my list, when I was really wanting to hold out for other games.

So, is there some kind of option I can pick on Gamefly to go in exact order on my Qlist, or am I just going to have to take every game off that list except for the 3 higher demand games I actually want?

[Doombear]

Sadly... nope. It is no Netflix Queue.

That is why I never have anything in the Queue that I don't want to get 'next'. Sucks, because it is nice to have 198 movies in my Netflix Queue and know that they are there, and I won't forget that I wanted one. See something I am half interested in, toss it in the Netflix Queue and it will get to me someday. Gamefly however doesn't work that way. That is why my list for GF is pretty much 95% full of games that haven't even released yet. I try to plan my returns around release dates, with nothing else in the way.

[Callisto]

I have the same issue, I've had no luck getting my top 5 at all since signing up for it, I just assumed the numerical order didn't really mean anything. That said, when they snag random crap from lower on my list, they've at least been good about not sending me sequels before previous entries of the same series that are elsewhere on my list.

[Doombear]

I know this is a pretty old topic, but in light of Gamefly winning their dispute with the USPS I have noticed a faster turnaround in their mailings. I was just curious if anyone else has recently as well. I think I have been a member for at least 4 years if not more and I have ALWAYS had at least a 3-4 day wait for them to notify me that my game reached them and another 3-4 to get my next game.

In the past few weeks I have seen Brink ship on the 9th and hit my hands on the 10th. In addition I mailed back Portal 2 on the 11th and they notified me that they recieved it on the 12th. Amazed. I am also starting to get those "When did you ship XXXXXXX Game" emails just like Netflix sends out so I really do think that there has been an improvement on their end. Surprising since they have so few shipment centers compared to Netflix. I will take it though as it really was my ONLY complaint about the company/service.

[Dryr]

the game i sent back on mon just got recv'd by gamefly today (fri), so 4+days one way, they don't show in my q that they sent anything/chose what they will send to me yet. My brother signed up to get portal without buying it. He signed up and the game showed avail, 2 days later they sent him the last thing in his q instead.

The issue with gamefly is more than the usps dispute. gamefly intentionally makes their mailers blend in with normal mail (color, etc.) to reduce theft. Netflix mailers are brightly colored and the fact is the mailers are sorted by hand to get them expedited. You can't program humans to never miss white/black envelopes just because they contain games.

Also, the issue with the usps was mainly about returning games. The usps is supposed to scan the barcode on the envelopes so gamefly marks it as returned in your queue even though it is still in transit. it should have no effect on how fast they send them out.

I got one of those mail time emails as well, I had to respond the "before a week ago" because it was true.

One last note, I looked into the usps issue in the news. Apparently, Gamefly has been operating deep in the red every month due to postage/breakage issues with usps. Either this change reduces their costs, or they will be going under/get bought out by netflix within the next year.

[volcanicweather]

I haven't noticed any difference in Gamefly ship times even living just 3 hours away from a dist center (Austin). Still though I get games in 3-4 days both ways which isn't too bad.

Two things really bother me about the service though:

1) Gamefly has a horrible turnaround time from when they receive my game to when the ship the next one. Sometimes it can be as long as two days. As someone who works in the eCommerce industry and knows a thing or two about an OMS the one they have in place sucks bigtime.

2) Getting games in the top of my queue is difficult. I have had dragon age 2 as my #1 game even before it was released and I still haven't received it. They should give you an option to halt all shipments until X game is sent without having to clear out your entire queue. I'm at the point right now where I would rather wait 2 weeks to get DA2 then get the next game in my queue 2 days later. I mean, I'd like to play DA2 before the ultimate edition comes out, lol.

[Dareus]

I really hope Netflix buys them out. Netflix having games as well would be the greatest thing ever!

[Doombear]

I really hope Netflix buys them out. Netflix having games as well would be the greatest thing ever!

Agreed. It sucks that my luck appears to be just that. Luck. Sorry to hear that no one else seems to be having any, I figured it was too good to be true so I guess we see how soon my next game ships (nothing in my queue that is available until LA Noire ships next week). Speaking of, that is the only way I will use Gamefly pretty much. There is plenty out there I want to play, but I would rather set up my queue and mailbacks in a way that lets me get games that I would most likely buy if I wasn't getting them on launch week from GF and saving a bit of money.

[Dryr]

I just tried to cancel my sub. They gave me another month for free instead, same for my brother. So, hopefully they get that usps issue resolved instead of 4-6 day return times or i'll try to cancel again...

[Doombear]

Got an email that they added a shipping center in Seattle. So... maybe that will make a difference for me? Thing is, I sent back Brink last week, I think it was on the 17th. They texted me on the 21st that they got it. So they have now had it for almost 3 days. Top two games in my queue (Killzone 3 and Lost Cause 2) are both "High Availability". Neither have shipped. I do not get it. I swear... the ONLY time I can bank on them shipping a game out to me for sure is if i make sure that 1) my game has been received by them BEFORE 2) a launch title releases and then they 3) ship that launch title on release.

Any other time, even if i have old as shit games in my queue that apparently have high availability, that shit just sits in my queue for days. The last time I even bothered emailing them about it I got some response saying that the Availability may be showing High, but in fact it could be Low at the shipping center nearest me. So really the availability indication doesn't mean shit in their own words.

[Eticket]

That's weird. I live in Portland as well and I usually hear back in 2 days that titles are received.