Why am I not getting some emails in my MSN Live Hotmail account?

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.