The Lamer Gamer

Modern Fucking Warfare 2.  It’s on its way according to Gamefly, oh and via FastReturn! no less.  So maybe by Weds it will be here.  While Gamefly has been delivering a better experience recently, I’ve noticed that shipping times, and occasionally return times are extended by a day more than what I’ve seen in the past.  But all is forgiven, as my return of ODST via Friday’s mail has yielded Modern Warfare 2.

Now all that remains for this week to really rock is the arrival of the TV repairman.  I’ve really enjoyed owning my Samsung LNT4065F for the last two years, and I got some good warranty service on it via Samsung in the first few months.  But now we’re into the extended warranty via Circuit City’s contracted guys, so we’ll see how this goes.  The last TV I had was a Sony 27″ CRT, which while perhaps less glamorous was still a near top of the line set at the time.  That lasted 10 years, with one repair, also on a Circuit City contract.  Here’s hoping I can get anywhere near that length of time out of the current one.

Well, if only GameFly hadn’t fucked me again, I’d be curling up with a copy of Ghostbusters in a day or two.  Instead 4 days post mailing back one of the other games I’ve rented, it still isn’t recognized as being returned.  I know I say it all the time, but FUCK, WHY DOESN’T FASTRETURN WORK RIGHT!  There is no way that my mailer wasn’t picked up by the post office by now, and no way it hasn’t made its way to GameFly’s nearest receiving center yet.  So even if Fast Return failed me, I should have still been set.  Burn.

Not a moment to soon, I’m visited by the FastReturn fairy.  Forgot to mail back my old game on the day when I was sure it would arrive in time to get Halo Wars.  Then I notice that the release date on GameFly for HW is moved up to March 2nd.  Grr.  So I get the old game in the mail on Saturday, but I’m sure I’ve missed my window.

Lo and behold, I check my Q and there’s Halo Wars listed as shipped with FastReturn next to it. Sweet! So I should be enjoying Halo Wars as early as Wednesday night.

So kudos Gamefly.  Keep up the good work.

How is it that I mail two games back at the same time and GameFly only reports one of them as received?  Of course I have to wait the full week until reporting a shipping problem, but I’m feeling like the thing is probably lost, otherwise why wouldn’t they have it already.  Seems like this has been happening with some frequency in the last 6 months.  They won’t get the game, I’ll report it, they’ll find it later.  Better than the games not showing up at all, they’d have probably canceled my subscription already.

Has something changed in how GameFly ships new titles?  The last two games I’ve planned for have become available two days earlier than was specified in their “Releases xx/xx/09″ date specified in the GameQ.  This screwed me on Afro Samurai, but seem to have worked out favorably with Onechanbara, since instead of it shipping this coming Thursday and thus getting to me on Monday, it ships today and I should have it Thursday or Friday this week.  

So keep that in mind when gaming the GameQ.  Since games are released on Tuesdays in the real world, GameFly seems to be cautiously estimating when they will be available to their customers.  This is most likely similar to how airlines handle expected arrival times, be overly cautious in your estimate then you’ll be on time more often.

So now all I’ve got to do is find the magic Post Office or Mailbox where Fast Return actually works.  I read other posts where people think it’s a grand conspiracy that GameFly fails to consistently treat returns as FastReturns in order to keep them from having too many games out in a month.  I doubt any actually malice, but either the Post Office or GameFly not properly handling FastReturn, and I don’t really care who, but someone should fix it.  It’s freaking dumb that games I send back don’t get FastReturned.  I do wish they’d tell you that the game was Returned via FastReturn, rather than stating that the next game is shipping via FastReturn. Lately, the whole problem is moot anyway since I keep waiting for new games and the my Q doesn’t have alternatives.

Okay, it’s bad enough that I have to trick GameFly into sending me what I actually want and not  the 10th game down my queue, but now they’re listing the incorrect release dates, so I’m completely screwed in trying to work the system.  I have it timed pretty well that mailing back games takes a certain # of business days, and emptying the queue of all but one title will always get you that one as it is released.  Afro Samurai was supposed to be available on GF today 2009-01-29, but instead became available yesterday for some reason (probably because the real release date as 2009-01-27), before my return was processed,  throwing off my timing, so no Bad-ass Mofo for me cause it’s Low Availability now.  

Anyone who has used GameFly for any significant length of time has been affected by one or more of quirks in the system.

• FastReturn doesn’t work.  I live in major city with bright and shiny new Post Offices.  I’ve tried dropping the games in different mailboxes and different Post Offices, it’s only worked a handful of times, and inconsistently.  To be fair, it might be the Post Office that’s screwing me.
• Availability status other than Available Now doesn’t give you a reliable means of determining how long it will take for a game to be shipped.  For some odd reason Medium which means 50-74% chance of shipping today frequently takes a week for a game to ship.
• You can’t weight your queue.  So GameFly, in an effort to ship something, will skip WAY down the list to find a game they can send today.  Part of this problem is that it’s really easy to browse the big list and think, “Sure, I’d like to try that one, someday” only to have it show up next because the 15 titles in front of it aren’t in stock right now. Personally the worst I’ve ever experience was that it skipped to the 9th game I had listed, but I’ve heard worse.  The only solution is to queue up games that you want right now, remove everything else.

I’d really like some new hotness in the queing system, like only ship from your top 5 excluding things that haven’t been released, or locking in a title with some sort of “I’ll wait for it” option.

In the mean time.  I’m pissed that the one game I’m waiting for aside from Halo Wars probably isn’t going to be shipped before Halo Wars is released.  Guess I’ve got to make sure I’ve returned whatever I’ve got out a few extra days early so I don’t miss that one too.  GF is listing 2009-03-03 as the release date, which matches up with most other sources, and the general tuesday schedule.  Here’s hoping I can work my magic on that one.