I just got email from a retailer whose email list I made certain to unsubscribe to as soon as I registered for their site. So of course I clicked the unsubscribe link under the assumption that they’d somehow managed to add me back. I got:
> The e-mail address you’ve entered is already unsubscribed.
Please note: if you’ve received e-mail updates from us after unsubscribing, we apologize. Your unsubscribe request is being processed as quickly as possible. If you continue to receive unwanted e-mail from [Company], please contact us at [their feedback address].
Well, contrary to their friendly apology, I am in fact NOT unsubscribed, or I wouldn’t be getting mail from them anymore.
Now, look, folks. I know email lists. I have worked with them at school and at work since 1986, and since 1994 I’ve worked as a software engineer for one of the most well-known mailing list software vendors in the world.
And I know fucking well that if you want off of a well-designed mailing list, it happens instantly.
What the response above means (and what any of these “you will be removed from our list within x days” messages you get from similar sites mean) is that the company who is mailing you does not have exclusive and immediate control of their lists — in other words, they’ve hired someone to do the job who doesn’t have a clue how it really needs to be done. And Lord knows what the company they hired is doing with your email address behind the scenes.
Whereas if you use my employer’s software, you can be off a list lickety-split.
But that’s because we know what we’re doing, and we don’t want people hitting the spam button because they get more mail after telling the server they don’t want it.
One thing I’ve always been proud of: With our software, there is no easy way to force people to stay on a list. It can be done, but you have to roll your own scripts to make that happen.