14 DAY TRIAL // Unlike most legal proceedings of public law suits, Gamefly's battle with the United States Postal Service seems to have taken a dramatic turn of events. The USPS did not seem to show any signs of backing down from the fight, but that was before Gamefly got their hands on some new evidence in the case. The PS was accused of showing preferential treatment in its product shipping, and in April it was charged with legal action regarding different standards of sorting for products that were involved with Netflix or Blockbuster.
This preferential treatment can lead to less damage to the package during transportation and can reduce the number of refunds a company has to provide for its merchandise. Gamefly complains that over 1% of its discs arrive broken at their destination, but the USPS states that the fault lies in the specific packaging method that the former uses and has no relation to the presumed preferential sorting.
In July, Gamefly requested details regarding the existence of special "Netflix-only" designated mail slots. The USPS offered no such details stating that no such mail slots were currently present in their post offices. This is where the story took a turn towards a classic TV mystery case as Gamefly brought some evidence to contradict this categorical statement. These preferential mail slots might be "against current Headquarters policy" according to the Postal Service, but Gamefly managed to snap some shots of them in the Susanville and Alturas, California branches.
Now USPS admits the existence of these slots, but claims that they should have been removed according to its directive some two years ago. It claims that these could have "legal ramifications" and it seems it was indeed right. The photos haven't been authenticated by the USPS yet but it could be just that the two Californian post offices never got the memo about the removal of these mail slots. Regarding the time stamp of these photos, the possibility that they were taken over two years ago when the mail slots had yet to be removed is pretty slim. It would take a little bit too much patience and planning from Gamefly to prepare for a law suit two years in the future.