[Ethereum] Why is an account not accepting the Ether sent to it

If I understand your question correctly you want to be able to see who has deposited Eth to your contract address. This is what event logs are for.

(1) Create a contract where there is an event every time there is a transaction. e.g something like:

contract someContract {   

    address public owner;

    // Set the owner of the contract to be the creator of the contract i.e. you
    function someContract() {
        owner = msg.sender;
    } 

    // This is an event 
    event DepositMade(address _from, uint value);
    event WithdrawalMade(address _to, uint value);

    //Catch all function 
    function() {
        // generate an event when someone sends you Eth
        if (msg.value > 0)
            DepositMade(msg.sender, msg.value);
    }

    // Only the owner of the site can withdraw Eth
    modifier admin { if (msg.sender == owner) _ }

    function withdraw(uint amount, address recipient) admin {
        if(recipient.send(amount))
            WithdrawalMade(msg.sender, msg.value);
        else throw;
    }
}

The important bits are defining an event type event DepositMade(address _from, uint value) and generating an event when something happens DepositMade(msg.sender, msg.value);these events are stored in the event log associated with the address of the deployed contract instance.

(2) You retrieve the events on this contract using rpc eth_newFilter or web3.eth.filter e.g something like:

var filter = web3.eth.filter({fromBlock:0, toBlock: 'latest', address: contractAddress, 'topics':['0x' + web3.sha3('DepositMade(hexstring,uint256)')]});
filter.watch(function(error, result) {
   if(!error) console.log(result);
})

The web3.eth.filter command only goes though the blocks' logs. When you create (resp. receive) a transaction from (resp. to) your address, it does not ensue that a log entry has been created.

Creating a log entry is an action that needs to be done explicitly. So scanning all the blocks is indeed the way to go.

To avoid scanning every time, you ought to save your findings in a regular database.