Determined to get to the bottom of this, I started scouring the Internet to find their contact info. Didn't take long, but I did find a number of complaints that they weren't very forthcoming with it on the site when it was working. I still had an individual's e-mail address from the damaged-disc incident, so I first tried sending an inquiry there, but it's just been bouncing around in delayed status for several days. Next I unearthed the e-mail address of the CEO of the company, but that also is stuck in limbo with no response. Today I tried their customer-support phone number (1-888-542-6817), but all I got was a temporarily out-of-service recording. It's almost like they were never there.
So where did they go? Hell if I know. If they had some concrete plan to go away briefly while they overhaul their services, why not mention it on the site? If they're going out of business, that might also be a good thing to let their customers know. My last monthly subscription charge went through on Nov. 5, so any day now I'll know if I'm still getting billed for a service that no longer exists. If you happen to have a membership there, you might want to keep an eye on your billing as well. Since the site's gone, there's no way to cancel it through there, so you may have to refute the charges if they go through.
Whatever the story is, it'd be great if GNF would spill it.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Edward
Dude, great post I thought I was the only member of GNF that was seeing this. I have been trying the same tactics to get in touch with some one but it has be no good. Thank you for writing this post. Please if you find out anymore information let us lost GNF members know.
2 - Mark
Thanks. I'd been looking around on the web for info on their potential demise for weeks, and since nobody was talking, I decided to try get to the bottom of it myself and report whatever I found. Glad people are reading, and I'll update if/when new info becomes available.
3 - brian
I second that. GnF is sucking as of late. They owe us an explanation. Thanks for the post.
4 - Mark Buckingham
It's going on a month and two days since I got billed by GNF. So far so good, but I'm keeping an eye on it. I'm also keeping the last thing they sent me until I find out what's going on. Might as well get a free movie out of last month's paid subscription I couldn't use.
5 - shannon
I am also a member and have no idea what is going on my bill date is on the 12 of each month nothing was taken out for nov or dec. It would of been nice for them to let us know what is going on do I wait or go to another site.
6 - BRBenson
I just wish I had a better game or movie out when this all whet down. I only have a PS2 title that I only partly wanted to rent.
Before this whole fiasco, I had to wait almost a month for my game. I think they knew something was going to happen. I had contacted GNF on October 15th when my last game has shown as being received on 10/8/08, yet nothing new had shipped. I had 45 games in queue and they tried to tell me to be patient and that I would eventually get one. I got a lot of generic answers like "we send them as as soon as they are available" and "make sure you have many games and movies in queue so we can send you something" and the like. After a few calls and e-mails with genuine threats to cancel my service I was told to give it until 11/1/08 by one of the reps. I thought they just wanted to give me a date to shut me up for a while, then low and behold, on 11/3/08, the first weekday after 11/1/08 I got an e-mail confirmation that my game had been shipped. I think there is some serious stuff going down and pretty soon we will see a national news article on it.
Anyone know the number to CNN?
7 - Roycar
Does anyone know if we will be billed for the amount of a game if we still have it?
8 - FifthDream
I had a lot of problems with GamesNFlix. Besides rarely getting games that i really wanted (understandable up to a point), i purchased a game from them in March that hadn't arrived two months later. I wrote their customer service on the site and was told that the distributor was processing my order, the games take around six weeks to arrive, and if it hadn't arrived in that amount of time, i could request a refund. As i said, it had already been two months, but i waited a bit longer anyway.
Two weeks later, i finally requested a refund, and was told that would take up to six weeks to arrive. It didn't.
I called their customer service number and was simply told that the refund was in the system. I asked if they had any idea when it might arrive. She told me, simply, "No."
I looked up GamezNFlix on the BBB's website, and there seemed to be quite a list of complaints, many resolved, but a lot were not. Currently the BBB site states that GamezNFlix seems to be out of business.
I guess i'm out that money, and the game. Very disappointing.
