For the last few months, I’ve found myself buying more video games then I normally do. Usually I might buy a game once every three months and then play it intermittenly until I get sick of it and move on. Recently though, I’ve found myself wanting to try out more games and have been spending more time playing my Xbox then normal. This was probably caused in part, by my having to live without my Xbox 360 for a month, while Microsoft repaired my console. Once I got it back, I was ready to play video games with a vengence and have spent way too much money over the past few months, buying new games for my console.

At first I figured the best way to try out a bunch of new games would be to reactivate my Gamefly account, but everytime I went to their site, I just couldn’t hit the submit button to actually sign up. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to join, but rather that everytime I went to the site, I froze up when I was faced with the decision over whether I wanted ten days free or a discounted first month. This sounds really stupid because the difference in price was only a few dollars, but having had a negative experience with Gamefly in the past, I liked the idea of trying to see if they’ve improved and being able to quit without a hassle, in case they haven’t. At the same time, before signing up, I was about 75% certain that I’d be a member for at least the first month, so the part of me that loves a good deal, didn’t want to give up the lower promotional rate. The positives and negatives of this trade off were so evenly balanced in my mind, that for the last three months, I’ve been spending way too much money buying video games when I could have been renting them from Gamefly instead.

I probably would have just kept buying games, but over the weekend I came across a story on Digg, that helped to motivate me to become a member again.

I haven’t found a lot of details on the program, but Gamefly has put into place a new shipping program which they are calling FastReturn. The program utilizes a partnership with the USPS and is set up so that the post office will actually notify Gamefly as soon as your video game arrives at the post office. This allows Gamefly to immedietely ship your next game to you, instead of having to wait until the disc actually arrives at their distribution center. Because the system relies on getting it’s notifications from the USPS barcode system, not every postal location will be able to participate, but even without every postal office participating, this is still a big improvement for Gamefly.

Because of their limited number of distribution centers, long wait times have been one of Gamefly’s glaring weaknesses from the get go. Even though I live on the West Coast, it still takes a day longer then it should, for me to receive games in the mail from Gamefly. While a two day wait for a game isn’t unreasonable, if I was living on the East coast and had to wait 4 or 5 days to get a video game, it would certainly diminish the appeal of the service.

So far I haven’t shipped any games back, so I can’t comment first hand on how good the service is, but the early reviews seem to suggest that FastReturn has been a hit with customers.

Ironically, after all of the agonizing that I did over which discount to take, it turns out that because I was a former member, I wasn’t even eligible for the discount to begin with. While I ended up having to pay full price to reactivate my membership, I’m pretty sure that by reactivating my account, Gamefly must have added me to their preferential treatment list, because not only did they immedietely ship out the top two picks from my Queue, but one of those picks was NCAA March Madness 2007. Considering that March Madness in full swing, you can bet that Gamefly won’t be getting that game back from me, for at least the next few weeks.