He was sure he had seen this address before, several times.
To be absolutely sure, he clicked on it. Yes, this was the same page and the same Website. He was sure of it. He was equally sure that he had unsubscribed, several times. Yet, here it was again! He went to unsubscribe. No. He’d leave it there in his in box and think about it.
He’d thought about it. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.
He scanned the page carefully and scrolled down. He knew it was there somewhere. He found it; in one of several lines of very small text, an extremely faint, pale grey word, ‘unsubscribe’.
He clicked on it and got the next page.
There were two buttons now, labelled ‘Reason for unsubscribing’ and ‘Unsubscribe’.
He clicked on ‘Reason for unsubscribing’.
Next was the exit survey. He’d seen them before, but he wasn’t going to bypass this one.
He looked down a list of items.
‘Content considered to be irrelevant’; ‘Content is of no interest’; ‘Not tailored to preferences’; ‘Have not subscribed to this’; ‘Address looks suspicious’; ‘Receiving too many emails’; ‘Looks like spam’; ‘Privacy concerns’, and so on. Each one had a check box. He checked all of them.
The next screen gave him two buttons; ‘Unsubscribe’ and ‘Further information’.
This may enable him to get to the bottom of it. He clicked on ‘Further information’.
Up came the question; ‘Are you sure you want to unsubscribe?’
This was followed by two check boxes: ‘Yes’ and ‘No’.
He clicked on ‘Yes’.
Next came the statement: ‘We’ll be really sorry to see you go’.
Followed by: ‘Before removing yourself from our mailing list, please answer the following questions.’
‘Have you been put under any kind of undue pressure to unsubscribe?’
He answered ‘No’.
Are you confident that you know how to resubscribe in the event that you change your mind?
He answered: ‘Yes’.
‘Are you fully aware that bargains and special offers are likely to be advertised on this site in the near future?’
He answered ‘Yes’.
A new page came up with the statement: ‘We thank you for answering these questions and assure you that they will be fully analysed by our scrutineering panel, prior to any future liabilities being considered’.
Underneath, a final button. It was a friendly blue, with uppercase letters.
It said: submit.
He clicked it and the screen went black.
He switched off and made himself a cup of tea.
The following day he received the same email…