There was an interesting article over on
gameasutra.com today (it's actually from last Thursday, but I didn't see it until today) regarding the postal rate "Netflix, but with videogames" service,
Gamefly is charged by the US Postal Service for shipping its discs. Apparently, they were being charged a manual-sorting-only surcharge that Netflix and Blockbuster Online weren't, despite sending the exact same items through the postal system.
The key word is "were" because the Postal Regulatory Commission has sided with
Gamefly in the matter and gave the USPS 60 days to set new rates for round-trip DVD mailpieces. The difference in rates amounted to $730,000, or more than 100% of
Gamefly's monthly net income in 2011. So yeah, that sounds like a big deal to me, and it only took 2 years for the case to sort itself out.
So maybe now
Gamefly can lower their rates to something closer to what Netflix charges.
You can read the full story at the totally real and not made up website
Post&Parcel.
*not a real organization