9 - Debbie
I am glad I am not the only one with this issue! I have a tendency to fill my queue and not visit the site for several months, so the recent "dust" message didn't worry me at first. I received my last dvd about a month or so ago, and sent it back last week. My billing charges should have gone through on Dec. 3, (and have not yet) so that was the first thing to prompt me to look into this. I hope we find out something definitive soon.
10 - Robert
I called what I found to be the number for customer service and got a company called F.R.E.E. Enterprizes, Inc. I guess they're really gone.
11 - Edward
Hello Mark and others:
After I read your post I decided that I would do a little digging myself. First I decided to find the address for GameZnFlix and call the Chamber of Commerce in Franklin, KY, which is were GNF's home office is located. After specking with a young lady, she informed me that she had no knowledge of the company going under, but she would investage the situation farther for me. The next day I called back for a follow-up and the young lady said that after several attempts she could not get anyone to contact her back, but she did say that another company in the same building below GNF, said that GNF was still in business and up stairs.
The young lady said that she knew the CEO and his wife because they were commerce members. She tryed contacting the wife while I was on the phone with her but no one answered(she left message). She said she would continue to investigate and that I should call her next week 12/15-12/19. I will do that and if I find out anymore information I will post here.
But for now if you have time please call Franklin, Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and ask questions maybe we can get some answers. Just google the city and you will find links and phone number.
Thanks
12 - greek
Alright, Guys I think this company is a complete fraud. I haven't received anything in over a year and went on to cancel my account and they are gone. The CEO has been making 300,000- 500,000 a year when the company has net profits of -10.4 million how is this possible? Im extremly frustrated that I paid for a service thats non existant and feel we should all file suit against them. I did some research and they seem to be selling games under the ebay username of gnfgames strange for a company to do. There is no way to contact them to cancel or anything. If anyone has any further info please send it my way.
13 - EatCrow
I did some checking of my own and found this quarterly report...
Interesting finds are that as of Sep. 30th, 2008, there were only 5,000 of us subscribers and 4 employees! The report basically says they haven't been able to retain subscribers because they haven't been able to purchase new library material because they haven't been able to secure loans.
Also, "In the event that the Company is required to pay penalties to Golden Gate or redeem the convertible debentures held by Golden Gate, it may be required to curtail or cease operations."
Also on a website called InvestorsHub.com there is chatter of a former employee lawsuit coupled with the return of a former lawsuit after the quarterly report clearly stated the company could not withstand such drains on capital. I have not been able to confirm the lawsuits but I could understand that, if they exist, Gameznflix is gone.
They certainly cannot afford to purchase Animal Crossing for Wii and I guess that is all I need to know.
14 - hutchice
Oh they totally went out of business. I was looking over their quarterly earnings statements sent to the SEC about 4 months ago and they only had 10,000 in cash on hand. When the gameznflix site was up you could look at all of their past earning statements to see they were going under. They have been bleeding money for quite a while. I had been a member for 6 months and probably only received 10 movies and 1 game. I complained several times but never got anywhere. When I received a couple of movies on it with regular stamps I new the end would be coming soon. I guess in the end I have 3 of their movies and I plan on keeping them unless I hear otherwise. I think they had a great idea but lacked the infrastructure to support it or the management skills needed to make it successful.
15 - Mark Buckingham
Not sure where Greek got his numbers, but I can say with certainty that the company was not a fraud, at least not until about a month ago. I got stuff from them regularly, though many items were in high demand and hard to get. However, it's mid-December and I haven't seen any new charges on my card, so if they vanished, at least they're not taking any more of my money with them.
Also, I don't think them selling old games on eBay is shady, since they sold them through their own site as well. If something was particularly hard to sell or only something a devoted collector would want, eBaying it seems reasonable.
That said, I have to wonder if the noise upstairs was just them moving out. Really seems like they're not coming back at this point, unless they get picked up by a new investor or bought out entirely. It'd be nice to know if they deleted my billing info at least, or if it's still floating around out there waiting to be stolen.
