In a quest to clean up the inbox I’ve been unsubscribing from a bunch of lingering newsletters and merchant email alerts.
Annoying: Some big name brands (J. Crew, FTD, BestBuy, etc.) say it will take between 5-10 days to be removed from their list. During that time they can still send you emails. And they have.
I can order a shirt today and have it waiting at my door tomorrow afternoon, but it takes 10 days to remove my email address from a database? That doesn’t seem like a genuine effort.
I feel like I get emails starting the next day when I sign up for a list. But 10 days to be removed? Something isn’t right.
I realize that many of these companies outsource their mailing lists to third party providers. Perhaps they provide a list of changes to the provider once a week or something, but it sure feels like the unsubscribe process could be swifter if someone cared a tiny bit about the customer experience.
Damian Karlson
on 30 Nov 07“Redonkulous”?
I thought that was a word my 25yr old sister made up! :)
Jose
on 30 Nov 07This gets a photo of Uncle Sam and the phrase “We want you” on my mind. It’s a really hard process to “unsubscrube” from a mailing list for a major company.
FredS
on 30 Nov 07Bigger annoyance – ten days to be removed from email list or ten days to get a shirt?
Jeff Decker
on 30 Nov 07I just called my credit card company to ask them to stop mailing special offers, in fact anything at all. I didn’t want any paper from the credit card company. They said it would take 30 days.
And then they asked if I would like a confirmation letter.
I don’t know how he asked without a giggle in his voice.
Dave Stern
on 30 Nov 07At least you could find an unsubscribe link for them.
After buying flowers for my Mom on Mother’s Day, I’ve been getting at least 1 1800-FLOWERS spam email a week (because I clearly want to buy flowers that frequently). I never subscribed (unless it was a prechecked box I missed in the flower ordering process), and there’s no unsubscribe link that I can find in the emails.
I just reported them as spam to gmail, all because I couldn’t unsubscribe easily.
Brian
on 30 Nov 07Jason, This post is nothing short of timely, accurate and fantastic. You hit the nail on the head! I don’t know if you’ve heard of Harry Beckwith or not… but he’s written several great books that deal with service marketing, and issues like the content of your post today. I’d “highly” recommend that you read his book,
“Selling The Invisible”.
In fact, if you read it… and then decide that the book doesn’t measure up to my accolade… I will reimburse you 200% of the retail price. As far as I am concerned… “Selling The Invisible” should be a legally required text book for anyone that’s considering going into business. You’ll love it!
Brian
Visit My Website
Visit My Blog
Blake Householder
on 30 Nov 07I wrote about this exact same issue I had with Fidelity.
Benjy
on 30 Nov 07I’m convinced that they use that 5-10 days to sell/trade your email address to somebody else in return for that company’s unsubscribed addresses. I always seem to start getting similar but different emails I know I didn’t subscribe to… for example, I unsubscribe from emails I started getting after booking a rental car online and suddenly I keep getting emails about some cruise packages.
Anonymous Coward
on 30 Nov 07Someone call Ron May!
Jeff Greco
on 30 Nov 07Some guesses – I know broadcast e-mails are generally scheduled in advance, with the population queries run when scheduled. It’s probably a limitation of the actual broadcast e-mail platform.
As far as snail mail goes, how far in advance do you mail things to get the lower class bulk mail rates?
Davis Seal
on 30 Nov 07I spent Thanksgiving watching football and unsubscribing from unwanted newsletters. It took about an hour. The worst was trying to unsubscribe from Classmates.com—they don’t make it easy.
pwb
on 30 Nov 07I think it’d be hard for most companies to prioritize “prompt email deletion” very high on the list of projects.
jim
on 30 Nov 07Watch as more and more people use the term “Redonkulous” now that 37signals has used it!!
Anonymous Coward
on 30 Nov 07I think it’d be hard for most companies to prioritize “prompt email deletion” very high on the list of projects.
It’s automated already. There’s not a human walking over the list of people who want to be removed and removing them by hand one-by-one.
Reed H.
on 30 Nov 07They probably email some department in the company that prints it out and faxes it to a third party handler that types it into an Excel spreadsheet that is transmitted to another third party handler each night over 1200 baud modem, converted to EBCDIC format, spooled out on tape, which is run through the mainframe every fortnight, then they fedex the printout back to the original manufacturer who verifies them .. ....
