Deleting a Subscriber from a Suppression List using the API

Question

I need to delete a Subscriber from a Suppression List using the API.

I have followed this documented example to delete a Subscriber from a Suppression List, but it does not work (and there's nothing more frustrating than following Salesforce documentation only to discover it is wrong).

Here are two methods that delete a Subscriber from a Standard List (both using the Delete SOAP action).

Option 1

<soap:Body>
    <DeleteRequest xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
        <Objects xsi:type="Subscriber">
                <SubscriberKey>S1234</SubscriberKey>
                <EmailAddress>sam@sample.com</EmailAddress>  
            <Lists>
                <ID>123</ID>
                <Action>delete</Action>
            </Lists>
        </Objects>
    </DeleteRequest>
</soap:Body>

Option 2

<soap:Body>
   <DeleteRequest xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
        <Options>
            <SaveOptions>
                <SaveOption>
                    <PropertyName>*</PropertyName>
                    <SaveAction>Delete</SaveAction>
                </SaveOption>
            </SaveOptions>
        </Options>
        <Objects xsi:type="Subscriber">
            <ObjectID xsi:nil="true">
            </ObjectID>
            <SubscriberKey>S1234</SubscriberKey>
            <EmailAddress>sam@sample.com</EmailAddress>
            <Lists>
                <ID>123</ID>
                <ObjectID xsi:nil="true">
                </ObjectID>
            </Lists>
        </Objects>
    </DeleteRequest>
</soap:Body>

Both of these work, and return the response:

<DeleteResponse xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
    <Results>
        <StatusCode>OK</StatusCode>
        <StatusMessage>Subscriber deleted</StatusMessage>
        <OrdinalID>0</OrdinalID>
    </Results>
    <RequestID>40a0244a-2698-4e8f-97f5-432a913d169f</RequestID>
    <OverallStatus>OK</OverallStatus>
</DeleteResponse>

That's fine. However if I try to use either of these methods to delete a subscriber from a suppression list (e.g. change the List Id to match the suppression list), then I get the same Subscriber deleted response, but they are not removed from the list.

I can add Subscribers to a Suppression List using the SOAP API, but I can't delete them.

I know there are other options to suppressing subscribers from receiving an email, but I really need to use Suppression Lists for a number of different reasons.

Does anyone know if this is possible using the API?

Answer 1

The first payload is really close to correct but needs to use Update instead of Delete.

<soap:Envelope xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:wsa="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/ws/2004/08/addressing" xmlns:wsse="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-secext-1.0.xsd" xmlns:wsu="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-wssecurity-utility-1.0.xsd">
   <soap:Header>
      <wsse:Security soap:mustUnderstand="1">
         <wsse:UsernameToken wsu:Id="SecurityToken-0c530ced-95e8-4700-94f6-daba49999931">
            <wsse:Username>ccc</wsse:Username>
            <wsse:Password Type="http://docs.oasis-open.org/wss/2004/01/oasis-200401-wss-username-token-profile-1.0#PasswordText">ccc</wsse:Password>
         </wsse:UsernameToken>
      </wsse:Security>
   </soap:Header>
   <soap:Body>
      <UpdateRequest xmlns="http://exacttarget.com/wsdl/partnerAPI">
         <Objects xsi:type="Subscriber">
            <EmailAddress>example@example.com</EmailAddress>
            <SubscriberKey>example@example.com</SubscriberKey>
            <Lists>
               <PartnerKey xsi:nil="true"/>
               <ID>1730822</ID>
               <Action>delete</Action>
            </Lists>
         </Objects>
      </UpdateRequest>
   </soap:Body>
</soap:Envelope>