User FAQs

Step 1: Find the category/topic that relates to your question. You can use the Search box located at the top of this page to do so. If that doesn't yield any matches, you can start at the main topic index, then navigate down until you find an appropriate category.

Step 2: If you navigate three levels down from any of the categories in the main index, you will reach a list of Experts. Read the descriptions next to the names, and when you've found the volunteer you believe is best qualified to answer your question, click on the Ask a Question link in the 3rd column beside him/her. This will take you to a form where you can type in and submit your question.

Please note that at times, there isn't any place to click to ask a question. If a volunteer is "Maxed Out", that means they have answered all the questions they can for the day and will not be available until 1 AM GMT tomorrow. At that time, the Ask a Question link will reappear beside their name.

You may not have received the email message informing you that your answer is ready because your mail client or service is marking us as SPAM. If this is the case, you will find AllExperts messages in your junk mail box.

To prevent this, you can add donotreply@allexperts.com and experts@about.com to your address book or to your list of approved senders. This should get our emails through your spam filters.

We can add it for you! All suggestions are welcome.

At times, there isn't any place to click to ask a volunteer a question.

This happens when a volunteer goes on vacation or is Maxed Out for the day.

Each volunteer specifies the maximum number of questions that s/he can answer per day. If a volunteer reaches this question limit, i.e., they are "Maxed Out". But don't worry, every volunteer that's reached their question limit today becomes available again at 1 AM GMT tomorrow.

We use your email address to alert you when the answer to your question is ready. That's it. Unlike other sites, we do not and will never give out or sell your e-mail address. Under no circumstances would we allow your e-mail address to fall into anyone else's hands.

We guarantee that your question goes directly to the person you ask it of. There's no bureaucracy that screens questions in this process. All we do is facilitate a direct one-on-one exchange, which is the way it should be!

Either the link in your email does not work or you cannot find your question in the archive. Unfortunately, we only archive some of the questions and answers from experts and questioners. If your question is no longer available via the link, it is no longer in our database. If you're having trouble with the links in your email, I recommend copying and pasting the link into your browser, failing that, try typing the link into your browser.

With thousands of volunteers, occasionally one or two will not perform up to par. If you're dissatisfied with the results you received, take the ultimate revenge--rate the volunteer! Your feedback will be used to help guide others away from that volunteer. Volunteers with consistently poor ratings are dropped from our service. If you still have an unanswered question, you should ask another volunteer.

We're not doing this to make money or gather e-mail addresses. Although this may sound a bit odd, we're doing this for one, simple reason: to help others! There's nothing that we want from you, other than to have a good experience with our service! :-)

Please click here to send a message to the AllExperts system administrator.