When I went to the unsubscribe page and submitted my email address to be removed from their list, I was shown this:

Your email address has been successfully opted out from Barnes & Noble promotional e-mails.
Please note that this change will be in effect within 10 business days. Thank you.

Is there any legit reason for it taking up to 10 business days? Technically speaking, I don’t see why it would take more than a few minutes, at most. I would assume that the email addresses are stored in a database, and when it’s time for a promotional email to go out, their system pulls the addresses out. While I’ve only dealt with MySQL databases, I can’t imagine that a database system which required 10 days processing time to remove one entry would be very efficient!

I suppose the reality of the situation lies in one word of that sentence: business. By telling their advertisers they’ll keep email addresses in the loop for 10 days after someone requests to be removed from the list, Barnes and Noble is probably making a heap of cash.

Oh well – certainly not a big deal, but it is something to chuckle about. I note that it doesn’t take 10 days for the ad emails to start showing up after you’ve signed up for a service of some sort.