A solution that I have found that extremely user friendly and (almost)
addresses the need for a confirmation message: The FAREWELL.MESSAGE. I have
had great success with a message that says

***

"Your subscription to the <listname> mailing list has ended, either at your
request or due to technical problems; please do not take this personally.
If you chose to end your subscription because the number of messages you
received was more than you could manage, you may wish to try the DIGEST
option, which combines all of one day's messages into a single message. To
do this, you will need to re-subscribe with a message to [log in to unmask]
that says SUBSCRIBE LISTNAME. Once you have received confirmed your
subscription, send another command that says SET LISTNAME DIGEST. You will
receive confirmation that your options have changed.

Thank you for your interest in our publications. Please check our website
regularly at xttp://www.web.com

List manager, [log in to unmask]

***

Because this is a government site, I included the 'do not take it
personally' message so that people are less likely to (over)react to being
removed if their networks are faulty and I keep getting error messages. I
have received enough complimentary and thank-you messages to indicate that
this FAREWELL.MESSAGE has a positive effect on (ex-)subscribers.

If you don't yet use Farewell.Message, check it out in the manual at
http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8d/owner/owner.html#6.8


Chip Harman
Bureau of Information - Electronic Media Team
U.S. Information Agency, Washington, D.C.
(202)619-6776
[log in to unmask]
http://www.usia.gov/usis.html