AllEars® FAQ Frequently Asked Questions

What is AllEars®?

AllEars® is a free, weekly electronic newsletter that offers all types of information on the Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida. AllEars® has news, feature articles, interviews, reviews, previews, money-saving tips and much more of interest to Walt Disney World enthusiasts.

Who publishes AllEars®?

AllEars® is published by AllEarsNet LLC, in association with the website AllEars.Net (http://allears.net). Debra Martin Koma is the Editor of AllEars®. For more on the other members of the AllEars.Net Team, visit our Behind the Ears page.

When and how often is AllEars® mailed?

AllEars® is emailed every Tuesday evening.

Can I write for AllEars®?

AllEars® always welcomes fresh story ideas and unique perspectives, and often spotlights reader-written editorials and guest columns. If you have an idea you’d like to pitch, review our Writer’s Guidelines and contact AllEars® Editor Debra Martin Koma at [email protected]

(Please note, AllEars® does not pay for written submissions.)

We also welcome guest writers on our AllEars.Net Guest Blog.

I’d like to read the older issues, is there an archive?

To receive the complete AllEars® newsletter, you must be a subscriber. But we do archive certain segments of the newsletter. Click here to find the Feature Article archive. We also archive many of our Reader Tips in a searchable database, which can be found here.

How do I subscribe to AllEars®?

The AllEars® subscriber list is maintained by a company called Campaigner.com. Subscribe to AllEars® by completing the Campaigner form HERE. Once you submit the form, you will be sent a confimation email to the address you provided. In order to have your subscription activated, you must follow the instructions in the email. Do not forget to click the link in the confirmation message.

It has been a while and I have not received my confirmation message.

Our system sends the confirmation message to verify your “From” address instantly. So, if you have not received it after entering your address, there are two possibilities:

1. The “From” address does not exist (perhaps you mistyped it?) or is not forwarding email to you.

2. The confirmation message was filtered out by your email system. Be sure to check your junk or spam folder.

If you know that your address is working correctly, then the problem is likely due to email filtering. There are two things you can do to verify this and to resolve the issue:

1. Set your “From” address temporarily to an address that is not in your email network. Using a Yahoo or Hotmail address, perhaps your personal one, as your “From” address will verify that our system did send you the address confirmation message. If you can receive the confirmation message there but not in your regular email box at the office, then contact your system administrator or ISP to see what kind of filtering is being done and what they can do to alleviate the delivery issue.

2. If your email administrators do not use email filtering, check with your ISP to see if they filter your messages before delivering them to you. Surprisingly, this happens much more frequently than one might think. As a result, ISPs inadvertently block legitimate email without informing their customers that their messages are being filtered.

If you have checked all of the above, you may request the actual email delivery record for the confirmation message that our system sent to you (must be requested within a few days of the delivery attempt). This information may help your email administrator or ISP in identifying the email message ID to determine why it was not delivered to your inbox. In making your request, please include the date and time (U.S. Eastern time) that you tried to change your address, which subsequently sends the confirmation message.

To resend the confirmation message — Visit the sign-up page, scroll down to “Already on this list”, and enter the email again. It will resend the confirmation message. If you enter the email in the main sign up form, youy will be prompted with a note indicating that they are already on the list and to click a button to have a link resent to them (this will contain the confirmation message link).

I subscribed, but haven’t received any issues. When I try to resubscribe, it tells me I already am subscribed. What can I do?

Email providers like AOL, Yahoo!, Hotmail, and others are constantly changing their methods to classify email. Our system delivers email to all accounts the same way, and the vast majority get it in their main inbox. Some email providers filter messages based on content, subject line, or the “From” address and may put your email into the bulk mail folder. We recommend that list recipients add our domains to their ‘Approved Sender’ list, also known as whitelist, if they have their email accounts with one of these email providers.

I was receiving AllEars® just fine and suddenly it stopped coming! What do I do?

With the increase in spam and folks complaining to the mail providers, a variety of filters are always being used. Some of these filters block mail that you really want to receive, like AllEars®, because they are sent out by a bulk mailer.

TIPS FOR EVERYONE

  • make sure [email protected] is in your address book and part of your acceptable email address list.
  • Check whatever spam filters you might use and make sure AllEars is not included.
  • Check your “do not accept” filters and make sure AllEars is not included.

