Trouble unsubscribing

Occasionally you'll get a member having trouble unsubscribing. By the time they contact the mod team, they may be quite irate after several failed attempts - be sympathetic.

Why members struggle to unsubscribe (and how to help)

• They genuinely can't figure out how to do it.
• They've set up two accounts and only unsubscribed from one.
• They've unsubscribed from Offer and Wanted posts, but not other notifications.

First, look for them on your membership list - in the situations above, they should show up in a member search. You can either remove them yourself or send them instructions on how to do it.

To leave a community, a member logs in, goes to Settings, and clicks Unsubscribe or leave communities (which opens the Unsubscribe page), then picks the community to leave. They confirm, and they're removed.

Members sometimes get confused between leaving a community and just stopping certain emails or notifications, even after clicking an email from your community. To unsubscribe completely from a community, they must log in (so other people can't accidentally or deliberately unsubscribe them) - this happens automatically when they click the leave link. See "Erasing an account by mistake" below for the "limbo period" when members delete their account.

Erasing all personal information

Members are entitled under data protection law to "be forgotten". To do this, they need to log in, go to Settings, and use the Unsubscribe button (also reachable via the three-line menu button top right, or Terms/Privacy at the bottom left).

This lets a member unsubscribe from individual communities, or unsubscribe altogether and delete their account.

Erasing an account by mistake

Sometimes members delete their whole account when they only meant to leave one community, or just wanted to stop certain notifications.

Since January 2024, there's a grace period allowing members to reinstate their account by mistake - see this Discourse thread for background.

While a member is in this "limbo" period before their account is fully removed:

• Their posts no longer show on the web or app, so they shouldn't get replies that way.
• They might still get replies from emails already sent out.
• Those replies go into the chat for the deleted user, but aren't sent to them.
• If the member reactivates their account, they'll see those replies then, and any pending notifications will go out at that point.
• Once the grace period expires and the account is fully deleted, their posts are marked as withdrawn.

Nothing works?

Contact the Support Team (support@ilovefreegle.org) to ask them to investigate, providing all the details you've gathered so far.

See also:

• Unsubscribe: help a member to leave
• Freegle Direct