I have a website from which l sent out mass emails (i.e. not from a Hotmail address).

The emails were not "marketing" or so l thought. Let me explain:

I Googled a load of businesses / charities, and got their email addresses. I compiled those email addresses into a big list.

I then mass mailed those lists in blocks of 20-40 addresses, asking if them if they could sell to me (directly, wholesale) some of the used items they deal in.

I got a few responses, but l also got a few failed email notifications, because some addresses were just "dead" or "full".

In my second round of mass-mailing (and l think this was my final round, due to what happened), l got one email bounce back with a notification saying "high likelihood of spam", referring to my emails of course. The target email address in that instance was not a Hotmail address, but a private address.

I sent a test email to a Hotmail email address, and it is going to the spam folder. I never once sent an email to a Hotmail address (l think?) during my massmailing.

There are 2 closely related issues here:

1. I didn't realise l could be seen as a spammer. I was emailing people offering to *buy* not to *sell*. I thought "marketing" (as per the CANN-SPAM 2003 regulations) referred to trying to sell things. Moreover, this is why l didn't include an unsubscribe option within the email message that l sent to people, because the email was a once-off (if there is no reply) and also because l wasn't selling anything. It would appear now that l should have included an unsubscribe option. Mistakes were made and l am happy to concede that. Another possible reason l got listed as a spammer by various spamlisting services is that through my self-made email list, l had inadvertently emailed a handful dead inboxes, and the ISP hosting them was treating them as "spam traps" somehow? 

2. Hotmail / Windows Live Mail now sees me as a spammer.

So my question now is: how do l get off the Windows Live Mail spam list? As I hope you can see, this is all an innocent mistake on my part. I dislike spammers. My heart sinks when l have a fresh email address and that first piece of spam arrives. I really am not a spammer. I was emailing people who are in a specific industry, asking them for secondhand stock. I was offering those people money. I had no idea this could get me spam listed! My mistake could either have been (i) not giving an unsubscribe option - see the reason why, in Point #1, above   (ii) accidentally emailing dead inboxes.

So, to reiterate: how do I get off the Windows Live Mail spam list? My emails do get through to Hotmail, but they go direct to spam. Of course, people always check their spam boxes when expecting email from a company. But l just feel this is so unfair. I really didn't have any bad intentions when l mass mailed, and let me just repeat: I was offering people money, i.e. l was offering to buy things, in my mass email. I wasn't selling weird things, in fact I wasn't asking for money in any form.

Please help!