Useful Service or Email Collector?
November 16, 2020
Here is a possibly useful service—Please-unsubscribe.com does just what its name suggests: Unsubscribe clients from bothersome marketing emails for a small fee. The service’s entrepreneur reassures:
“Forward marketing emails to hey@please-unsubscribe.com and we will take care of the rest. Here is an example. … Each unsubscribe uses 1 Credit. Over time, you should need this service less and less 🙂 Fresh accounts start with 5 Credits. Credits are initially locked to the source email address. For example, if your email is john.smith@example.com, then your credits will only work with that email address. To change your source email address (or add a member), please message: support@please-unsubscribe.com. For example, you can add multiple members of your family or friends to share a single credit pool.”
One begins by simply forwarding any marketing email and the first five credits will be assigned. Once they are used up, the user will be asked to enroll through Stripe or PayPal. We’re told unsubscribe requests are usually processed within 24 hours, and users receive a monthly report describing the junk email that has been halted. The page, which is written in the tone of a casual conversation, ponders the value of moving to a weekly report vs. not cluttering its users’ inbox (when they were tasked to do just the opposite). Depending on how many credits one buys, the cost is between 20 and 50 cents per pesky sender. We are also told the service respects users’ privacy. It pledges to never sell data and to place processed emails into Google Workspace’s trash to be purged within 30 days.
We found this part interesting—For now, anyway, this service is not automated. The job is performed by an actual person. The page specifies:
“Currently, there is no automation. Oftentimes, these marketing emails contain hard-to-find, low-opacity links. But it’s nothing that a real human can’t tackle. At this time, the only processor is my high-school sister. I pay her $15/hour. In the future, automation might be worth it. But for right now, hiring a real human is a pretty good deal for the task.”
One wonders what will happen when and if the service becomes popular; the sister may soon become overwhelmed. Will please-unsubscribe turn to automation or hire more workers? We would be curious to learn the answer.
Cynthia Murrell, November 16, 2020
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