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A project to make businesses more aware of their customer experience, and how to fix it. By Mark Hurst. |
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Previous: Road status sign | Main | Next: Information for visitors to the Senedd
May 16, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: Webroot unsubscribe
A reader named Grant points out:
Mysteriously, I have appeared on the mailing list of Webroot, which is a company that makes anti-spyware software.
In an attempt to remove myself from their list, I clicked on the "Remove Yourself From This Mailing List" link at the bottom of one of their mesages. This led me to the page in the picture with the text below:
ErrorOur unsubscribe service is temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.
Please check back again later or contact our customer service department at 1-800-772-9383 to unsubscribe.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!! thats all...
DANGITDANGITDANGIT!!!! I ALMOST GOT TO FIRST PLACE!!!! ARGGGGG!!! owell... lol!!! SECOND!!! ok whatever...
I wouldn't call 56 minutes almost.
Anyway, I'm wondering whether it's actually broken or just to stop people from unsubscribing. In the second case, it's very broken. In the first, not as much, though I'd think an unsubscribe service is pretty simple.
It's usually a good idea to not click on those "Remove Yourself From This Mailing List" links. Companies tend to use them as a verification of valid email.
So you take a customer who's already upset at being on a mailing list and you slap them with a "sorry, unsubscribe doesn't work..." without giving them any other options? (A phone number doesn't count) Definitely a dumb idea.
The "Leave Me Alone, you Jerks" part of your website is the one page that should always, always work. BROKEN!
I would bet a lot of money that this is deliberate.
Can you imagine the thought process if it were legit?
"Dang, Bob, our unsub process is broken."
"Shoot Doug. Well, we need to ensure they can unsub. I know, let's hire someone to man a phone. Users won't mind making a phone call to unsub from our list."
"Hey Bob! While we have them on the phone we could tlak to them about..."
"Nownow Doug, I know where you're going, but that would be unethical..."
Error
Our Continue Reading service is permanently unavailable.
We apologize for the inability to give you enough details to figure out if this is really broken.
Please check back again, again, and again to see whether we ever get the Continue Reading service working again.
I'd be careful with this some phishers make pages that look official and use the "unsubscribe" to tell them they have an active address...
In the same line as Horatio mentioned above, these clowns don't care one bit about your 'good user experience' they just want a validation of your email address. Probably broken on purpose.
It's not broken because it is deliberate. As called attention to by rtwertwe, the page is obviously not located at webroot.com but at t.4at1.com. Never believe or respond to unsolicited email -- it can only make things worse.
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Previous: Road status sign | Main | Next: Information for visitors to the Senedd
webroot is very broken. spysweeper is junk and they are unhelpful.
Posted by: gmangw at May 16, 2006 12:12 AM