Unsubscribing to emails; the good, the bad and the ugly

mabinogion_2

I've been doing a little techie housekeeping today including unsubscribing from a number of email updates. Not moneysavingexpert of course!

Some companies make it incredibly difficult to unsubscribe to emails. One example is confused dot com who have an unsubscribe button, but when you click it they ask that you email them with virtually your life story first. I just want to hit unsubscribe and be done with it.:mad:

When it comes to unsubscribing, who are the good guys, who could perhaps do better, and who are the wind-up merchants to send people on a wild goose-chase doomed to failure?

mab

libra10

I do this regularly. The easy ones, just hit the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the email, and Bob's your uncle.

Unfortunately, there are unsubscribe links which are impossible to see, let alone click. Some where you are asked to log in at the website, yet you have never registered there. Others where the unsubscribe link goes nowhere.

Some, eg netflip.co.uk - unsubscribe is clear to see, however, emails keep coming however many times you unsubscribe. Emailing them doesn't help either, their emails go straight to Trash these days.

Some emails don't have an unsubscribe link and you have to visit the website and search for 'contact us'.

Why don't they all have a clear (working) unsubscbe link at the bottom of emails, which you could easily click?

kwikbreaks

For something I recognise as having subscribed to I have one go at unsubscribing and simultaneously dump the email that caused me to unsubscribe into the spam folder. Anything I don't recognise goes directly to spam without any attempt to unsubscribe as that is often just a way used to validate email addresses. Putting stuff in spam automatically adds the sender to my blacklist (with gmail).

Unfortunately that leaves me unable to answer your question as I don't recall the last time I tried to unsubscribe from something I recognised giving me any problem.

free4440273

if the unsubscribe method 'fails' then u could just mark said emails as spam -- send automatically to spam folder .

esuhl

O&O Software are the worst non-criminal organisation for this. No matter how many times I "unsubscribe", I still get emails from them. I'm sure this is against the law (they're German, but I think there are EU-wide consumer laws, or at least recommendations for such enactments in law) - if you ask to be removed from their mailing list, don't they legally have to stop contacting you (except regarding an outstanding contract/relationship)...?

mabinogion_2

Thanks guys. I'm gonna try the junkmail method.

VSC

What I do is just have several email addresses (gmail, yahoo mail etc).
That way, I can ditch an email when it starts to receive spam, and change my subscription details to the ones I still want to receive.

santer_2

This is good for one account only, there is a paid for version if you have multiple accounts, the paid for version also has a bounce option which sort of tells the sender there isn't such an e-mail address or it has permanent errors

With the free version, it loads your e-mails then lets you block or approve, the blocked ones are deleted instead of being downloaded

http://www.mailwasher.net/

You just need to check it until you are sure all your approved contacts have been added