Kirk here. This post is not specific to Kumamoto. It's about the difficulty of…

Kirk here. This post is not specific to Kumamoto. It’s about the difficulty of unsubscribing from mailing lists in Japan vs. the U.S.

Here’s what I’ve noticed: Unsubscribing from mailing lists (that is, promotional e-mails you don’t want) is harder in Japan than in the U.S. The reason is that, in Japan, you have to be able to log in to your account with that company just to say “don’t send me any more stuff.” I first noticed this with Yahoo!Japan (which, by the way, is a particularly egregious spammer) but have since noticed that quite a few other companies follow this “spam-will-continue-until-you-are-able-to-log-in” policy too.

Today I noticed it with AU (cell phone company). I no longer have an account and don’t remember my log in information so the only way to stop the e-mails seems to be to call the company. This will be my second time to make such a phone call just to get e-mails to stop coming.

In the States, by contrast, I haven’t had difficulty canceling similar promotional e-mail services. Basically, they seem to be set up so that they automatically know that the link you clicked on to cancel is actually from your e-mail address and that’s enough proof for them. A world of difference!

Of course, in slightly different ways, American companies also employ a sort of “make-staring-easy-but-quitting-hard” technique to increase profits. Amazon is one such example:

Amazon Prime is too damn hard to cancel, says FTC lawsuit https://www.fastcompany.com/90913194/amazon-prime-lawsuit-too-hard-cancel-easy-signup-ftc

Generally, I would agree the commonly-voiced opinion that service in Japan tends to be very good. Clerks are usually friendly and helpful. I would have to say that I prefer typical Japanese retail service to that of my own country, the U.S. But, Japan’s vaunted service has it’s limits. One example is the kind of thing we see with this smiling tanuki from AU. It looks friendly and nice and everything but the effect is to make customers suffer though a tedious cancelation process unnecessarily. If AU and similar companies were truly interested in providing good service, they’d make it easier to quit!