Games By Post www.gamesbypost.co.uk

I used them from November 2005 until April 2006, for the renting of Xbox 360 games when few others sites did them.

The first problem occurred days into my subscription when the games didn't arrive, and I phoned Games By Post up, to be told that they had been sent to my billing address (as opposed to my delivery address) by mistake. This happened to be my university, and I couldn't get the games until I returned home in January. This meant that the free 14 day trial I was expecting was delayed until when I got to university, but Games By Post still tried billing me in December. Cue angry phone calls, and they EVENTUALLY decided to cancel the billing.

Generally, the service was reliable but slow until March/April, when it gradually became ridiculously bad. Games would take up to two weeks to arrive, or I would receive two games by accident (which would mess up their website when I returned them). Emails were not responded to, nor were they replied to with any reliable information.

In April or May I returned a game but they didn't send one back out. They eventually replied to emails and told me that I hadn't sent one back when I had. They seemed to want me to pay for the game which was lost, because apparently, even though their envelopes are designed for the letterbox, I needed a receipt of sending, ie. I should have returned the games recorded delivery. This was completely ridiculous, and I told them as much. I cancelled my account and they didn't even bother replying to any of my emails, and I haven't heard from them since.

The only plus side to ALL of this is that they never remembered to bill me AT ALL during the whole time I was with them.

Twice I have sent a game back to Games by Post, and they have claimed they have not received it. This means if you have just put it in the postbox, it's going to cost you £50. You need to go in the Post Office and get proof of postage each time you post one back. I sent them proof of postage about about a month ago, and I have still not heard anything from them. All my emails have been ignored. So I'm paying for a service I can't use. The phone number on their site is dead, so there is no way of getting hold of them.

Games by Post online game rental service offer an annoyingly slow game turnaround (4 days was the worst), and they have a habit of adding games to rental queues that haven't been released yet. Couple this with the fact that their online help never works, and you've got a pretty poor company. Even their customer services will take 2 days to get back to you. On the plus side though, they forgot to bill me for the first 2 months. Save yourself money on wigs, and go elsewhere.

Games by Post offers quite a good Game Rental service - games always arrived very quickly, with the added bonus of renting 3 games at a time instead of the traditional 2. Quite reasonable rates also.