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I am working on a SMS (text message) service. Customers will receive text alerts to important information. The message will inform the user they may reply "STOP" to opt out of future messages. This is, to my knowledge, fairly standard.

My question is, if someone replies "STOP", should one final text message be sent back to inform the user that they have been removed from the service and will no longer receive text messages (and possibly a sentence explaining how to opt-in again, should they decide to do so at a later date)

I always feel that providing feedback is important, but in this scenario you could be costing the user money in text message fees from their cell phone carrier by sending the extra message. And while each message likely only costs 10 or 20 cents, it also seems bad to do what the end user just asked to you stop doing.

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In many countries this is not really an UX but legal topic - sometimes it is just illegal to send another confirmation message. So check this first.

If it is ok to send a message, then do it, but avoid charging the user for the message (this is commonly possible) and tell him about it.

e.g. : You no longer recieve messages from 123.com. Note: This message wasn't charged to your bill.

If you can't avoid charging the user a fee, then just don't send it.

Hope it helps.

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As you have mentioned giving feedback is important and the only way to give feedback when it comes to SMS service is by sending SMS message. Unsubscribing from email newsletter is much easier when it comes to giving feedback - user can get redirected to a simple "you are unsubscribed from our newsletter" page and that's it.

The additional fee for getting an extra confirmation message can be really annoying for the users. Even though it seems like only 10 or 20 cents, people can feel cheated. It is quite funny when I think about it- you get a message after you just wrote that you don't want to get them anymore, I'm pretty sure that could easily go viral on Twitter ;-)

For this reason I would skip the confirmation message. Hope that it helps- please let me know what you've decided and how you solved that issue.

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  • @Kevin-Anderson Yes, what did you decide to do, and do you know how well this design decision worked?
    – JeromeR
    Aug 22, 2015 at 22:37

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