no way out

I have already posted two entries in this blog about bad practice on the Blackpool Football Club's website [see Register - just to check availability?  and just the ticket. not ] - and here's another which follows on from those. This morning, I got the following email:

As it is of no interest to me I decided to 'unsubscribe' and so clicked on that link, which took me here:

... where I entered my email address and password. But it was rejected ...

... so I clicked on the 'get new password' and got this email:

So I put that password into the form and got:

If anyone at Blackpool FC [for it is in their name] or Ticketmaster [who seem to run the system for Blackpool FC would like to tell me how to unsubscribe from something I never wanted in the first place please let me know. Oh ... and by the way, if anyone from either organization is reading this: you are now [probably] breaking the law in this issue.

email: instant communication?

I have already posted an entry on this subject [email - [still] the poor relation of customer service?] - and that was back in 2008 when I asked the question. Well, it's now 2012 and 02 [they are a teleCOMMUNICATIONS company] still want me to wait up to two days to respond to an email.

Why? Phone calls can be answered immediately, why not emails?

It gets worse for 02 in this entry however. I needed to conatct them because I had exactly the same problem I posted about in oh oh oh oh O2. Oh dear.

no charge?

I wanted a mains charger for my sat nave system - and so put the relevant term into Google. Top of the ads was one from chargers4u.co.uk -  which means they had bid most to be there. So I clicked on that link and was taken to the site - see below ...

£2.99 seemed to a fair price, so I thought I would order one. However, when I had added the order to my basket I clicked on the 'delivery and account information', but guess what? They wanted my delivery and account information - there was nothing about how much the delivery was going to cost me. And to get that information I would have to complete the form shown below.

So I went to ebay where I bought the same product for £2.49 including delivery.

I would file this example under 'there is still work for me'. Good e-commerce sites gave up on this prcatice years ago - if, indeed, they ever started to doing it. I was telling organizations about telling customers the full cost of products in 1997. And yet companies still do it. Ho hum ...