My old hotmail account has started to rejects emails from multiple legitimate organisations.

Question

My old hotmail account has started to rejects emails from multiple legitimate organisations.

Dennis O'Neal 0

"My Outlook/Hotmail account rejects emails from multiple legitimate organisations. They receive SMTP 550 5.7.515 errors. The same messages are delivered successfully to another Hotmail account in my household. This suggests the issue is specific to my mailbox or account rather than the senders. Please investigate whether my account has an incorrect inbound filtering or reputation issue."

Dennis O'Neal 0 Reputation points

2026-07-27T16:08:08.44+00:00

My Hotmail account is rejecting emails from multiple legitimate organisations. They receive the error:

550 5.7.515 Access denied

The same emails are delivered successfully to my wife's Hotmail account, so the problem appears to be specific to my mailbox rather than the sender. This has happened with multiple organisations (for example Lime Wood Hotel and Practice Portal). Please investigate whether there is an issue with the inbound filtering or reputation of my Outlook.com mailbox.

1 answer

Your answer

Dennis O'Neal 0 Reputation points

2026-07-27T16:08:08.44+00:00

My Hotmail account is rejecting emails from multiple legitimate organisations. They receive the error:

550 5.7.515 Access denied

The same emails are delivered successfully to my wife's Hotmail account, so the problem appears to be specific to my mailbox rather than the sender. This has happened with multiple organisations (for example Lime Wood Hotel and Practice Portal). Please investigate whether there is an issue with the inbound filtering or reputation of my Outlook.com mailbox.

Answer 1

Hi Dennis O'Neal,

I understand why this appears specific to your Hotmail account, particularly when the same messages reach another Hotmail address.

Please note that this is a user-to-user forum, so contributors cannot inspect or change Outlook.com’s server-side filtering.

The 550 5.7.515 Access denied response indicates that the sending domain did not meet Outlook.com’s required email-authentication level. Each affected organization should give its complete non-delivery report to its email administrator or mail provider and ask them to verify that SPF and DKIM pass, a valid DMARC record is published, and the authenticated domain aligns with the address in the From field. See Fix NDR code 550 5.7.515 in Outlook.com.

Adding these addresses to Safe Senders will not resolve this particular rejection because the messages are being refused before reaching your mailbox.

If the organizations confirm that all authentication checks pass but messages are still rejected only for your address, contact Outlook.com support:

Go to Outlook.com and sign in.
Select the Help icon, the question mark, in the upper-right corner.
In the Help pane that opens, search for "email management", then press Enter.
Scroll down the page until you see "Still need help?", click Yes.
Choose "Chat with a support agent in your web browser."
Review the issue description and confirm an email address you can access.
Click Confirm to create the service request. The screen will indicate that your request has been submitted and the system is connecting you to Outlook.com live chat support, which may take a moment to load.

I hope this helps identify whether the organizations need to correct their authentication or whether Outlook.com support needs to review the account-specific behavior.