At work yesterday I received a glossy advertisement from Microsoft touting their new adCenter. Beyond the irony of using postal junk mail to advertise an online advertising platform is the irony of the opt-out method for stopping this junk in the future.
If you prefer not to receive future promotional mailings of this type from Microsoft, please send this mailing back to the sender with the following text visible to the recipient: “return to sender” and “unsubscribe me from your list.” We will promptly update your contact preferences; however, please be aware you may still receive previously initiated promotional communications.
The sender? That would be “Microsoft adCenter.” The nice letter was signed by a Corporate Vice President, Joanne Bradford, should I mail my note to her?
Why can’t they simply set up a web page somewhere at microsoft.com to allow me to opt-out? There is already a unique code on the inside of the mailing, which is also on my address label printed on the envelope. I’m so sure that MS has a staff of people waiting to go through dozens of opt-out requests. Or they could hire one programmer (I’m sure they have some out there somewhere that aren’t busy screwing up Vista and Office 200x) to spend a couple days to integrate their address label system with an opt-out system.
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Posted under Junk mail
This post was written by Michael Clark on June 30, 2006
I have fought my postal junk mail problem by simply marking unsolicited mailings RETURN TO SENDER. I no longer want the task of accumulating unnecessary paper which I then have to open and discard.
Furthermore, if there is personal information in the solicitation such as on credit card offers, I dont really want that in my garbage in the first place and so I no longer will accept this as my responsibility.