One item, ten emails: why a simple online purchase feels like spam warfare

Inbox overload

A single purchase. Ten emails. It has been reported that blogger Josh Ghent catalogued an absurd chain of messages after one order — everything from “Thanks for your order” to “How was your delivery” and a separate “We’ve delivered your item” from both courier and vendor. Online shopping is supposed to be magic: two clicks and you’re done. Instead, the post shows how checkout bliss turns into notification fatigue. Ouch.

Optimised to death

Why does this happen? Because businesses are chasing clicks, opens and attribution. It has been reported that companies run myriad A/B tests and layered campaigns to squeeze whatever ROI they can from a single transaction — allegedly optimizing every tiny interaction until the signal drowns in noise. Goodhart’s Law looms large: once a metric becomes the goal, it stops measuring what matters. The result is not delight but irritation. Who’s winning here? Not the customer.

Small fixes, bigger questions

Ghent’s workaround was low-tech and blunt: create a SimpleLogin alias and switch it off immediately — a bandage on a wound that shouldn’t exist. That fix works, but it’s a consumer-side hack for a merchant-side problem. What would actually help is consolidation (one clear “order status” thread), meaningful preference centers, and sensible frequency capping — the sort of common-sense moves that get lost in the notifications arms race. Companies talk about customer experience. Time to stop mailing it to death.

Sources: joshghent.com, Hacker News