« Don't Be a Comic Sans Criminal | Main | Saved From Further Embarrassment »
Tuesday
Dec072010

How Not to Unsubscribe

So I got an email from GM advertising the new Chevrolet Cruze. These days, who knows how they got my name and email address. But the point remains that I am not interested in purchasing a new car, so even if I was considering a Chevrolet, this ad has no value to me. Time to unsubscribe.

At the bottom of the email is this:

I click the link, and I'm taken here:

Beyond this page being confusing, it's completely unnecessary. I just clicked on a link indicating that I wish to unsubscribe. So you should unsubscribe me and the website should be a confirmation with an option to revert to the previous settings in case I clicked the link by mistake.

I'd even accept a webpage that asks if I'm sure and requires me to click an "unsubscribe" button to confirm. But this? This, is just terrible.

I enter my email address in the box, and click 'retrieve'. I get this:

Well now isn't that interesting. Apparently I'm not in the database, yet somehow I've received multiple emails from them. So now I think that maybe if I click "submit", it will register that I do not want email from any of the GM business units, since none of them are checked. Let's try that:

Shit, didn't work. So now it appears I have to first subscribe to something before I can unsubscribe from whatever list I'm on which caused me to receive the initial emails.

I notice at the end of the paragraph on the right I have the option to opt out of ALL GM unsolicitied marketing communications. OK, here we go!

Fine, let's get on with it. OK what next?

For crying out loud are you guys fucking serious? So now it appears that there are two ways I may be able to stop receiving emails from GM:

  1. Subscribe to emails from one of their business units and then attempt to unsubscribe.
  2. Give them my first name, last name, home address, phone number, and email address (all fields required!) so they can not send me anything for the next 3 years, after which they'll use all that information to spam me back into the Stone Age.

I'd almost rather let the TSA cop a feel than go through this. Hey GM, the next time the American people bail your ass out of bankruptcy, how about you treat us with a little respect?

EmailEmail Article to Friend