Lance
on 30 Nov 07I’ve had a couple “newsletters” and “special offers” that, despite the active link, I am unable to remove myself from. When that happens they get treated to a little Bayesian filtering.
Hawkeye
on 30 Nov 07I’ve actually been doing the same thing this past week. I wish I remember who it was, but one site said it could take up to 5 weeks to remove me from their distribution lists. I was shocked and annoyed, but alas… what’s a guy to do? Even 5-10 days is unacceptable, but it seems to be the norm.
Mark
on 30 Nov 0710 days is what CAN-SPAM laws require. I appreciate where you’re coming from, but when I used to managed 1million+ subscriber lists for Fortune 500 firms, sometimes things happen. You’ve got send systems with a different database than the CRM system where the unsub request comes in, and a job may have already been queued up to send. We typically processed and ran lists from the customer database on various criteria, and then delivered those to the team that actually managed the blast…which is no small feat.
I’m not justifying it. Just saying, there are humans on the other side of the Internet too.
Ian
on 30 Nov 07I’ve been doing the very same thing recently. I’ve encountered places where the delay is as much as 28 days! I’ve had them already send 2 newletters in a week, so I guess I can expect another 6 before they finally remove my details. Other places that don’t even give me any option anywhere in mails to unsubscribe!
Anonymous Coward
on 30 Nov 07They probably email some department in the company that prints it out and faxes it to a third party handler that types it into an Excel spreadsheet that is transmitted to another third party handler each night over 1200 baud modem, converted to EBCDIC format, spooled out on tape, which is run through the mainframe every fortnight, then they fedex the printout back to the original manufacturer who verifies them .. ....
Don’t forget the TPS cover sheets. They have to have 5 managers remind every person in the chain to include a TPS cover sheet.
AdamA
on 30 Nov 07Same thing happens with banks and businesses. The 3-7 day period that it takes to transfer funds, get a refund, etc. is just more time for them to make interest off of your money. Turns out it makes them millions of dollars a year (Depending on the scale of the business, of course).
aliotsy
on 30 Nov 07Somewhat related: there are a number of services that allow you to sign up online, anytime, 24/7, but then require a phone call, during East Coast business hours, Monday through Friday, to leave the service.
I think the excuse I’ve seen is that it’s for privacy purposes. Is this really true?
Benjamin
on 01 Dec 07If I can’t be removed easily and immediately, the emails get marked as spam and I never see them again.
Fazal Majid
on 01 Dec 07I never give my primary email address to vendors. I create an address for each in a throwaway domain. If I start getting spam at that address, I just revoke it. Sometimes you find out interesting things, like when I started receiving pornographic spam at the address I created for Dell, leading me to believe Dell’s database security is substandard.
For those who can’t manage their own mail server, there are a number of services like Mailinator that allow you to create disposable email addresses, or limited validity email addresses.
John S.
on 01 Dec 07You can always tell the companies that care about you by how easy it is for you to leave/cancel/etc. I remember hearing awhile back that exit barriers are big entry barriers.
LaurieG
on 01 Dec 07Anybody ever tried to unsubscribe from a Disney service? I subscribed my kids to Disney’s ToonTown and finally had to report my card as lost and get a new one in order to stop the recurring payments. Ugh. I would have expected more from them.
Former FTD Employee.
on 01 Dec 07I used to work for FTD - did some high-level work on their bulk email system, even. Mark is right - the delay is due to how their bulk email system works. Their campaigns are queued up days in advance to give the system time to put the lists together.
The emails are very targeted—a 20% discount may go to Chicago area customers who ordered 5 or more things last year but nothing this year, while a 15% discount may go to people in Baltimore who only order around Christmastime and spend $60 or more…you get the idea.
Selecting the right recipients for all the lists in a campaign can take days, and then there’s time on that for the emails themselves to go out (throttled so their don’t use the whole building’s bandwidth). The 5 days is in case you were already selected to receive an email that hadn’t gone out yet.
B
on 01 Dec 07Former FTD Employee: That’s a weak excuse. If the systems are that sophisticated they can be sophisticated enough to respect the customer’s wishes. If a customer doesn’t want to get any more emails, it shouldn’t take 5+ days to grant their request.
I love when sophisticated complex systems are the excuse for not being able to do something simple. When a system can only do something hard it’s not a system, its a failure.
