The Headaches of On-Line 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 possiblility 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: the website, distrubution, the Postal Service, and to a small part Customer Service.  That's a whole lot thats out of your control.

What can go wrong? I took a poll earlier this week and asked for on-line rental headaches that happend to any 2old2play members. These are the questions I asked:

• Game Lost In Mail When Returning to Service Provider: 27% This acctually 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 happen.
• Game Never Reached Me: 0% No one complained of this issue. Makes me wonder how come so many get lost on the way back...
• 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 them 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 facilites 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% Thats a good sign.
• 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 real easy to fill requests for old games. This means that if you have a queue of 10 games with the newer games on top priority and older games on low priority you're more likely to get that older game regardless. Its 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 cassetts 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 head ache. 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 get more games for your buck in the long run. There is no embarasment when you need to rent Barbie: Horse Adventures for your daughter. Larger selection: 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

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