It's not a secret that many websites and organisations will send you marketing / special offers regardless of how carefully you select correct checkboxes telling them that you don't want any marketing emails. In some cases the only difference selecting right boxes makes is that you will start to receive these emails not immediately, but a week or two later...
This is annoying, but at least most legitimate newsletters and marketing emails have working unsubscribe links and respect your choice to opt-out. Obviously, there are exceptions, both good and bad ones. And one of the bad ones is Currys.
I first had this issue with Currys quite few years ago. Basically it goes like this: you buy something at Currys retail store, they ask for your email address assuring it's only for warranty (or some other made up purpose). Short after you start receiving marketing emails. Obviously, like all legitimate marketing emails they include unsubscribe links. So you click on the link, they acknowledge that you have successfully unsubscribed. All seems to be well and good... Except when a few days later you receive another marketing email, unsubscribe again, and keep getting their spam regardless. After unsubscribing at least dozen times, I even made an effort to call Currys customer services. Despite their promise to get this sorted, marketing emails continued. Eventually I gave up, created an email rule to silently delete all email from Currys and forgot about it.
Fast forward 4 or 5 years later and I'm buying some audio equipment from Currys again. At a checkout the salesperson asking for my email address. I explain that I don't wish to give this because of previous issues with their marketing spam. The person ensures me that this is only for warranty purposes and they will never send me any marketing emails if I don't want this. So I decided to check whether they have actually changed and are now showing some respect to their customers. I give another email address, not before confirming once more that I don't want to receive any marketing material.
You can guess what happened next... A week or two later I get a very special offer from Currys.
Notice what they say in the small print at the bottom:
This email was sent to you because you gave us your email address along with permission to contact you about special offers and new products from currys.co.uk.
No, Currys, I did not give you permission to spam me. I actually very specifically asked not to do so!
So, lets see if at least unsubscribing now actually works...
It worked... for about 2 weeks... And then:
You wouldn't want to miss that sale, would you? Luckily in Gmail it takes just couple of clicks to block an email address.
So no, Currys hasn't changed... And if they are still around another 4 or 5 years later, I may even give them another chance...
December 2015
