The five kinds of message an account receives
Almost every disagreement about a message starts with the same mistake: treating a receipt as an offer, or an offer as a notice. The five kinds do different things, and the switch at the foot of one of them does not reach the other four.
- kinds
- 5
- in the month
- 50
- switchable kinds
- 1
- unswitchable
- 38 of 50
An account receives five kinds of message: receipts of what already happened, marketing, service notes about the account, security alerts, and legal notices. Only marketing can be switched off. A receipt records a fact, a service note explains one, an alert asks the reader to act, and a notice is the message whose arrival is itself part of a process.
The fault line is not importance, it is function
The five kinds are not ordered by how much they matter to a reader - a security alert matters more than an offer - but by what the message is doing. A receipt is a record of a completed event, so its job ends when it arrives. A notice is different in kind: the terms usually make its arrival a step in a process, which is why the same words can matter in a dispute where a receipt would not.
| Kind | Sent | What it does | Stoppable | Consent needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| receipt | 30 | records an event that has already happened | no | no |
| marketing | 12 | promotes something the account may buy | yes | yes |
| service note | 4 | explains a state of the account or a request | no | no |
| security alert | 2 | tells the reader something changed on the account | no | no |
| legal notice | 2 | starts or ends a period the terms depend on | no | no |
| five kinds | 50 | four of the five cannot be switched off | 1 of 5 | 1 of 5 |
The kind is decided by function, not by wording
Operators write promotions that look like service notes and receipts that carry an offer, so the name on the message proves nothing. Two tests settle it, and both are arithmetic rather than opinion.
Why a receipt is not a promotion
The distinction has a practical consequence, and it is the reason this page comes before the switches: a reader who replies to a receipt asking to be left alone has asked for the wrong thing. The receipt continues, because the account cannot be run without a record of what was done to it, and the operator is usually not required to ask first.
- Ask what the message is doing, not what it calls itself: recording, promoting, explaining, alerting or notifying.
- Assume a receipt, a service note, an alert and a legal notice will continue after any marketing opt-out.
- Treat an offer that borrows a receipt's shape as marketing, and check the footer of the message for the switch.
- Keep the alert and notice messages: they are the ones that date a change to the account.
- Do not read "you have won" or "your account" as a kind of message - both appear in all five.