Where's My Daily Deal?

From: eBay
Date: Friday, December 11, 2009

Have you ever wished for a quick sign-up form on a web site? I recently heard an ad on the radio for eBay's 'Daily Deal' - limited time and quantity offers that are usually 20% - 90% off, all with free shipping. All I have to do is visit eBay.com and sign up to have these deals delivered right to my inbox, or at least that's what the lovely voice on my stereo said. Pretty cool, right? Well, in reality, not so cool.

I found the daily deal page and email acquisition module with no problems. Unfortunately, I had to register in order to sign-up for this email. Determined to get these great deals, I forged ahead and registered. During the process I was told that I'd be able to adjust my notification preferences once I was done registering. Hmmm... I clicked through the confirmation email and still couldn't find a place to do this. Luckily, they sent me a welcome email with some language and a link in the footer on how to make these changes. Unluckily, it "may take up to 10 days to process" change requests. Also, the preference center didn't include a single reference to daily deal emails anywhere. (I THINK that was why I started this process 30 minutes earlier.)

I'm still not sure if I'm going to get these emails at all. If I do, it may be too late for my holiday shopping. I think a better time to smooth out this process would have been before the holiday season, and before you invest in a radio campaign.