As a rewards member, I receive emails regarding sales and new releases which come about once a month. These are useful and contain coupons for things I’ll actually buy. But recently, I’ve been receiving many emails regarding the Borders Reward Perks program that I joined. These are additional rewards from other vendors (flowers, candy, retail, etc.). They’ve been coming in increasing regularity and are very very annoying. Also, I mistake them for my usually happy encounter with the Borders Rewards emails that I enjoy.

Today, I decided to take action: updating my subscription settings. Now, normally, like many of you, I deal with these annoying emails by adding them to spam or deleting them over and over again. I decided to do a solid by all permission based email marketers and to delete myself from their mailing lists, thereby keeping their analytics accurate, and my karma clean by not asking for email, and then calling it spam. I used the opt out link provided and was taken here:

This isnt for my Reward Perks. This is for my normal communication with Borders. I was confused because I only had one subscription checked, and it wasnt the one they had sent me via email. I then hunted and pecked all around the site, to log in to a second section of the site (thats right, I was not only not logged in from the email they sent me, but I had to log in again to this other section). Once there, I was given a second set of subscription settings:

Although now I wont be receiving those pesky emails, how many other people will go through these hoops to make sure versus just adding this to their spam folder or opting out of everything all together? I wonder how confusing this is to others?

Thoughts?

I’m a comic book superhero movie buff, so of course I pre-ordered The Dark Knight. It was my first ever pre-order, and I wondered if I would really be getting anything for this purchase, besides ending the dismay of walking into another retailer to see my precious selection either sold out, or overpriced. I was happy with this purchase, as, not only did it arrive 3 days ahead of schedule (and ahead of its release date to the public) but it also came at a discounted rate (once billed, I was told I had a refund that was applied to my card).  Joy to Amazon.

Just when I thought it couldnt get any better, I just received this in my inbox:

Huh. I never would have tried this feature, but, since I can watch it for free, why not? Further, they included with this some outreach to people like me who may be unaware of this service:

What great customer service combined with adequate service information:  I may not have asked for this service, but now I’m intrigued and will check it out. By understanding I am an involved consumer and evangelist for this title, Amazon saw the opportunity to take me a little further in a helpful, unobtrusive way.