unsubscribe

ever unsubscribed from those zillions of promotional campaigns these banks throw at you? i for one, make it a point to do that with every institute i'm associated with (no matter how remotely). all of them gloat about the technology-savviness of their systems. but it still intrigues me.

every one of them gives you that all important 'unsubscribe' link. eagerly you follow it. in most cases you would be lucky if the page loads at first attempt. (take a hint bloke! they want to fill your inbox with the loads of stuff you can buy with the money you don't have). furiously you key in your mail id and press the all so gorgeous looking 'unsubscribe' button. poof! stage two of junk mail-list retention – the page might not load.

it might go through if there's a guardian angel watching whom you've bribed like crazy. then you see the message 'you shall be unsubscribed from our promotional mailing list in two working days. sorry to see you go… blah blah blah… but you shall still continue to receive… blah blah blah… ' what!? i still get stuff from them after all this!? oh ok. its just the statements. phew! you almost had me there! (icici bank – my favourite crib bank wants 3 days to do that) just imagine your plight were you to do this on a friday. (or thursday in the case of icici :p) they get 3 whole days (4 for icici) to clobber you with as much junk as possible! there! take that! and that! how dare you refuse the shit we throw at you! did someone ask for weekends?

now, it was so easy for these guys to put you on that list (in all probability you are on it once you open an account – system driven they say.) what makes it so bloody difficult to automate getting out of it!? it surely wouldn't take the server that long to remove one measly mail id from a list! ah! now i see it. the marketing guy wants to know who the defiant renegade is. you shall not be purged of your sins without hearing from the marketing guy.

finally, unsubscribe done. 2 working days (3 for icici) done. but you might still hear about the latest pre-approved personal loan they designed 'just for you'. why? i guess their system just forgot to get you out of the list. amnesia you know. happens. here's where you step in to fire a feedback/complaint to them.

:)

seen those java and asp errors when you submit feedback? all that lingo Apache Servlet, SQLerror, ConnectionString, yada yada... gives one a feeling of dabbling in rocket science.