Comments on: How can I unsubscribe from American Public Media's e-mail newsletters?

Question: How can I unsubscribe from American Public Media's e-mail newsletters?

cmyers — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 15:25:47 -0800

I'm currently subscribed to, and wish to unsubscribe from, American Public Media's "Speaking of Faith" and "Writer's Almanac" e-mail newsletters. Neither APM's site nor the newsletters themselves seem to offer an unsubscribe function. I even e-mailed APM several months ago to request that I be removed from their mailing list, but haven't heard back. Short of adding APM to my ISP's or mail client's spam filter, how can I stop these newsletters?

By: paulsc

paulsc — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 15:34:53 -0800

An unsubscribe address is typically included in recurrent mailings from a list, or often in every message from it. You send a message to that list, formatted as instructed in the unsub instructions (usually "Unsubscribe" in the Subject or Body fields) and the list management software drops you, and will usually send a final confirm message to the address of record.

It's often not a Web based unsub routing at all, a left over mechanism of traditional list self-management by email schemes from the dawn of the Internet.

By: BackwardsCity

BackwardsCity — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:01:18 -0800

If there's nothing in the emails or the web site, and they won't respond to your emails, you might as well just bite the bullet and create a filter that deletes those messages upon receipt. There are a lot of email lists out there that you just can't ever leave.

By: cmyers

cmyers — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 16:15:51 -0800

paulsc: I'd assumed and hoped that that would be the case, but the messages make no reference of such an unsubscribe mechanism. I even sent messages to unsubscribe at each of the domains, but they bounced.

APM seems to be using EmailLabs for their mailing lists, but their site is unhelpful too.

I suppose I'd better go the filter route, and send another message to APM in the meantime...

By: flabdablet

flabdablet — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:18:25 -0800

Try simply replying to one of the mailings, using Unsubscribe as the subject and Unsubscribe as the entire message body. If that doesn't work, filter.

By: bcwinters

bcwinters — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 17:50:01 -0800

I would hesitate to be the threatening type, but there's an email address for their lawyer on the APM Terms of Use page. A gently worded note about the legal ramifications of sending bulk email without an unsubscribe mechanism might help.

By: rsanheim

rsanheim — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 19:44:18 -0800

I've heard that not offering unsubscribe links could be considered illegal, but couldn't find any source to back that up.

The closest I found was this act, but it deals more with commercial spam and not just free mailing lists that don't offer easy unsubscribe.

By: Malor

Malor — Sat, 30 Sep 2006 20:02:41 -0800

Blanket their company with requests to unsubscribe. They're not providing you an easy way, so they are, in a sense, spamming. If you semi-spam them back, and keep doing it every time you get an email from them, I imagine they'll stop pretty fast.

Just peruse their website for contact information, and try 'sales' and 'postmaster' and 'webmaster' as well. Be polite, just vociferous. Every time you get a mail from the list, blanket your list with nicely worded requests to stop mailing you anymore.

Usually this will work within a day or two.

By: Cranberry

Cranberry — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 00:54:01 -0800

I get the Writer's Almanac and see an unsubscribe link at the bottom of every issue - down below "Be well, do good work, and keep in touch®".

Clicking on it should take you to a page of options for a number of their email services.

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 08:39:18 -0800

This link is an un-personalized version of the one at the bottom of my SOF newsletter.

By: ibmcginty

ibmcginty — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 08:46:22 -0800

This one is their "Report an e-mail related problem" link from the same newsletter.

By: cmyers

cmyers — Mon, 02 Oct 2006 06:53:49 -0800

Cranberry: When I view the newsletters in Mail, there's no visible unsubscribe link, but looking through my plain-text mail archives (stored in Subversion) indicates that there is one. Odd.

I tried the link, and although the form refuses to display correctly in either Safari or Firefox, I didn't get "The Writer's Almanac" this morning.

ibmcginty: Your first link takes me to a form where it seems I can only subscribe, not unsubscribe. I'll try your second link if the "Speaking of Faith" newsletter continues.

Thanks to you all.