I just logged into the Alaska Airlines web site to claim some mileage points from my recent flights and was greeted with this message:
Our system is currently unavailable for planned maintenance due to a system cutover from April 14th to April 22nd. The information you are viewing is current as of April 13, 2008. This account is not available for award redemption or updating through this website, by calling reservations, or Customer Care. Any flights flown during our system outage will reflect on your MyAccount shortly after April 22nd.
A customer facing outage of over a week for planned maintenance?! At least I can still view my account details ... maybe I've time warped back to '97?
Last election I made the mistake of signing up for email updates on Howard Dean's campaign. It seems this was granting permanent permission for them to send me email. After all, they are important politicians, I should pay attention to what they say ... right?
Here's what's wrong with their unsubscription process:
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When you receive a letter from the democratic party they include a link to be unsubscribed. That's a good start.
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Unfortunately when you go to the URL you have to know what email address you originally signed up with. Because I know how to read "Received:" headers that's not a problem for me, but I pity the punter.
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Once you enter your email address and click the "Process Unsubscribe" button it informs you you that you will need a confirmation code to unsubscribe.
<sarcasm>I'm sure there are lots of people trying to fraudulently unsubscribe others from democrat email, makes perfect sense.</sarcasm>.
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Once you receive your confirmation code and put it into their web site they inform you that you have been unsubscribed but that your request may take up to 12 hours to complete. Twelve hours to complete ... this is backing up my time travel theory!
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And the grand finale of this glorious experience? It doesn't work, they keep sending you email ...