In trying to unsubscribe to an email, and lodge a complaint, I visited so many countries!

See, I get a lot of spam for all sorts of things I would never use. Michael Kors shoes, Oakley glasses, Coach handbags, and the list goes on and on. I’m sure the products are quite wonderful, however I’m just not enough of a fashion statement to be interested in these things. Also, I’m a man.

While I was home for Thanksgiving recently, my brother told me that against his better judgement he clicked the unsubscribe link for an email (which normally just confirms an active email account), and to his surprise the emails went down.

So I thought I would run a little test. One of the other products I get spam about is something called ‘Uggs,’ which I believe are some kind of boot or something like that, I’m not really sure. Specifically, the email comes from ‘Uggs Australia.’ Apparently, if you read the small print, the fur in these comes only from animals originating in Australia. Or possibly the European Union. Maybe the United States. 

Nice hat, too.

No matter. This was going to be the guinea pig for my unsubscribe text. I clicked on the ‘Unsubscribe’ link at the bottom there, and was taken to quite the grammatically challenged unsubscribe page linked to a company in New York.

What?

Also notice you can choose from a couple of languages including English, and also English.

So I filled in the reason, and was taken to their main page without a confirmation they recieved the unsubscribe.

So I decided to file a complaint by clicking the ‘Complaint’ link. Imagine my surprised when I was taken to the spam complaint site for the government of New Zealand! If you’re not familiar, that’s close to Australia but not Australia.

They asked me to supply the email header, body, history of the issue, and some other information. You can find out more by reading the body of my complaint in the image.

They ask, I deliver.

I clicked the submit button as ordered, and this page was the result:

I’ve been around the world through this process! From Australia to New York to New Zealand and to what I believe is Chinese in the above picture. How does the New Zealand government’s site even link to this? I tried to understand what was going on, but just couldn’t. None of it made any sense, everything seemed to be a random cog in a weird, non-functional machine, and so I’ve just given up. I’m not even sure which country I should be annoyed with.

I still get the emails by the way. At least they’re festive. I should just buy a pair and admit defeat.