I moved on to greener pastures but could see myself flying AF again at some point (or DL, CI, CZ/MU; KL less so). An account is convenient to keep track of bookings, etc. Being a FB member would not hurt too (or so I thought). If I were to end up taking other ST flights, I might even credit them there.
I've honestly never got an ad-ridden newsletter telling me I can't unsubscribe as a customer anywhere. For all the other travel-related accounts (*A, EK, LCCs, OTAs incl. even Ctrip) I could more or less easily opt-out from any mailings, so this is new to me, which is why I posted about it in the TravelBuzz forum. (I understand it's hardly news to the FB subforum though, where the topic ended up.)
Perhaps if one already gets a lot of unsolicited mail from other sources, then the only practical approach is to make sure that the spam filter does its job. However, I take care to unsubscribe from all such stuff as soon as it starts or, where possible, preemptively, so I hardly get any other spam, and then something like this stands out. More importantly, I oppose being treated like this on principle.
Originally Posted by
irishguy28
If receiving monthly emails from a frequent flyer account is of no interest to you, then the frequent flyer account itself is of no interest to you
I register for an FFP account because I look forward to flying with a particular airline at some point, not to "explore special offers from selected partners" such as for example taxi companies. And if I haven't flown with AF for a (rather long) while, it's because they had nothing interesting to offer recently, not because I forgot about them. I don't need to be sent a monthly reminder about the continuing existence of Air France to be aware they're still around.
I understand some people might enjoy such communication but not everyone does, which is the reason there's usually an opt-out.
Originally Posted by
irishguy28
I would advise you to write to them requesting your account be closed.
That's the first thing I did, as I mentioned in the OP. This topic is/was intended as (1) a heads-up to others considering an FB FFP account alongside other options and (2) to find out if this behavior is more widespread than I'm aware of (possibly to avoid inadvertently registering for other such programs). It was intended as TravelBuzz material for general discussion, not to stir up things here in the Flying Blue forum among ST FFs for whom the calculus is obviously different than for me, and I can understand that.