Dear Yelp.com,
After two years of silence, I appreciate your sudden and continued, nay daily, efforts to bring me up to date on the culinary scene in Brooklyn, New York, where I no longer reside. Happy to hear from you but, unfortunately, miles away from any city served by your delightful application, I scrolled to the unsubscribe link at the bottom… only to be promptly transported to a login page.
“Hello there!” your website seem to say. “You, beloved user, have arrived to change your subscription preference. Welcome! Surely you and I cannot have become so estranged that you do not even remember your password? No no, you’re here daily, I can feel it! There’s absolutely no need for you to click ‘Forgot Password’, request a password reset, check your email, come back to our website, enter a new password twice, be redirected to some other page, go back to your email, find the unsubscribe link, click it, uncheck all the cities you are subscribed for, and click submit, just so you can stop getting crap from us. No siree! We’ve thought this through, and we wouldn’t make life so hard for you.”
“We’re as sure of your commitment to us as the reputable fellows with the moniker United.com. When you selected to opt out of electronically delivered offers, they had no doubt that you had your frequent flier number, used once and only once, memorized—because you fly frequently! Get it? And there was no question that you would feel more secure entering a four-digit PIN number than one of those silly-sounding passwords like myGErbl123. Because after all, they want you to feel as important as if you were at an Automatic Teller Machine, and not just at any old website trying to please for the love of god get them stop sending you crap.”
Seriously, if you are from one of a bajillion companies who do this unbelievably irritating and stupid thing, please stop. People just want to break up with you nicely, not be dragged through divorce court. Give them an unsubscribe link that works with one click. Jerks.
Best regards,
Flooded with Mail