You may not like spam but we insist…
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 02 Dec 2009, 11:15 PM - 3 Comments
That’s what Citibank says.
I have been a Citibank customer for years and in the last few months, they suddenly started sending spam mails – offers from other companies. Yes, I understand that it may get them some revenue by selling their LARGE customer base and allowing other companies to spam people but if someone does not want to receive spam mails, they should stop instantly.
A few weeks ago, I opted out… sorry let me correct this… I tried to opt-out of the program and I got a notice that said that it will take a few weeks for their email systems to be updated to reflect my new preferences. In other words, they were telling me that I have to bear with their spam for a few more weeks BECAUSE their systems are messed up.
Today, I tried to opt-out again and I get the same message. They are very consistent with the message. Our systems will take a few weeks to update my preferences.
I am just imagining that someone will print out my preference, print it and send it in a horse carriage to a remote location where someone will stamp an approval and then return that in the same horse carriage to be updated by someone else.
Hopefully they will come to the 21st Century sooner than later.
The lesson here is in setting the expectations right. Nobody will believe that it will take a few weeks to opt-out of spam. So why make up things and lose credibility?
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Posted in the Business Models category.
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glenn on December 3rd, 2009
You mustn’t have worked in a bank’s IT department before. It does take weeks for someone to be removed from deep inside the (probably several disparate) mainframe systems, and the request would need to be queued for the slow, methodical mainframe team to process, all in good time.