I do use the MSN Messenger service though, so it might be prudent to just unsubscribe to their marketing spam rather than flag it spam and miss potential emails about the actual service. So I click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of the mail, log in, select “I don’t want this stuff” at three different places, click submit, and… a red-colored text that says “Error 500″ appears.

I try to submit two more times. More error 500.

This is where I sigh, go back to Gmail, and click “report spam”.

Here’s some helpful hints from an email user: I can report your mail as spam with a single click. If you can’t add a one-click unsubscribe link (also, it helps if it actually works), then I can report your mail as spam with a single click. I don’t want to have to jump through hoops to do this. There’s no need for me to have to log in and navigate the site to find my account preferences.

It’s all a cost/benefit calculation. This cost me time. The benefit was that I might still want to get things like password reminders (in case I suffer from sudden brain trauma) and information about service changes.

Had this been a web shop I would most likely have clicked “report as spam” right away. I can accept having to provide a password, but after that it should opt me out instantly.

The worst offender I’ve seen here is CD-WOW. After logging in the user preferences had two places where you needed to deselect your spamming preferences — under separate tabs with nearly identical names. I only spotted one of them, and logically assumed that it would work. Then I got more marketing trash from them, got annoyed since I had already declared my preferences, and now their mails go straight to the spamcan.