Hi there.  

A couple of years ago, having been through various buy-outs/changes of hands with Ihug, Woosh etc, I finally decided to opt for a more generic/universal email address and opened an Outlook live account.

I started to have problems relatively quickly, with people telling me they'd sent emails which I had not received.  I check my Junk folder daily and deal with any by whitelisting  - I would probably only get about one a month, landing in Junk.  To be honest, I took the reports of emails sent with a grain of salt, as I thought it might be the sender who was mistaken, given I could find no trace.

However, the problem seemed to get worse recently and I did finally see with my own eyes that I had missed receiving an email, when I received a subsequent email with history (on a group email) and could see clearly that I had been included in the previous message, but had not received it.

I had also missed receiving an invoice, which then incurred a late penalty fee.

Armed with this, I went to Outlook Support (via email).  Over many days, they had me search and try recovering emails in various ways (clearly they thought I may have accidentally deleted the ones I asked about).  I have adjusted my spam filtering as much is as possible in Outlook.  They have looked at everything/talked me through every procedure available, to no avail and my emails continue to go missing.  For the email I had a copy of, they said it had never reached their server.

They have been very helpful and patient, but don't seem to offer any real answer to my problem.  They suggest I whitelist everyone who emails me, but the problem is that sometimes I receive emails I am not expecting and it really just isn't practical on a day-to-day basis (i.e.  I attended an appointment last week and had to provide my email address.  I did not expect them to email me, but they did later - this can happen any time and I do not know the email address I will be emailed from in advance).

Because it has now at the point I am always worrying about what I might not have received, I thought I would open a Gmail account instead.  But it strikes me I could have just the same problems there?

I am with Slingshot - would I just be better off using my Slingshot account?

After tons of Googling, I have wondered if the problem is just one of more and more strenuous spam filtering going on at a higher level than my actual account?  Am I less likely to encounter this with Slingshot than Outlook or Gmail?

Any suggestions would be appreciated, especially in deciding where to switch to. I never knowingly missed getting an email when I was with Woosh.

But when they got taken over by Slingshot, I thought now was the time to do the big switch and save myself having to change addresses again.

By the way - I am unfortunately no great geek myself, but a member here because I find it very useful to look up/ask the expertise of those who are.  I am not completely hopeless, but may need the use of plain English 

Many thanks

Lisa