I tip my hat to you, sir. Very well done.

More proof that Elysium is full of awesome sauce.

You do realize that if their reply is at all interesting (in a good or bad way), you'll have to post it as well.

R.I.P. Gamefly

I'm about to cancel my own subscription to Gamefly.

At the moment I'm basically playing games they send me because they sent them and not because I really want to. The one exception to that is Ghostbusters, but that's the one fluke in probably the last 6 months. I could have bought Ghostbusters on the PC for $30 and saved five months worth of my gamefly subscription.

Maybe it is just me, but it seems like sending off sarcastic emails to customer service really isn't the way to accomplish anything. Unless you just did it to make yourself feel better and aren't actually expecting a response. In which case I would've just posted it and not actually sent it; I guess I find that type of email a little rude.

I'm still a big fan of Gamefly. I get brand new games shipped out the day they release and get to keep them at a discount if I like them. I'm not sure I've ever had to wait more than a day or two to get a game shipped out to me but I make sure to manage my queue to maximize the benefits I get from the service. I've been a member for over four years now and have been satisfied the whole time.

Yeah, they need more distribution centers. Yeah, they could use more copies of games. I think they have many more challenges than something like Netflix, though, so I'm willing to cut them some slack. All of my frustration has come from the post office's poor handling of Gamefly, not Gamefly itself.

It always surprises me to hear people have such bad experiences with Gamefly. It's like we're using two different services.

It really is. I think I've gotten a new release game twice in the last two years, even with careful queue management. Can we switch subscriptions?

I have a feeling that it comes down to the distribution centers. The one in Tampa is awful. They rarely have any of the games in my queue in stock, which is a mercy as it somehow takes 5+ days for me to receive games they've sent, or for them to acknowledge games I've sent back. It's literally faster if they ship them from the Pittsburgh center 500 miles further away.

Still, having the subscription saves me money in preventing me from being tempted to buy games. As long as I can (theoretically) get it from Gamefly at some point, why spend $60?

This thread has made my day.

It seems unfathomable to me that they find it so difficult to offer a halfway decent service. I see some of you ragging on Netflix, but I'd KILL for service like that from Gamefly! Three days turnaround time on a game would make me so very happy, as would the slightly better in-stock stuff. But I digress, the point of my post is to agree with Elysium and try to converge my frustration with his, in the hope that, somewhere in L.A. the guys in charge at Gamefly feel our ethereal hate emanating from beyond a dark horizon.

Bitch about them on Twitter. Seriously. I made a post complaining about Gamefly being unable to send me the ONE game on my list, and Gamefly customer service contacted me through Twitter an hour later. Sort of eerie, but I got my game.

Actually, I've had companies respond positively to comically sarcastic emails that I've sent to them before. Sometimes with a form letter and a discount coupon, but a couple of times, with a phone call from an amused customer service rep, who I've ended up having a really enjoyable conversation with.

Think about it, if your job is to respond to pissed-off people all day, having the opportunity to have a laugh with someone for a change is great!

Great email, no doubt it stands out from all the generic angry emails they probably get.

I don't think I'll be using Gamefly much longer myself. I never get the games I really want from them and the turn around time for getting a game is at least a week. The did actually ship me the Conduit yesterday, which is the first time I've ever gotten a new release from them. The Conduit wasn't even at the top of my list though, it was like number 5 of 9.

I wish there was a game rental service that was as reliable as Netflix, I've never had an kind of issue with them.

I don't think anything could ever top eagle semen, ever.

This only works if you don't use instant watch, and take forever to watch a movie. In general, my wife and I can easily go through 4-5 movies a month on the 1 disc at a time plan. We could easily go to 2 at a time, still do instant watch, and come out even further ahead of this than we are already.

Touche!

Back in the late 90's, I was having a problem with a Creative Labs CD-ROM drive that wasn't working. I couldn't get through on their customer service line (for which I had to pay long distance charges and sit on hold for ~60 minutes at a time before hanging up in frustration) and just needed to get warranty service. Since this was in the days before spam (can you even remember when spam was not a problem?), I was able to troll around on the web for a few minutes and managed to find email addresses for the CEO and a lot of the executive staff. I sent a polite email letter to everyone at the company whose email address I could find, explaining the problems. The next day I had people calling me up and offering to send me a replacement drive quickly. For the next two weeks I was getting emails from people at that company asking if they could help me. I imagine it is a lot harder today to get email addresses for executives, but it sure worked like a charm for me.

Legion is correct, and once again proves the power of that ancient magic known as doing your research.

Amusing letter though Sean.

Gaming the system like Legion is a great way to run it. It's also a question of your video game burn rate though. Elysium, I imagine you're always on the bleeding edge of games considering you record a weekly podcast about video games and run a website focused on video games. Hell, just the fact that you have a three-out subscription shows you probably play more games in a week than I do in a month (I didn't even use my two-out subscription). I just got sent Chronicles of Riddick and I'm quite happy to play the game. I'll return it in a week or three when I'm done and probably get Prototype or Ghostbusters a month or more after everyone else is over it, but I don't care. They're still fun games and I'm not one to go wax poetic about every game I play. Though I can see how it'd be annoying if you only wanted the new hotness.

Also don't email the black hole, call them at 888-986-6400.