Dear Websites, Stop Asking for Ransom Sign-Ups

Re:Dear Websites, Stop Asking for Ransom Sign-Ups by matthiaswh on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:29PM (#36964729)

I've been trying to order from non Amazon sites as a habit lately. A large percentage of them use the same platform, maybe it's Shopify?

During checkout, they have a checkbox asking if you also want to receive promotional emails. It's annoying that this is checked by default, but I can tolerate it to some degree since I still have the ability to opt out.

I always uncheck it. Always.

Almost without fail, I end up receiving marketing emails from these companies. (And not just followups from my purchase or even review requests, which would be bad enough.)

I never buy from those brands again.

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Re:Dear Websites, Stop Asking for Ransom Sign-Ups by polysaturate on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:33PM (#36964774)

This...

My assumption was always that there are two separate systems at play, and once your email is entered, it gets put into some sort of cart rescue campaign..which sends...promotional emails.

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Re:Dear Websites, Stop Asking for Ransom Sign-Ups by koverda on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @07:38PM (#36964824)

cart rescue campaigns technically qualify as "transactional" campaigns, rather than promotional campaigns. that's why that happens

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Re:Dear Websites, Stop Asking for Ransom Sign-Ups by spondylosaurus on Tuesday August 01, 2023 @08:14PM (#36965148)

Do these stores' checkout pages have a section to enter your billing/shipping details on the left, and then a pane displaying what's in your cart and any active coupon codes on the right?

If so, it's almost definitely Shopify.

I know what checkbox you're referring to, and another fun thing is that if you use PayPal (or, I assume, another non-credit card payment method), it bypasses the "Sign me up for promotional emails" checkbox entirely... but it still checks it for you.

So if I check out with PayPal I have to select the PayPal option, sign in to PayPal, confirm, then in the store's checkout page go back a page to manually uncheck the box. Drives me crazy. Unchecking it beforehand does nothing.

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