[PLUG-TALK] Why unsubscribing from ecommerce messages take so long?

[Ben Koenig]

On Saturday, March 23rd, 2024 at 10:26 AM, Rich Shepard <rshepard at appl-ecosys.com> wrote:

> On Sat, 23 Mar 2024, Ben Koenig wrote:
> 
> > I'm pretty sure that newegg.com is just broken or designed to make it hard
> > to properly unsubscribe. They treat it as opt-out not opt-in and the
> > system doesn't remember your setting. It is possible to get it to disable,
> > but you have to be extra careful because every time you log in the
> > checkbox is there, on by default. They have something sketchy going on to
> > try and re-enable the setting no matter how many times you've disabled it.
> 
> 
> Ben,
> 
> Thank you for the explanation. There are a few other sites that take their
> time (and I don't recall which ones as it's been a while.) But, the most
> annoying is PayPal.
> 
> Each time I use PayPal it keeps me logged in until I have to follow their
> "don't keep me logged in" link. Apparently there's no way to opt out for all
> instances of use.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Rich
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Paypal is extra special, their site is broken in other ways. Years ago I lost the ability to log into my account due to some sort of database corruption problem. The account exists, but the password is always wrong. Attempts to reset my password end up in an infinite login loop, no error message, just loops back to the login page after attempting to enter my password or reset it. Can't contact Paypal support because following the support docs on their page for this type of issue sends you to a customer service portal that requires you to have an active account when contacting their team. LOL.

Your assumption that there is a database problem has merit. These sites have all kinds of weird little issues lurking in the corners of their cloud infrastructure. Each instance of their containerized webapps creates a little bubble universe where bugs can hide and reproduce. Sometimes I wonder if my attempts to disable the promos on newegg are failing because their load balancer sent me to a container that has a pending update for the new database schema. The REST API backend hits an SQL error because some column name changed and fails without error, resulting in my choice not getting saved and newegg thinking (incorrectly) that I WANT to be sent adds for every stupid part I look up.

Of course this is obviously unintentional. Innovation is hard, we apologize for any inconvenience caused by this issue ;)
-Ben