The Headaches of On-Line Game Rentals

Ever sign up for something and get more than you bargained for? Well personally, I have on more than a dozen occasions. My most recent folly involved the on-line game rental services.

Like most people I thought, "What a great idea! This is going to be easy and well worth the monthly fee..." What I never took into consideration is the possibility of errors. My grandpa always told me: "The more working parts something has, the more prone it is to break." Without getting into specifics, lets take into consideration how many parts there are to an on-line game rental service: First you have the website, then distribution, the Postal Service, and even to a small degree Customer Service. That's a whole lot of steps that are out of your control.

What can go wrong? Well, we took a poll earlier this week asking for on-line rental headaches that happened to any 2old2play members. These are the questions we asked along with the percentage of members affected by them.

• Game Lost In Mail When Returning to Service Provider: 27% This actually was my problem and my motivation behind this article. Not only does this clog your steady flow of new games it also brings up customer service issues. Some service providers will write off the game once you report the loss and a period of time passes (usually two weeks). Others may have you go to the USPS to resolve the issue. Since missing mail must be reported by the sender this is one headache that I'm sure none of us would like to deal with. Hard part is, this happens, and if you plan on using any on-line game rental for an extended length of time this issue is bound to come up.


• Game Never Reached Me: 0% No one had complained of this issue as of this article. Makes me wonder how come so many get lost on the way back. Obviously 2old2play is only a cross section of the gaming world, but 0% is still great no matter how you slice it.


• Game Took 2 Weeks Or More to Reach Service Provider: 9% Generally, when this happens the game is 'lost' in the distribution facility. If you think about it, any sizable service provider has a customer base in the thousands. On some days its possible for hundreds of games to arrive. They are bound to drop the ball on some of them and misplace some in the shuffle. Most times, when you report the game missing they will match it in the distribution facility. Choosing a service that also rents movies only compounds this problem.


• Game Took 2 Weeks Or More to Reach Me: 9% Days off for the Postal Service, slow distribution facilities, and distribution facilities that are clear across the country. Make sure that when you do sign up for a service that you look into the locations of their distribution facilities. Many services post it on their site. Find a service that has one close to you.


• Got A Game That Was Not On My List: 0% That's a good sign. Golf Clap anyone?


• I Have A Hard Time Getting Newer Releases That Are On My List: 45% This was the biggest problem. With the rising cost of games many people are looking to these services to get some of the games that they want to play, but may not necessarily want to keep. The demand for new games versus old is lopsided making it hard to fill requests for new games, but easy to fill requests for old ones. This means that if you have a queue of 10 games with newer games on top priority and older games on low, you're more likely to get that older game regardless. It's unfeasible for the service provider to get a copy of a new game for every customer that has it on their queue, so they get a percent of that demand and try to spread it out thin. If you have a large queue expect to get the old over the new.


• I Received A Damaged Game: 0% While the poll showed zero, many people posted a complaint of receiving a faulty disk. Short of a tour, its impossible to say what happens when returned games arrive at the distribution facility. This problem has been around since the dawn of video rental stores. I can remember renting dozens of broken VHS cassettes and scratched DVDs over the years. There is no cheap solution for this problem and the service providers will continue to rely on us to report damaged games.


• Billing/Cancellation Issue: 9% A member of 2old2play posted that it took three months to get his account cancelled. Sad to say, there is no easy button in your customer profile on the site. Most service providers make you phone in cancellations and it usually makes for a very awkward conversation with the customer service representative. Saying "Your service sucks!" usually opens a whole scripted can of worms and makes it a big headache. Best tell them that your system is kaput and you will not be replacing it.

What would a bunch of cons be with out pros? No punchline here. Rather than driving to the rental store only to find that they don't have what you want, you can instead browse on-line and let some one else pick the game off the rack. You'll also get more games for your buck in the long run. Not to mention there is no embarrassment when you need to rent Barbie: Horse Adventures for your daughter. Plus, since most of these service providers deal in games only and that means more to choose from.

Here are some quick tips for choosing a service provider:

• Find one that has a distribution facility that is close to you.


• Browse the site before you sign up and look for ease of website use and game choices (make sure they have what you are looking for).


• Keep your queue small. This will make you more likely to get what you really want by reducing the choices the service provider has.


• When you send a game back check your queue often to see if it arrived. If it has been more than seven business days since you sent and they show it out, report it missing.


• If you want just games stick to a service provider that only rents games. However, if you do pick a service that offers games and DVDs prepare to get more movies than games

Remember: Stuff happens and there are few guaranties in life. Its up to you to look out for numero uno. Happy gaming!