James's Weblog

My mom has been receiving a lot of email from Borders. I don’t know why. Anyway, rather than setting email filters, I generally prefer attempting to unsubscribe from newsletters when they’re clearly backed by legitimate commercial entities (they are, after all, accountable and suable if things go wrong). Setting mail filters takes work, and I prefer stopping the email at the source over letting it clog the tubes.

Unfortunately, unsubscribing from Borders’ mailing lists is a challenge. Each email contains an “Unsubscribe” link at the bottom, but the link takes you to Borders’ website and requires you to log in to set your account’s email preferences. My mom says she has no account—and Borders’ website confirms that no account exists for the email address they’re sending email to—and therefore she can’t unsubscribe.

I eventually resorted to contacting their customer support. They said that they’ve removed her address, but we’ll see.

People running mailing lists should make unsubscribing really easy. There should be no hoops. Users shouldn’t have to remember log-in information. The easier it is for people to escape, the more willing they’ll be to try out the service in the first place. Annoying users who already are annoyed with you has no benefit. This doesn’t apply to just mailing lists. Netflix understands this and gets my business. Earthlink doesn’t, and I’ll never do business with them again, and I tell most people I know my Earthlink story so they will never do business with Earthlink either.