• by Kara Trivunovic , Op-Ed Contributor, August 19, 2010

As some of you know, or have read, I have three-year-old identical twin boys and a five year-old daughter. And as you can imagine, bedtime around our house can be, ummm... chaotic. So to avoid the imminent cries of, "Mama, Bubba bit me," from the twins' room, I patiently sit in their room, night after night, in the dark, and wait for them to go to sleep.

For entertainment, after we've read books and they are banished to their beds for quiet time, I turn to my BlackBerry (OK, it's not *as* entertaining as an iPhone, but I love my BlackBerry nonetheless). Sometimes I will catch up on Facebook, thumb through what happened on Twitter that day or read my email. On this particular night, I decided I would see what back-to-school and summer-end sales found their way to any one of my three email addresses. That's when it all came apart.

I had gotten an email from a toy store I frequent (I have three young kids, remember -- and a husband), and there, at the top of my message, it said "view on handheld device." And so I did, as I have so many times before with so many different brands. But this time was different. I went to a watered-down HTML page (no, that's not what's different), clicked on a link that I was interested in and it didn't work (that's not what's different either), went back to see if any of the links worked (they didn't), then I closed the browser, deleted the message from my hand-held and my inbox and moved on.

Here's what was different. Over the course of the next few days, as I sat at my desk, I noticed something annoying, I was now receiving all of my email from this brand in an HTML-light format all of a sudden. Arghhh! I've been banished to the netherlands of what is equivalent to a gloried Text message indefinitely! All because I clicked a stinkin' view-on-handheld link that then served up links I couldn't even click!

So now I've gone and done it... I unsubscribed. It could have all been avoided if you, Mr(s). brand, sent me a simple, triggered message, asking if I wanted to relocate my email subscription to the netherlands. But instead, I'm off to subscribe to another toy store's email. Let's see if it's any different this time around.