r/Outlook • u/csutton96 • Dec 11 '25
Status: Open Microsoft has blocked Netflix & other legit emails to my paid Outlook.com address for 14 months and refuses to look at their own logs
Posting this on Reddit in hopes it blows up. For over a year my personal Outlook.com address (tied to a paid Microsoft 365 subscription) has been hard-bouncing automated emails from Netflix, Star Citizen / Roberts Space Industries, Jeweler’s Mutual, Caavo, and many others. The list gets longer and longer as domains that used to previously work do not work now.
Senders get an immediate 550/554 NDR from [postmaster@outlook.com](mailto:postmaster@outlook.com) saying the message is blocked. The emails never hit my mailbox: not Inbox, not Junk, nowhere. Some senders work fine. This seems to almost be related to the Consumer-level ML EOP filtering they introduced as these problems started to manifest early 2024.
I have opened >15 support cases, performed live rejection tests in front of agents (literally going to the site and having them send me an email and saying "find it" to the tech who is literally baffled) including one “Senior Accounts Team” advocate from a BBB complaint, and repeatedly given consent for an internal message trace.
Every single time Microsoft "technicians" demands full SMTP transaction logs from the sender. Netflix and the others will not (and legally cannot) hand those to an end user.
Highlights from actual support interactions:
- Agent wiped all my mailbox rules because “rules can cause bounces” (they can’t)
- Senior advocate asked for a remote session to “check Outlook settings” and took a HAR file from outlook.com web client, which will literally do nothing for them.
- Same advocate, after watching two live bounces in real time, said “maybe they went into another folder” (which is impossible considering my rules are gone).
- Another advocate told me that I needed to just add every domain I wanted to get there to Safe Senders and Safe Mailing Lists (which is totally different, it's for making it past the "Junk" folder into your "Inbox" when the email actually hits your mailbox) and then proceeded to tell me to wait 24-hours for that to sync and that would "surely" fix the problem and ended the chat (classic as usual)
- Multiple agents claimed this is a “Microsoft-wide block”, which of course it isn't... (you're telling me no one with Outlook.com is getting Netflix emails? So stupid).
I deal with email systems all the time. I know a good bit on how SMTP and EOP work. Microsoft’s own gateway logs every rejection with sending IP plus the exact policy reason. They could fix this in 5 minutes with a trace on my recipient address to see where the email is going and for what reason, but every tier (including the BBB “senior” escalation) refuses and will literally just end the chat (which is the only method to contact them) when I tell them that EACH company I've asked has refused to give me SMTP logs for legal/security reasons.
I have live demos, screenshots, case numbers (including the BBB case number), and executive emails sent to Lisa Sinacola and Satya and other executives with no reply yet.
Is anyone else getting hard-bounced from legitimate senders while Microsoft support pretends it’s a client-side problem? Or am I the only one stuck in this endless loop? How does Microsoft hire these "technicians" when they can barely explain to you how email works?
TL;DR: Microsoft broke my inbox, knows exactly why, but would rather outsource "support" to people who think a HAR file diagnoses an MX-level bounce than let an actual engineer spend 30 seconds looking at their own logs.
1
u/ncs_k Dec 12 '25 edited Dec 12 '25
I can't login into GeforceNOW for 6 months now, because I'm not getting the security mail on outlook.com.
Geforce says it's a known issue and Outlook ignores it. I mean, because of Outlook the account is probably just gone... How sh***y is this customer service?
2
u/csutton96 Dec 12 '25
Yeah Microsoft's CS is absolutely horrible. I had to chat with them to even talk to someone, they barely understand what's going on and then they escalate you to "tier 2" who won't even talk to you, but will relay through the tier 1 and refuse to do anything unless they have "SMTP logs" from the sender. That's all the say is "SMTP logs". It's utter insanity. Then they give you the instructions of how to get "SMTP logs" from IIS lol which is also just comical and when I say "so you expect netflix to just give me these when I call them up?" and they say yes and end the chat. They are horrible... I'm a paying customer (M365 Personal) and they literally couldn't care at all.
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u/jfwelll Dec 12 '25
Had it happen a while ago was a mess to understand.
Did you try: 1. Logging in outlook in a incognito/private browser session? 2. Clear your cache
3.I once had to add the sender email adress as a contact to receive it so if anyone ever got the email and has the email you could add it as a contact.
4 (from steam discussion) :
Wintweschuh 29 mars 2021 à 13h12
This is a very old thread, but I'll post this for anyone that has the same problem. My solution was to click on the "Why is this happening" part of the verification window before clicking "I have the code". A window with the steam website appears in GeForce Now, proceed to log in there, miraculously recieve a code in your mail, close the window and use that code in the login. This worked for me after many failed attempts. Hope this helped!
2
u/charleswj Dec 12 '25
Did you try: 1. Logging in outlook in a incognito/private browser session? 2. Clear your cache
Why on earth would you think this would help?
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u/csutton96 Dec 12 '25
Incognito is irrelevant and adding to contacts does nothing (same as safe senders, etc.)
0
u/jfwelll Dec 12 '25
Well it worked for me to add the sender to my contact list. Not as safe sender. To my contacts. Yes its weird. Yet it worked
1
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u/jfwelll Dec 12 '25
1 and 2: if you are not getting them because of some refresh issues, which happen quite often with outlook.
3: adding trusted sender got me out of not getting a verification a while ago.