16 - Social Studies Guy
Thanks for this entry. I have not been billed for a couple months now from GameZnflix.com either. I have had a movie out, but had not returned it as I could not get on to the site to see my Queue and was concerned that they had not billed me. The site was giving me that "Pardon our Dust" page, but last week it said something about GNFgames.com instead of GameZnFLix.com. I assumed at that point that they may be revamping their site or something. As of today, however, when you enter either of those URLs it takes you to a GoDaddy page that says that URL is temporarily parked. This is the case for both GameZnflix and GNFgames. Guess I'll hold on to this disk a bit longer to see if they re-emerge.
17 - Social Studies Guy
Okay, I did a WhoIs search for GameZnFlix.com and located this information (I think some likely have this already):
Administrative Contact:
Fleming, John
GameZnFlix, Inc.
1535 Blackjack Road
Franklin, Kentucky 42134
United States
888-542-6817 Fax -- 270-778-0025
The 888 customer service number is working, but it takes you to a recorded customer support message that says "all Representatives are busy" and provides regular office hours.
18 - Moedean
Glad I found this, and that Im not the only one wondering what is going on. Im fine if they are out of business, the service wasnt great, but just want to make sure I dont get any more charges on my card. They do appear dead now though, godaddy as the website parked, the underconstruction stuff appears gone, at least for me.
19 - It's me
I have been wondering about this site for a while myself. I still have two movies out from them and was waiting on a game to be sent. Just called the 1-888 number mentioned in other blogs and all I got was the free enterprise place. If they are gone does anyone know of another good place to get movies and games from. GNF was slow about sending some of there stuff but I felt that their pricing was pretty good, especially with the military discount. Oh well I guess with the economy the way it is it's not a big suprise if they are gone. Let me know if anyone has any suggestions as to another site with similar services.
20 - Mark Buckingham
Gamefly and Netflix are the closest things I know of, but they're mutually exclusive. GNF was the only place I knew of that handled BOTH games and movies. Blockbuster's online service was rumored to be trying to add games to their movie catalog, but talking with a store manager the other day, they said it's likely not going to happen, primarily because they can't settle on an appropriate pricing model. That seems like a pretty lame excuse to me, considering all us ex-GNF users are looking for an alternative that does both.
21 - figured
Switched from them like 6 months back due to poor service. I'm not surprised they went out of business. They rarely had any new stuff in stock. It was a cool thought to try both but, for the cost they truly cut to many corners. Would rather pay both netflix and gamefly more to get what i wanted then sit there for months on end to not get crap. 50 game que 2 months to get a game thats 40th on my que? lawl I'm surprised they lasted this long. Now if only netflix would just join forces with a good game rental service!!!
22 - Tina
I subscribed to GNF in early November of this year as a Christmas gift for my son. A week later the site went under "maintenance". I wasn't even able to add any movies to the queue. I paid using my military card and began to start worrying when the site never came back up. I ended having to call AAFES and have my card number changed after reading all the posts online about the site going under. I was worried that my information was out there somewhere waiting to be stolen. The AAFES people say that GNF never charged my account, but better safe then sorry. I feel better now that my information is safe. Maybe it was worth the hassle to get my card number changed rather than have it out there with who knows who having access to it.
23 - Ruth
I also bought a membership for my husband. They charged me the fee for a year-supply. Then we weren't able to activate the membership, the site went under and we tried contacting people are months with no response. We're trying to dispute the charge through our bank but since we waited more than 90 days to report it we're likely out the money. If anyone has any more information that could help us (since we didn't even get to use the service once for all the money we paid) we'd greatly appreciate to see it posted!
24 - Roger
well sufing the web found a stock market page the Ticker names is GZFX and well the november looks down but december 0 and by 0 I mean Zero. So i'm just guessing out of buisness. i don't know how to read stock the market but I know when you see nothing on thier chart, I want to say the went out of buisness. So what do i do with suff i have?
25 - Mark Buckingham
If you still have products from GNF, I say keep them. They weren't kind enough to tell us they were going belly up (AOL Pictures warned users months in advance that they were goin under), I don't see the point in sending back items to an empty office. Probably just get returned to sender anyway.
I just wish I had something more valuable or interesting checked out at the time.