Harry Shannon
Like everyone else, I get too many emails. You know, spam, phishing, ads, promotions, etc. – and occasionally ones I actually want to read. It’s partly my own fault; at some times that I don’t remember, I signed up to various websites.
So the other day I decided to cancel ones that I am only vaguely interested in and certainly don’t have time to read. The process was typically pretty straightforward, though a couple of sites demanded that I click on a link in an email they would send me. The message then came up: “You have successfully unsubscribed.” Just what I would expect from a computerized process.
But there was one notable exception. I haven’t flown since before the pandemic began but keep getting messages from Air Canada telling me how cheap it would be to fly to places I don’t want to go to. So this was an obvious candidate for unsubscribing. But at the end of the procedure this box came up:
Really?! Ten days? In fact, even longer, 10 business days. Isn’t it automatically done by their computer system? Or is there some dingy basement where underpaid minions go through the credentials of would-be unsubscribers, checking by hand if they deserve to be removed from Air Canada’s email list? And why are they so behind in their work?
Fast forward to the evening and my wife mentioned a CBC story. Air Canada ranked last among the 10 largest North American airlines in their proportion of on-time flights last year.
It isn’t hard to join these dots.