The only reason why I am replying to your post is because I have experienced exactly the same problem. I am out of work, I am looking for a job and, today, I was due to receive an e-mail from a recruitment agency. The e-mail just went missing, and it was sent to me twice, because I phoned the sender to let them know that the e-mail they sent me was not received. My wife tried to send me some e-mails from her e-mail address and they were not received either.

At that point I thought a third person may have had unauthorized access to my account and I reset my password, but after I reset the password my wife tried again and it didn't make any difference, the e-mails would not be received.

I checked my Junk Mail and the e-mails were not in there either. I, too, would really appreciate it if someone could investigate the issue. If you need my e-mail address or anything else I would be grateful if you could explain where to post it or e-mail it. Thanks so much!

Same problem here.  I have checked all my filters and settings.  Just not getting mail at all.  Very frustrating as I also travel and use my live account for all email contact.  Really don't want to have to change my email but this is becoming a huge issue over the past few weeks.  Eventually I get the email but it can be a delay of a couple hours--or a couple of days.  I have sent myself test messages.  They show in my sent folder immediately but then don't show up in my inbox.  And this is right from my account...back to the same account!  What is wrong? 

I have been having the same problem for the last couple of weeks.  It seems to be my msn paid account.  The regular hotmail accounts are working fine.  This is making it very difficult to work.

At this time, I sometimes receive emails hours later.  There are many emails that I have not received.  I have gone through the trouble shooter articles and it is still not working. 

Please Fix this problem ASAP

@ Everyone,

I suggest checking your account's filters to make sure that it is not affecting the delivery of your e-mails. Here are some of our solution articles if you need more info on how to do this:

Not receiving e-mail from contacts
http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/settings/archive/2009/02/18/not-receiving-e-mail-from-contacts.aspx

How to set the Junk e-mail filtering level
http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/settings/archive/2009/02/16/how-to-set-the-junk-e-mail-filtering-level.aspx

How to set or change reply address
http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/settings/archive/2009/03/03/how-to-set-or-change-reply-address.aspx

If you've confirmed that your account's filters are not contributing to the issue, please reply to this post with the following:

1. Your Hotmail account.
2. The sender's complete e-mail address.
3. Confirm if the sender is receiving a non-delivery notification message after sending an e-mail to your account. If so, please ask for a copy and post it here.
4. Confirm if the sender is having issues sending e-mails to all Hotmail accounts.

First, I must say Hotmail's method of support is incredibly disappointing.  I have put up with this problem for almost a month because I feel your support method just makes people go in circles and felt using this form of communication is as frustrating as the problem itself.  This is a daily occurence for every single email that is sent for me during period's of time.  It doesn't matter who it comes from. 

1. What do you mean by "Your Hotmail account"?

2. As stated, I would have to send you every email contact I have.

3. The sender has no idea that it takes hours for emails to be sent.  They are not being sent a non-delivery notification because it gets sent, just hours later.

4. They probably wouldn't know if they were having issues with other accounts because they are not getting a message saying there was a delay.

Sometimes the emails come right through and then next thing I know, there are no emails at all for hours and then they all come at once. 

I do pay an annual fee for my account.  I am terribly disappointed in your Customer service.  I had to wait all day for a response.  If this were any other business I could pick up the phone and talk to someone and at least have an idea of what is going on.  Now, I will probably need to wait hours to hear back again.

@catsanddogs

Your Hotmail account means your e-mail address. Please post it here so we can investigate.

{removed email address}

Hi catsanddogs. I realize the importance of resolving this issue immediately. I appreciate your feedback. I will submit them to our Product Team.

E-mail delivery is affected by Internet traffic. This means that if the Internet as a whole is busy, it may take longer for your messages to be delivered. 
 
Many companies and servers process e-mail messages before they are delivered and the problem may be with them.

The issue that you reported is sometimes general and is usually resolved automatically. Please perform the troubleshooting steps below if the issue persists:
 
• Advise your sender to use compression software to compress large or multiple attachments because they may significantly delay delivery time.  I also suggest that they send fewer attachments in each message.
 
• Send a test message to yourself.  This method is a good way to make sure that you can send and receive messages properly.  This is because a message that you send to yourself must travel to a main server, be sorted and then returned to your inbox.

*I work from my home computer, not a company so the problem is not with a server that process email messages before they are delivered.

*The emails that are not coming through may or may not have attachments.  Even my test emails don't come through.  It is not "certain" emails.  It is all emails for periods of times and then all of a sudden (hours later), they all come through at once.

*This has been happening since mid-October.  I have had hotmail for several years and have never experienced this.

It is happening again.  Last email received was 5:40 a.m.   I sent a test email (which is in my sent file) 15 minutes ago and I still have not received it. 

I am having the exact same problem as Catsanddogs. It started a week or so ago, no mail will come in for hours, even the test email i send myself, and then suddenly 4 or 5 hours later (or longer sometimes) it will come pouring in. It doesn't show up to my BlackBerry either until then, so this is definitely an MSN problem. This is from ALL senders, even test emails to myself.  {removed email address}

I just sent a test email to a newly created gmail account for myself, my husband's hotmail account, and my hotmail account.  The gmail account and my husband's hotmail account received it within a minute.  My hotmail account didn't receive it.  The test email I sent 2 hours ago still hasn't come in to my hotmail account.  I have yet another day of now almost 4 hours with no emails coming in again.  I think you can see by Becca1975's post and several posts from yesterday this is not an isolated case. 

After 4 1/2 hours I started receiving emails again.  The email test that I sent at 7:33 a.m. came in to my email at 10:24 a.m. and the email says that it was sent at 10:24 a.m.   The email I sent myself at 9:09 came into my inbox at 10:10 a.m. and it says it was sent at 10:10 a.m. which obviously it was not.  I thought maybe this info would help you determine the problem.

{removed email address}

I am having the same problem others are experiencing. My account is a paid MSN account. The problems with delayed mail started in early october. If I send an email to my husband's hotmail account and to my own account, it shows up in his account almost instantly. He has a free account. The email does not show up in my account for hours or sometimes days. I have all of my contacts on a safe sender list. There is no mail from them that goes to my junk mail folder. My contacts do not receive notices of undeliverable mail. The symptoms and results are the same whether I use my account at home through a cable modem or whether my husband checked my account at his work which has a 1 Gbit network connection.

Guys, as what my colleagues previously mentioned that if the Internet as a whole is busy, it may take longer for messages to be delivered. This is the reason why you’ve encountering this issue for several times and and this issue usually resolves automatically.