Monday, August 1, 2011

Cranky Customer still cranky, but now at the right people

In my previous post, I related a tale of great woe, a tale of such injustice that all who heard it marveled I was able to withstand the strain

This screed was powerful, heart-rending, and wrong.

Randy Cassingham sent me a reply to one of my unsubscribe messages, letting me know that he had not been the publisher of 'Heroic Stories' since February 1, 2003. Still being in high dudgeon, I attempted to justify my stance, accusing him of guilt by association, since he had at one time been involved in the site and there was still a "sister site" link from 'Heroic Stories' back over to one of his sites.  His response pointed out the fallacy of my position, using a rather blunt analogy I didn't appreciate, but that's a different matter entirely.

I was still convinced in my own mind that there was a link between 'Heroic Stories' and the Cassingham community of sites. Wanting to prove Randy wrong, I began poking through his websites, just looking for the cross-link or other attribution that I KNEW had to exist.

Yeah, I found bupkis.

I did realize, however, that one of the failure emails I had received earlier contained an email address on one of Randy's domains, instead of on the 'Heroic Stories' domain. I realize now that my brain concocted quite the logical path, and I was trying to defend this monstrosity. In short, I remembered an old relationship between Randy and 'Heroic Stories', and in my attempts to unsubscribe one email address from their list, I saw an address pointing to one of Randy's domains. Since 1 + 1 still usually equals 2, I went racing off with a result of 4.

So, yes, I'm still a frustrated and cranky customer, and the unsubscribe process for 'Heroic Stories' is unjustifiably broken. But, my ire is with them, and the team that manages that site, not with Randy Cassingham. In fact, as I mentioned in my reason for unsubscribing from Randy's list:
At least This Is True provides a simple, easy, and convenient method for unsubscribing and managing their email lists.
I should have realized the irony of kvetching about a broken unsubscribe process while lauding the unsubscribe process in use by another site.

So, Randy Cassingham, I apologize. I should have done my investigation first, and waited on a response before firing with both barrels. I did you a disservice.

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