I talked about Goozex a short while ago, pointing out the obvious benefits and obvious shortcomings. The shortcomings can simply be summed up as “humans are thoughtless twats” and you’d know all you needed to know. I detailed my initial experiences with the receiving-side of the equation in that post which mostly amounted to the items being fair to okay but the senders taking their sweet ass time. That continues to be a trend, though this time with a twist.
I’ve been interested in trying Killzone 2 for the PS3 for a while, so I stayed up until the requisite time on release day and jumped into the requests queue for the game on Goozex. I ended up 46th in line. Not terrible, but I’ll still have a considerable wait. Fast forward to last Wednesday — 6 weeks after requesting the game — and I finally had percolated up through the queue and gotten matched with some kid wanting to trade the game. Given the popularity of the game, the kid had obviously just listed it so he likely got a trade email within minutes of the system matching us. It took him about 18 hours to agree to the trade, saying he would ship it in 3 days. Ah well, fair enough. I’m getting Killzone 2 soon!
So, Sunday night rolls around which is 5 days after he accepted the trade and agreed to ship the game within 3 days. I get an email saying that the aforementioned thoughtless twat wants the cancel the trade. Why?
Reason for cancellation: Game was scratched and is not working.
I’m sorry, you didn’t think to check this before you listed the game? Nor did you think to check this before you accepted the trade? Nor did you look at it before the 3 day deadline for shipping the game? You waited 2 days after you were supposed to ship it to say “oh hell, looks like I somehow smeared shit on the disc and scraped it off with a Dremel tool”? I call batshit.
So, where does that leave me? Back in the queue, waiting to be matched to the next gibbering dildo who will almost undoubtedly wait until, say, Halloween to decide that he misplaced the game disc in his cat’s sphincter or something equally wonderful.
Frustrating. Such a great concept with such a gaping flaw, especially to those of us who try to provide good experiences to others.
