Unilever's Opt-Out Page Thinks It's A Tax Form
We'll give Unilever points for offering an exhaustive opt-out page that covers every conceivable form of communication you may be receiving from them. We'll take all those points away, however, and award them a fail badge for creating the world's longest, most labor intensive opt-out page you've ever seen.
Sarah writes,
I had been on the Dove email list for some time and finally decided to unsubscribe today. I don't use their products any more and have no need for the email newsletter. Imagine my surprise when I clicked on 'Unsubscribe' at the bottom of the email:
Hey Unilever, how about a single one-click opt out option that removes the subscriber from every channel at once? Then, for those who want to micro-manage their relationship with you, they can click through to this page. Maybe you're just trying to be helpful, but we can imagine such a huge opt out hurdle stops a lot of people from going through with it once they hit this page.
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but we can imagine such a huge opt out hurdle stops a lot of people from going through with it once they hit this page.
Executive #1: If everyone hates unsolicited advertisements, and we're legally required to allow them to opt out, what can we do to keep them from actually opting out?
Executive #2: I know! Let's make opting out so painfully difficult that nobody will actually do it!
Executive #1: BRILLIANT!!
Whenever I get spam in my mailbox, I just call the company directly, pretending that I want to take advantage of the offer I just received.
Then, I yell at them and tell them to take me off their stupid junk mail list and never send me anything again. It has worked flawlessly so far.
It's at this point that I would add all Unilever domains to my hosts file so I never see one of their pages again, and add email filters so they can never contact me again.
Rather than spend the time jumping through any number of hoops to unsubscribe, I just set up email filters to auto-forward the email right back to whomever is sending it to me, then auto-delete the original.
I guess I could just have the auto-delete thing going, but that's less fun.
Weren't CAN-SPAM rules revised a year or so ago to require a one-click unsubscribe? (Specifically to prevent this kind of nonsense)
I give companies one chance to accept my single-click opt-out, failing that all their email goes to /dev/null.
Write a short note to their postmaster, webmaster, abuse address (abuse@..., though they may not have one), and marketing director if you can find them and demand that you be taken off all mailing lists and that further email will be considered spam. Then forward any further email to wherever one reports spam these days (the FTC, I guess), cc the addresses at Unilever, till they stop.
Well, they might stop.
@Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel TinyBug: The problem with that, as someone who is involved in email marketing, is that if the person can't opt out they start marking you as spam in their inbox, which hurts your deliverability rate. Companies should definitely want people who don't read their emails to opt out. We have to pay (though a small amount) for every email we send. Making the opt out form this convoluted hurts the company as much as it does the consumer.
Anyone knows how to get rid of Yves Rocher and Avon spam? I tried unsubscribing and contacting their customer service. I still get their spam all the time.
This is a great time for me to share my experience with Gavin Newsom's email list (mayor of San Francisco). First of all, I'm not even sure how I got on this list, but I'll give them the benefit of the doubt because I probably signed up for an event reminder at some point and they opted me in to the newsletter.
They sent me an email a week ago and I hit unsubscribe. But the unsubscribe link was broken. So I replied to the email and said, "Your unsubscribe link doesn't work. Fix it or you won't be CAN SPAM compliant." They wrote back and said I was unsubscribed.
Guess what I received today? Another newsletter from Newsom's office. The unsubscribe link actually worked this time, so let's see if they removed me. Only time will tell.
@GuinevereRucker: That's pretty much immature. Plus, if you get a vindictive CSR, you'll be spammed to death. Rude behavior deserves a punishment!
Disclaimer : I'm not a CSR.
@wickedpixel: Yep, I came here to say that too (I'm also in email marketing.) Besides deliverability, your list is now crap because it included customers that are annoyed by you. So while the company spends money to send out emails to what it thinks is an interested audience, they don't have a shot at converting a certain pissed off percentage of recipients to a sale.
@Radi0logy: Maybe you better tell my wife that. She uses linux, too, as does my six year old, mother, and mother-in-law.
Another thing that concerns me about their form (and I'm guessing at this actually) is that ten to one it's served from a regular http server, instead of a secure https server. Whenever a company demands more than a name and email address, I firmly believe it has to be served from https. As I said, I'm just guessing, so I could be mistaken.
Another option if a company doesn't remove you is to report them to your ISP's 'blacklist' group. Maybe if enough people do that they'll catch the hint.
I saw one opt-out form once that wouldn't let you check the opt-out from email box. You could check mail and phone, but not email. I guess they figure they could always blame it on those stupid programmers....
@Radi0logy: /dev/null is present on all Unix / Unix-like systems, including various berkeley systems like netbsd and freebsd, not to mention Mac OS 10. Unix isn't just linux.
I use gmail so, if opting out doesn't work, I just set up a mail filter to delete it.
I wish you'd tell that to my boss. He thinks sending annoying email newsletters to people who don't give a rat's ass is the next wave of the future. I feel sorry for the person in my office who has to do it.