Mark
on 01 Dec 07B-
Believe it or not, sometimes marketing people like to believe they’re providing you added value when they pull segmented lists as described. No one’s describing a “sophisticated complex system,” they’re describing a manual, complex process handled by disjoint teams. You interact with a marketing database, a list is pulled that factors in your selections and preferences, and that list is passed off to a delivery team. It probably took a day to run. Then, guess what, your client calls and wants to change the copy – the email is delayed a day but the list is already out. The customer then submits an unsubscribe request and an email still goes to them.
Meanwhile, the 1 day delay in the send has now pushed it from a Thursday to a Friday, and I’d tell a client they’re wasting their money doing a blast on Friday, in some cases even Monday. So the blast is delayed til Tuesday.
It’s not optimal, and don’t think the people doing the work don’t sweat the fact the fact that they’re potentially pissing off customers. The people in the trenches do care about doing their jobs well. It’s just not always as straightforward as a CampaignMonitor (which I use) subscriber list collecting unsubs on the fly.
James
on 01 Dec 07I agree; sometimes it’s even hard to find how to unsubscribe. I have several regular emails that I don’t really need, that I’m still receiving because I’ve not been able to work out how to unsubscribe from them.
FBM
on 01 Dec 07I’ve been (I am really) through the same process as you: deleting most of my subscriptions, and I’m facing the same problems. Even with a big one I couldn’t unsubscribe. I had to send an email message to get deleted from their database, which they did a week later. Others (also big, why is that?) still send me messages. It’s a shame, really.
Luca
on 02 Dec 07I have only really had one problem with unsubscribing and that was from the Xbox Live newsletter. I thought after I had stopped paying for my account they would remove me from the mailing list…. but no. In the email it says I need to login to the website and select the option to not recieve the newsletter – guess what, I can’t find this option! I then tried emailing various addresses to get them to unsubscribe me – no luck. Now it is just treated as spam in Gmail. :D
Benky
on 03 Dec 07You can never beat the email spammers, i get tonnes of newsletters every day that i have no recollection of signing up to, some of them send you more when you try to unsubscribe as you are effectively verifying your email address. Best and easiest solution is to have them directed automatically to your junk folder!
Ben Sekulowicz-Barclay
on 03 Dec 07I hate any online service which requires me to delete or modify my account in any way other than an online form. If you can add data through a form, you should be able to remove it too.
Mind you, Tadalists doesn’t provide any method of removing your account. And no support email either.
Trey Connell
on 03 Dec 07I work for a development company that offers a Content Management System. We integrate with many e-mail marketing vendors, and you really get what you pay for. Some provide an API that allows our system to send an unsubscribe action in real time where others do not, and the unsubscribes have to be batched. Depending on the load the vendor is able to accommodate the frequency of the batch process varies, and some dictate you send only once per week. It’s unfortunate, but some customer just don’t want to pay the premium dollars that it takes to put an efficient system in place that provides top customer service.
cedaferta
on 04 Dec 07I never give my primary email address to vendors. I create an address for each in a throwaway domain. In the email it says I need to login to the website and select the option to not recieve the newsletter – guess what, I can’t find this option. Don’t forget the TPS cover sheets. They have to have 5 managers remind every person in the chain to include a TPS cover sheet. When that happens they get treated to a little Bayesian filtering. It’s probably a limitation of the actual broadcast e-mail platform.
Scott Meade
on 05 Dec 0710 days is what the law allows, so 10 days is what companies will take. It’s not good customer service, but where do we expect companies to put their process improvement efforts – into making life better for its customers or for people that never want to hear from them again? Disapointing, but not a surprise.
Michael
on 06 Dec 07Vendors want a market, and even bad advertising is advertising.
Government communications typically have a 24 hour turn-around. I am employed with a mass communication company working with elected officials; our mail system uses the immedate unsubscribe method. You click a customized link on your ecard, you get unsubscribed and a confirmation email indicating that you’ve unsubscribed (as well as indicating how to resubscribe if you didn’t mean to unsubscribe). After that you cannot be contacted again (unless you re-subscribe).
FYI, read the privacy policies of the sites you sign-up with. Anyone that allows selling, renting, or sharing their list with 3rd parties or “communication partners” risks giving your email address into the public data world where it can be sold for $0.04.
Some State Attorney Generals (PA in particular) will take action on companies violating CAN-SPAM; good way to get some revenge.
This discussion is closed.