The Lamest Unsubscribe Method Evuh by cogdogblog
posted 28 Oct ’08, 10.18pm MDT PST on flickr
TeacherTube, blecccch. Never used, and surely never will.
I’m trying to winnow down the crap emails form my inbox. Along comes a “newsletter”, unsolicited, unrequested, from TeacherTube. I zipped to the bottom and clicked the “unsubscribe” link.
Wouldn’t you think that does what it says?
About 99% of these inbox clutterng newsletters actually do what their links says, it confirms that I have been unsubscribed from Uncle Bubbah’s Fish Fry Recipe list, and we part ways. Adios.
But not at TeacherTube.
First it makes me log in.
And plain as day is the unchecked box where I never did check to read newsletters. I always opt out or dont opt in for bacn.
So down at the bottom is a link to “delete account”.
Wouldn’t you expect if clicked a “delete account” link it would … delete the account? Is that ass-umiing too much?
Yep.
This is the automation built into this Web 0.0002 site:
Please email info@teachertube.com to delete account or change username with the following in message:
1.) Account Username
2.) Account Password
3.) Reason
Thank you for your cooperation.(*Please allow 24-48 Hours for Completion of Account Close.)
Thank you for my cooperation? WTFFFFFFF? Removing my accounts is a simple row deletion of a freakin database table? Or is this a Fred Flintstone web site with a little bird inside that must peck away at some stone wheel for 24-48 hours to remove my name from it?
Believe me, I provided a terse reason to get my account (which has never been used beyond logging in a few times to check out the site).
I feel like I am in the web of 1994. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. This is near criminally negligent interface design. License to abuse. Grrrrrrrrr.
It’s funny you blogged about this, because I spent some time the other day doing the same thing — mostly, I might add, unsubscribing from stupid email lists that I never signed up for. Grrr.
I didn’t have any experience quite as glaringly frustrating as you, but I did notice a few things.
First, several times when I clicked on the “unsubscribe” link at the bottom of the email, I was taken to a page to “manage” my subscription where staying subscribed was the default radio button. It would have been easy, if I wasn’t paying attention, to simply click the submit button without noticing this. Totally bogus. And, particularly, since in many cases these lists are part of legitimate Web information sources. Do they really think they’re going to build brand loyalty with shenanigans like that?
I also discovered two days after my purge that several of my unsubscribe attempts didn’t even work. Lo and behold, some of the lists are continuing to send me what now I can only call spam.