Summary: One of the casualties of the war against spam is reliable email deliverability. Sometimes mail simply never shows up. We'll look at what can be done.
•
This turns out to be a fairly common problem, and not just for Hotmail. Yahoo and other email services seem to suffer the same problem from time to time.
And no, I know of nothing you can do.
Strike that, I do know of one thing you can do, but you won't like it.
•
As you've described, the scenario is very, very simple:
-
Someone sends you an email
-
You don't get it
-
The sender doesn't get any indication that the mail wasn't delivered
It's the worst of all possible scenarios - you can't know what you didn't receive, and the sender has no indication that nothing was delivered. Neither of you realize that there's any problem until much, much later.
It's the most frustrating of all possible scenarios.
And to cover the stock recommendations:
-
Check your junk mail folder
-
Clear any filters you have set that might automatically act on incoming email
-
Add the sender's email address to your address book. On some email providers this acts as a kind of "whitelist", or at least increases the probability that email from that person will get delivered
-
Make sure that the sender isn't sending something that "looks like" spam. For example if his email is talking about enlarging body parts, then it's highly likely to get filtered as spam. Sadly it doesn't have to be that blatant - legitimate messages about breast cancer, free offers, business opportunities and more can often be confused with, and filtered as, spam
And it really is all about spam. Chances are that your email provider, Hotmail in this case, is simply being overly aggressive about filtering spam. (And unfortunately in doing so, there are actually reasonable arguments for not sending a bounce message - many spammers actually rely on bounce messages to either legitimize an email address, or to actually carry their spam message.)
So, what can you really do?
Aside from what I've listed so far, nothing.
I wish that email providers, particularly the free ones, gave you more direct control over what is, and is not, spam to you. Truly paying attention to your address book would go a long way to solving the issue, but as you can see that's not happening consistently.
So what's the one thing to do that I said you won't like?
Use a different email provider.
Stop using Hotmail.
Find an email provider that is more responsive to its customers needs. GMail currently appears to be the best of the free services, but email reliability is also worth paying for, if that's what it takes.
Related:
-
Ask Leo! - How do I get rid of all this spam?!?!
-
Ask Leo! - Why am I not getting all messages sent to the mailing list I'm on?
-
Ask Leo! - Why is my mail to this person not getting through?
Article C3382 - May 14, 2008
I had the same prob, no bad filters, nothingin junk mail.
Posted by: Zack Strulovitch at May 17, 2009 3:31 PMBut when I went to "Contact List" , Chose the person whom I don't get the emails from, Recent email and then I marked the email as safe
now I can get the emails from him again
Similar problem but with a slight twist. Sometimes an email gets through to the recipient and sometimes it doesn't. Only know of one recipient at one business. Messages to others at the same business seem to get through OK. It's not a free account it's a paid MSN account.
Posted by: Dave Lancaster at August 6, 2009 3:43 PMI have a similar story to these other poor souls...
Posted by: Stuart Redgewell at November 21, 2009 2:19 PMI have used Hotmail for many moons now and only recently are no longer receiving emails from a friend of mine.
He will often send an email to many people and the only time I know it has been sent is when someone else 'replies to all' to the message then suddenly I'm presented with a conversation that has been going on for quite a few messages.
I have looked at my safe list and his email is most definately in there and I have absolutely noone on my blocked list.
I just can't figure it out and it's stupidly frustrating that I seem to missing so much.
And what's worse, like the article said, there appears to be very little (if nothing you can do about it).
why is my MSN different on 1 computer and looks like the normal MSN on another computer in my office?
Posted by: trix at December 18, 2009 11:41 AMi want to change my facebook password and i dont seem to be getting the email for this and it is frustrating me.
Posted by: chelsea at January 30, 2010 6:21 AM