@kjm0606: KJM is 100% correct. All email marketing communications are required to have an opt out one click deep from the the actual email. IE. you click the unsubscribe link in the email it opens a webpage and you just click submit or unsubscribe and its done.
Easy fix: Click, Shift + Arrow Key (to select all). One click: 'add', voila. No big deal.
I've been having a running battle with Penton Media, which publishes trade magazines, trying to get unsubscribed from several of their email newsletters about pro audio that they decided to sign up everyone in the company for about two years back, unsolicited.
Too frequently in my inbox at work I get their email with either a complete newsletter, or a link to the latest issues, and the unsubscribe link is always something different. For several months off and on it was linked to a bakery magazine they publish (unrelated to the pro audio newsletters I was getting), and some months the unsubcribe link just didn't work.
The capper is the scam they've got going now-- the unsubscribe link takes you to a webpage headed "subscription management" with just a list of their email newsletters and publications, with a checkbox next to each one. And no instructions as to whether checking the box subscribes you, or unsubscribes you. None of the boxes next to the newsletters I get are ever checked off to begin with, so the dilemma is to check, or not to check in order to unsubscribe. I've tried it both ways and the result is the same-- the junk keeps on coming. I even deliberately changed my email address with them to something totally bogus, and yet it still comes to my correct company address.
I sent their publisher an email asking to be deleted once and for all from their mailing lists, and it was ignored. I finally resorted to using a filter to delete their email automatically once it lands in my inbox.
I don't know who would be subscribed to twenty different e-mail newsletters from Unilever.
Besides, all of the newsletters I've received have an 'Unsubscribe' link at the end of the e-mail.
Pretty damn easy to unsubscribe, so I don't know what you guys are complaining about.
That "Don't want to be contacted? It's easy!" makes me just laugh and laugh.
@RedSonSuperDave: They way you wrote it sounds festive. The way they did it: "It's easy..." sounds ominous. Well, actually is ominous in this case.
@GuinevereRucker: You shouldn't yell at people who are just trying to do their jobs and have nothing to do with the e-mails you're getting. You could always opt out, or have it sent directly to your spam folder, instead of acting like an immature child and treating another human being like crap.
It wasn't that difficult to opt-out of everything:
1) Fill out information.
2) First list: Hold Shift > Scroll to bottom > Click bottom of list to select all > Click Add
2) Repeat for second list.
3) Check all the boxes below that.
4) Leave reasoning field blank.
Submit.
ctrl+a = hotkey to select all members of a form.
My problem with this form is that it requires you to give them your physical address just to opt-out of receiving e-mails. That makes no sense. If they don't already have your address they shouldn't get it just because you don't want e-mails anymore (and vice-versa).
Unilever is so frickin' big and their marketing is so disjointed it ain't even funny. ConAgra is probably bigger, but not by much.
Best bests to hammer them is CAN-SPAM, SpamAssassin, Spamcop, and a nice EECB.
@WiglyWorm: This is like, the third time someone has said this. I think we get it at this point... That doesn't mean this horrendous opt-out page is right, however.
@GuinevereRucker: Unlike the others, I think that's truly spectacular. In fact, I'm going to try it myself very soon.
@Rectilinear Propagation: I agree with you in principle, but there's a quick fix to that.
Firstname Lastname
123 F*** You Ave (preferably sans stars)
Nunovyerbusiness, NY 10001
How about no form at all? "Opt out" scams/schemes are bullshit.
Businesses should get a clue: "Don't call us, we'll call you" is not an insult. They should not call anyone unless called first.
Spamming customers and telemarketing, however, IS an insult.
@Julius Seizure. Jim to my Peeps: I just hit the spam button. Gmail learns and then I don't see them again. If lots & lots of people mark it as spam, Gmail learns and starts filtering it out en masse.
I really hate when you want to opt out of some emails and they make you login to do that. I shouldn't have to log in.
So now.. let's see.. I ordered one thing from this company 10 months ago.. what frigin password did I use? Now I have to use the forgot password reminder... oh screw it: REPORT AS SPAM.
@Jean-Baptiste Emmanuel TinyBug: I don't know where that picture came from or if you made it, but that was amazing.
@HogwartsAlum: I'm not sure if your boss send emails through an email service provider (ESP), but tell him that paying for one hour of extremely basic email consultation would be very valuable to him.
I don't want to tell him anything. He doesn't realize that people. Are. Not. Interested.
@GuinevereRucker: I use the word "yelling" extremely loosely. A better word would have been "firmly". I'm not really that much of a yeller :)
@GuinevereRucker: Also, do NOT try this with email, I was talking specifically about snail mail in an actual three-dimensional mailbox.
Ugh. What a pain! I went to New York last year, and to receive some discounted Broadway tickets, I signed up for Roundabout Theatre's Hiptix program. Ever since they have sent me about 2 e-mails a month. Every time, I opt out of the newsletter, but each e-mail is part of a different newsletter mailing list. So opting out of one does not completely end their communication with me.
Admittedly, I haven't really looked into other methods of making the e-mails stop altogether since they really don't send that many. It's still annoying though when I see it in my inbox. :(