Opt out

I received an SMS from motoring company Subaru this evening. I’d imagine that they have my number because we looked at buying a Subaru, before eventually not buying a Subaru. But they make you fill in all the information for marketing purposes (like this SMS) before you get to see the goods, and you comply, because you want to stay on the good side of the salesperson, just in case.

Decent deal, and… no… wait. That’s not why we’re here.

You’ll note that the sms has an opt-out.co link at the bottom. I chose to use it.
I’ve moved on since I signed up with Subaru. (Great car, small boot.)

It (the link, not the car) took me a site where I had to enter the cellphone number that they contacted me on. Fair enough – that’s clearly a only a campaign (9930) specific link. I entered my number.

On the next screen, they made me read the SMS message that they’d just sent me. That was a bit odd, since if it was the wrong message, there was no option to say “er… actually no – that wasn’t it”; there was just a continue button at the bottom. But ok, I’ll jump through your weird hoops. I clicked the button.

And when I clicked it, I got this:

“If you receive another sms from the current campaigns [sic] kindly ignore it.”

Wut? Really? Time for this gif, I think:

If I wanted to just ignore “another sms from the current campaigns [sic]”, I would have done exactly that. I don’t want to receive the sms to ignore.

That’s kind of the point.

I want to opt out. (It’s a difficult concept to grasp, I know.)

I’m no legal beagle, but I’m pretty sure that this really isn’t how this works.
This isn’t how any of this works.

I’m going to be on the lookout for another sms from the current campaigns [sic] and then when I get one, I am going to sue Subaru for every last cent that they have be really rather irritated about the whole thing.

Honestly, how difficult can this sort of stuff be?

That Nokia SMS tone is hard to find

You know the one that you used to have on your 3310: the DeDeDe-DerDer-DeDeDe one. The one which is actually Morse code for SMS.
In a moment of nostalgia, my Dad asked me to find it for his new Samsung. But it was a whole lot more difficult than I imagined. Too many crappy remixes and too much false advertising in the murky world of internet ringtone marketing sites.
And then there was this Soundcloud page, with all the old Nokia ringtones on (but not the Morse code SMS tone), which delayed us for another fifteen minutes (but those memories!).

Anyway, we finally found a copy, and as soon as I am near a decent uploading platform (tomorrow), I will share it on here. ‘TIS DONE – DOWNLOAD IT HERE! All new and shiny and cleaned up a bit as well!

Meanwhile, if you’re in or around Sheffield and you hear that olde worlde DeDeDe-DerDer-DeDeDe sound, it’s probably just my Dad being a bit of a hipster.