Missing. The. Point....

I probably buy 80 to 90% of my non-grocery items online.  Furniture, pictures, gifts, TV's, books, kitchen stuff - whatever I can - all online.  I hate the "store" experience.  Before I go into an actual physical store I usually know exactly what I want - buy it and leave.  It took me about 5 minutes to buy shoes this weekend :)

I buy online for the convenience - and the experience is fairly similar regardless where you shop.  You typically have to create "that account" (even if you never intend to shop there again..) and you get that form to opt in or out of mailing.  They almost always default to "opt in" and I invariably set it to "opt out"

I just bought some shelves while sitting here in King of Prussia, PA (I live in VA, another benefit of shopping online, just do it when/where-ever you want)... I received two emails.  Email 1 - my receipt (great).  Email 2, well, it was in response to me opting out:

While registering as a shopper with xxxxxx.com, you chose not to receive our promotional Email. This is being sent to confirm that yyyy@yahoo.com will not receive Email from xxxxxx.com.

The decision to receive Email is personal and can be influenced for a variety of reasons. In an attempt to better understand and respond to our customers, we would appreciate it if you would answer a short survey on this topic.

That just strikes me as "missing the point" :)

Can you imagine what my survey comment field might have contained.... The survey did contain

We value your feedback and encourage you to give us candid answers. Are there any comments you would like to make to xxxx? (Note: Response is limited to 250 characters)

250 characters.  I shall have to choose my words carefully...  I should have it written in Kanji to see if they support multi-byte and truly support 250 characters.  Or if it is really 250 bytes.