Tag Unsubscribe

Unsubscription of the Day

Michael Leave a comment

Before there were jokes of the day or meditations of the day there were Dial a Laugh and Dial a Prayer.  If you were feeling down you could call for a smile or an inspirational pick me up.  Now we can enjoy inspiration in our inboxes every day by way of a joke, recipe, song, home decorating tip, deep discount air fare, fashion accessory, sports trivia, or even a prayer of the day. No need to wait until you need help dealing with life, life’s little boosts come to you. Directly. At no charge to you.

The thing about free anything, particularly something free that you can get every day of every week, is that they end up costing something. But not you. To you the subscriber the most expense you incur is the time it takes to scroll around or to read the ads that come with the daily encouragement. No, this isn’t a rant about ads. Ads are fine. I like ads. Ads will buy my old folks home space someday. Ads make the world go ‘round. And it’s because of this that I had this thought pop into my head three weeks ago.

What popped was “Really?” and what made it pop was “If you want to continue receiving this email, please click here.” The email in question is one of the ubiquitous OTDs. The question was, “Really? Well that’s a new one,” which I guess really isn’t a question but literary license and all that. What it definitely was though, it was a first. Usually you have to do almost anything you wouldn’t want to do in front of your parents to get out of an email subscription that you once actually asked for. If you are lucky enough to find among the message’s fine print a link to unsubscribe it usually takes you to a series of questions verifying your unwise selection (You are about to have your name PERMANENTLY removed. Are you sure you want to do this?) then respond to several confirming emails with links that take you to more veiled queries regarding your decision making and ultimately your sanity. Nobody lets anybody go from a subscription list. Those are the numbers that advertisers live by. They are literally the lifeblood of the OTDers.

So when I saw this email, this special email sent separate from the daily delivery of inspiration, I knew it was an experiment in the making. If anything, one would have thought that the email would have said that they needed to confirm their list and if I no longer wanted to receive it I should respond, but this was a whole new bag of beans. (Look, somebody has to make up new idioms and someday when “bag of beans” is old hat you’ll be able to say that you read it first.) Personally, I didn’t care if I got that daily gem or not so I didn’t “click here.” About a week later I got another email reminding me that I hadn’t yet responded to their previous inquiry and if I wanted to keep receiving their pearls of wisdom I should “click here.” Again I didn’t. Now two weeks after that I’m still getting my daily missives.

Well the joke is on them. I’m getting what other people have to actually go out and ask to get and I didn’t have to do anything for it. How’s that for pulling one over on them. Hehehe.

 

Day After Day

Michael Leave a comment

Who knows how it happened but recently He of We’s e-mail box has been under a new assault of junk.  It’s not even good junk.  It’s mundane buy this, buy that, enroll in this class, give to this cause, apply for this job, have you thought about a cemetery plot lately?  Fortunately, hidden at the bottom, in the world’s smallest font, usually in the world’s least contrasting color to the background (ivory on white should be illegal) is the “unsubscribe link.”

We suppose most of us would prefer not to be regimented by time, day or year but unfortunately most of us are.  Work schedules, meetings and appointments vie for our attention along with their and other imposed deadlines.  It is the deadline or action time that confuses us most.  Sometimes the measuring of time makes sense as we described in “Apology Accepted” (April 1, 2013).  Other times those times make no sense and we said so in “Past Their Prime” (October 13, 2014).  But now we found a new one that is so quite arbitrary it also should be illegal.  Or at least make somebody feel bad.

Let’s take a little detour to the early days of the home computer.  We’re not sure how many of you might have been around for those challenges but challenges they were.  Everything was written in DOS and written in some weird reverse logic notation where yes meant no and no meant uh oh.  Deleting entire files was a daily occurrence.  Deleting files, erasing directories, reformatting entire disks and drives.  There was no stopping the carnage!

So now, let’s come back to the present and that “unsubscribe link.”  You really don’t want any more e-mails from that sender so you click on it.  At least twice.  Eventually it opens a web page.  There you click on another “unsubscribe link” sometimes having to re-confirm your e-mail address.  At least twice.  Then you click on “Yes” when asked if you are sure you want to do this.  Again, at least twice.  And then you get a message.  “We’re sorry to see you go.  Please allow 21 days for your e-mail address to be removed from our files.”

Twenty-one days?  What are they doing for 3 full weeks?  We know from history that you can delete a record in record time.  In 21 days they can remove all records of all e-mail addresses ever used to send anything to anybody.  From the beginning of computer time.  To be fair, some sites can actually get the job done in ten days.  Usually these are the same sites that will gladly sell you just about anything and guarantee next day delivery.  But it takes a week and a half to delete an e-mail from a list.  Yeah, right.  Let’s all stand and applaud their efficiency.

Twenty one days.  Talk about arbitrary.  Next thing you know, banks will be calling anything that happens after 3pm tomorrow.

Now that’s what we think. Really. How ‘bout you.