I’ve been a loyal GameFly customer since March 20, 2004.

Let that sink in for a while.

In a matter of weeks, and two more payments of thirteen dollars and some change to them, I’ll have been a paying GameFly customer for five years. Five long years. I don’t want to even think of how much of my money I’ve given to them.

It started with Viewtiful Joe for GameCube. I was trying to rent it from all my local Blockbusters and Hollywood Videos, but none of them had it, and I was getting frantic. My poor fifteen-year-old mind yielded to a banner ad on IGN or Gamespot, and I signed up for the free trial. Around the same time I had been given my own bank account with debit card linked to the family one. What better use for a 16-digit piece of plastic linked to my money than a subscription based-service?

Yes, my logic was flawed. How many 15-year-olds do you know that don’t spend their cash on video games?

But I was a happy customer. I played over a hundred games with GameFly. I never had delays on getting games and I could get the best new releases within days of release. It was fantastic. Splinter Cell, Soul Caliber, Eternal Darkness, I played them all. A glorious existence! (When it came to gaming) I saved so much money that I even was able to buy a Nintendo DS on launch day.

Then I graduated from high school and bought an Xbox 360 with money I had earned from tutoring.

Before that time, I had only Nintendo systems. And the GameCube certainly wasn’t in the same demand the Wii is in today.

Horror set in. All the good 360 games were trapped behind “Medium” and “Low” Availability. I satisfied myself by playing the Xbox games I had missed out on the previous generation. Then I ran out. I decided to go to my local Hollywood video for a few next-gen games I could try.

ATTENTION GAMEFLY: When a customer goes back to the stores he left you for, YOU HAVE FAILED.

One of the most recent changes to the site I’ve noticed is a scrolling banner telling viewers which games have been recently restocked. Yet out of the 14 games currently on my “GameQ”, none of them are available. Too Human has been out since August. de Blob is a moderately popular Wii game. The Bourne Conspiracy is almost at the six-month landmark since its release. The Darkness costs just as much for me to own forever as it does for me to rent for a month.

Am I the only one seeing something wrong here?

Having graduated from high school and being forced to swallow down economics, I can say that Supply and Demand are not balancing out here. The games that are being lauded and demanded aren’t going out to the people that want them. The games that only a few people want are taking weeks to show back up in the warehouse. I’m beginning to think there’s something wrong with your business model, GameFly.

So, as a “loyal” customer and someone who’s sunk hundreds of dollars into the service, I’d like to suggest a few things to the ignoramuses that are currently running GameFly.

1. Give the games to customers in the order that they are on the queue. I want to play Prince of Persia. That’s why it’s number one on my list. I want to play that game. I don’t want to play John Woo’s Stranglehold before it. The same goes for Amped 3, Okami, God of War II, and all the other games BELOW it on the list. GameFly sends out the first available game in the list, though it will wait a day for a “Highly” available game to come in just in case. But it’s not the same. I’d gladly go gameless for 3 days to get Prince of Persia than wait five weeks for it to become available in my queue.
2. Take your store seriously. You shower me with rewards of  $5 coupons and magical 10% off deals for being such a damn cool member, but the only game that interests me in your store that I can remotely consider buying is Lumines for PS2. And that’s a remake of a PSP launch title. I’d happily give you more money, if you’d do more than sell the games that no one wants.
3. Stop telling me to rent games you don’t have. Yes, I’m aware Fallout 3 has won Game of the Year awards. I’ve also noticed that it currently is at “Low” availability. I’m not going to get Fallout 3 (if I didn’t already own it) from GameFly for a month after I click the Rent button. Stop giving me and other users false hope.
4. Give some kind of pre-order option. Oh god, how I would love another Metroid game. If Nintendo announced one though, I wouldn’t be able to put it on a wishlist or my queue until a month or so before it comes out. If I could use some kind of pre-rent option, that would be fantastic. And then you’d have an accurate representation of demand going into release. I can’t see how this would be bad.

So GameFly, this is my ultimatum. Unless I see some kind of change, I’m going to cancel my membership. You’re a fickle mistress, GameFly, and I need to go back to my original lover, owning the damn games.