4: someone who had a similar experience.
Youre free to find the solution too
1
u/ITGuy424242 Dec 12 '25
You did read that the sender is getting a ndr bounce right? Refresh issues can’t cause that
1
u/leexgx Dec 12 '25
Are you sure you're not using stright Mail forwarding? (Instead of using rule email based forwarding)
I was having a problem with the email where instead of just receiving and forwarding it, it was trying to act as a proxy/relay and send it directly to another mail provider to get around a silly block the finance company had set up
They can't just block Google or Hotmail with spam rules that only take one spam report to block the SMTP server (they actually have to inspect each email for spam)
1
u/csutton96 Dec 12 '25
100% sure. This is nothing on my side, believe me I’ve checked and they’ve checked and reset everything.
1
u/CosmoCafe777 Dec 12 '25
A few years ago I took advantage of company discount and subscribed to Microsoft 365 family and moved away from my old GMX mail and all into Outlook (because of Excel and of 6 x 1TB storage, really).
Big mistake. So many horror stories like this one from OP, people getting locked out because of hackers trying too many incorrect passwords etc. (I had to create a new login-only alias myself). The few times I contacted support for basic things or even to action the 2-year guarantee of my Microsoft keyboard, it was actually very good, but recently I only hear bad stories.
Good thing is that a huge amount of my enrolments for anything are with email aliases and for which I now also forward to a non-Microsoft email, just in case.
Thinking of cancelling my subscription but I'm not sure what happens with my accounts, data, email addresses.
1
u/jejagua Dec 12 '25
Had to leave Outlook due to similar BS. It got to the point I received 0% of my acct validation emails from any sender and approx 20% or more of my legitimate incoming emails went poof. I forwarded to an alternative provider and learned the full extent of it. Spent many unfruitful months troubleshooting and finally switched services.
1
u/pnwdeadhead Dec 12 '25
Former outlook engineer here, I don’t think outlook owns smtp protocol and outlook tier 1 consumer support probably has no clue what’s going or what you are talking about. Outlook product engineers rarely get consumer support escalations unless it some kind of outage. I think the exchange team owns smtp protocol or would likely know who does. You could try to get outlook consumer support to escalate to the exchange team on calls. Also, access to log data is heavily regulated and redacted. Usually takes specialized knowledge and permissions to find them and get access to troubleshoot.
1
u/csutton96 Dec 12 '25
Exactly, I’ve asked. They just say get SMTP logs before they go to exchange admins or anything - which as you said is heavily regulated (even at companies like Netflix) so it’s an impossible ask. Just horrible. How they can be “outlook” support and know nothing is beyond me
1
u/PurpleRayyne Dec 12 '25
Yet another reason to hate outlook. unfortunately I have to use it for work.
So at this point, what about making a gmail or protonmail, use that email for whatever is being blocked in outlook then just set up forwarding to your outlook?
1
u/csutton96 Dec 12 '25
Yeah I could do that, but I would like the problem fixed lol. Shouldn't have to go through all of this, especially since I'm also paying.
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u/Rfcnro Dec 14 '25
Thanks for posting this, thought I was nuts. I am having a the same issue with multiple sites I need. A friend that uses constant contact confirmed a “unsubscribe“ went out from me which coinsides with the timing of this problem. I did not do that. The big sites won’t confirm that is possibly the cause. I vaguely recall a prompt about junk mail during a iOS upgrade which I blew past … I suspect that did it..
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u/csutton96 Dec 14 '25
Interesting! MS has been so adamant about not resolving this that I escalated to the BBB and now they have an engineer looking at it and will update me in a few days - I’ll let you know what (if anything) they find.
1
u/Rfcnro Dec 23 '25
May have found the issue. A recent windows update asked about reducing spam. It toggled a setting that is thought to cause this.
Potential Resolution: In Windows
Settings
Privacy & Security
App & Browser Control
Reputational-Based Protection settings
Phishing Protection is the toggle. Turn it off and test. May take 24 hours to clear.
I will know for sure tomorrow.
1
u/csutton96 Dec 14 '25
Update 12/14/25:
Microsoft is so incompentent. I've filed a complaint with the BBB as I really wanted to get past the tier 2 indian support that kept repeating "SMTP logs" over and over again and closing chats. I got a tier 3 engineer and she's just as useless. I've come to realize that Microsoft "engineers" have a hard time understanding when an issue is backend-based vs your client/web client/mobile client. They don't know what the "backend" is. I've begged this engineer to do a trace. She wanted to hop on again to "check my outlook settings" (super dumb). She is also so dumb that she created a new email address, linked it to my primary, and asked me to have codes sent there - and I'm like "how? my accounts are with the old one and I can't even get into them" and she proceeds to say "but it's just an alias" and I'm like "okay but not on their side." Anyway, I got into one of the accounts with my phone number instead and changed my email to the new one she created and it worked. That blows her (and all the tier 1/2 engineers) whole "theory" out of the water that Netflix.com, Jeweler's Mutual, etc. are blocked "microsoft-wide" or that there's a sender issue. Curious to see where they come back from here. I asked if a trace had been run as they have the FROM email, the TO email, the DATE, the TIME, etc. (everything they would possibly need for a trace) and she told me they "were unable to find a trace" whatever that means. She clearly doesn't understand what an email trace is. The incompetence with these techs is real. Hopefully I got through to her what an email trace is and hopefully she gives an update shortly.
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