AOL ACCOUNTS

  • Please check your spam filter to make sure you have not mistakenly blocked AllEars®.
  • Periodically, subscribers hit AOL’s “Report Spam” so fast that they did not realize that they had reported a legitimate message, or they did so accidentally and want to be added back to the AllEars® list.To be added back, please send an email directly to our provider, Campaigner.com, indicating your desire to be put back onto the AllEars® newsletter list. In the past, you were able to resubscribe yourself, but since the passage of the CAN-SPAM Act effective January 1, 2004, those who file complaints are viewed as never wanting to be emailed again proof of sign-up is required in order to comply with the law before they can add you back.

    We recommend that you add [email protected] to your “People I Know” list so that your “From” address is not on AOL personal “block” list (AOL automatically does this if an email was reported as spam, even accidentally).

YAHOO ACCOUNTS — Check to see if Yahoo has sent your mail into the Bulk Mail Folder. If they have, follow the directions to send it back to Yahoo and get it removed from their spam list.

What is a “bounced” message?

Our mail provider makes several attempts each hour for five consecutive days to deliver AllEars® to each recipient. If after five days, the message is returned to as “undeliverable” by your recipient’s email system, it is considered a “bounced email” and the recipient’s address is flagged as being potentially invalid. If successive messages sent to that address bounce, the email address is suspended.

Why am I getting multiple copies of the newsletter?

Our mail provider’s system only sends out one copy of the message to each recipient. They tell us: “If the recipient’s server is having any delivery issues, which could be that it is not responding quickly enough to our system’s delivery attempt, we retry delivering the message later (note: if we did not do this, it would take an extremely long time to deliver messages because we would be waiting on slow servers to respond).

“Unless a recipient’s system reports back with a bounce message or an acknowledgement of delivery (which are part of standard Internet protocols), any email system, including ours, would interpret the lack of response as an intermittent delivery failure and retry delivery. If the recipient’s server has such an issue or is in any way misconfigured, it is possible that the recipient may see multiple copies of a message.

We recommend that you ask your recipient to check their email server setup to see if there are any such issues.”

I want to unsubscribe/change my address. How do I do that?

You can use your personalized update link to modify your email preferences. This link can be found in every message sent to you from this list, and in the list welcome message.

If this doesn’t work, please contact us using the “Contact Us” form link found at the bottom of every page on the AllEars.Net website.

Special Note to AOL Subscribers — If you want to cancel your subscription and are unable to do so PLEASE email us using the “Contact Us” form link found at the bottom of every page on the website. Please DO NOT click on the “This is Spam” button. We have had subscribers ask us why they no longer receive AllEars®, only to find out that they reported us as SPAM to AOL. Please use care when selecting “This is Spam”. Please allow 7 days for your unsubscribe request to be processed.

Why are there advertisements in the newsletter?

Advertisements help defray the cost of producing and emailing AllEars® every week. AllEars® uses a professional, highly rated bulk email provider to send out the newsletter. With nearly 130,000 subscribers, AllEars® exceeds the “free email list program” limits.

We also want to offer you the opportunity to experience new products or services and take advantage of special offers.

While the AllEars® staff checks out all potential advertisers (many do not make it to the newsletter), you should use the same judgement and standards you use when dealing with any business.

How can I advertise my business in AllEars®?

AllEars® accepts paid advertisements primarily from businesses that appeal to the Disney enthusiast. Please read “Advertise with Us” for more details.

On the subscription form, I see a mailing list option for offers and announcements pertaining to Walt Disney World and Central Florida called Ears the Deal™. What exactly is this?

Ears the Deal™ provides special promotional offers and announcements for AllEars® subscribers. Many of the announcements are EXCLUSIVE to this special mailing list. We promise not to fill your email box, and only send out this special mailing a few times a month.

Ears the Deal™ is mailed out on Thursdays (3 or 4 per month) to about 90,000 subscribers.

To subscribe to this special AllEars® mailing list, you must first be an AllEars® Newsletter subscriber. Then you will need to EDIT your registration form as follows:

1. Go to the very bottom of your latest AllEars® newsletter.

2. Click on the link that says: Update your preferences or Unsubscribe

3. Scroll to the bottom of the form, to the question: “Which mailing lists would you like to subscribe to?”

4. Check the box for “Ears the Deal” then click on Update Subscription, and you’ll begin receiving Ears the Deal™, with its special offers on the following Thursday.