How Easy Could This Be? UnSubscribe Me!

Last month I posted about Barnes & Nobles tedious process for unsubscribing from their email newsletters. It was so complex that I honestly coudn't even figure out why I was receiving emails to begin with. By all appearances I was not subscribed to anything. This was confirmed after a couple of submissions to tech support, they also told me that I had already unsubscribed. Phew!

But then today, guess what lands in my inbox? Too easy, huh? It was yet another email newsletter from our friends at B&N.com.

My first thought was, "Here we go again." I quickly scroll to the bottom of the page and find the so-called unsubscribe links:

How to unsubscribe: This message was sent to stoney@polepositionweb.com on October 9, 2007. If you no longer wish to receive promotional email from Barnes & Noble, please click here [link removed]. If you have a Barnes&Noble.com account, you can also log in [link removed] to your account and follow the instructions under Change Your Communications Preferences.

I didn't notice if that was any different than the message at the bottom of all their other emails so I simply hit the "click here" link. You could say I was surprised when I was taken to this screen:



Could it really be this easy? I mean, yeah, it should be this easy, but it was so haaaaard before! Sure enough, one click and I'm told that I'm unsubscribed:



Though 10 days does seem long a long time to be removed from the list. That should be automatic. But still, I'm impressed.

So, just for fun I wanted to see what the process was like by logging in. I clicked the "log in" link in the email and was brought here:



Well, this is new. I logged in and was taken to an account screen. I quickly found the "Communication Preferences" area that gave me a couple of options:

• Change Your Communications Preferences
• Change Your Keep Me Posted! Newsletters and Alerts

The first option sent me to a page that le's me change if or how I want to be communicated with. Notice the yes/no options about receiving any kind of communications at all. By default my options were yes and well, contact me any way you can. Not what I expected to see after unsubscribing, but they did say it would take ten days!



The real disappointment set in when I click the link to change my "Keep me Posted" options. As you can see below this is the same sorry "we'll email you a link" scenario that I came across before.



Barnes & Noble needs to take a lesson from itself. All communication options should have a two-click (or less) unsubscribe option. But for now, I'm just happy they got it half right.