International Fax Service?

[joeleitz]

I've been trying to find a way to manage faxes without having a ton of numbers for each area. Nothing makes me wince harder than someone in a foreign office saying "what's the fax #?" because most of the time I've got to call someone to get it right.

There must be a good international solution? Even this fax review site has nothing, just an unanswered question in the forums with the same problem.

I'm hoping a fellow sailor might have a good suggestion to unify all my fax #s?



(I'm taking a few free trials and we'll see how flexible the default toll-free numbers are but something tells me they aren't going to work for calls outside NA)

[rmeador]

Nothing makes me wince harder than someone saying "can you fax that over?". This is 2010. Who has a fax machine anymore? If you really need similar functionality, get a scanner, scan your documents, and email them. The only times I've had to use a fax in the past 5+ years is when dealing with the government, and it is painful.

[hellosailor]

I'm with rm on that. Folks who don't know how to "scan to email" might as well still be using Telex. And I know lots of "clerks" who never figured out how to use a fax machine correctly, even for local calls. Most of them will never figure out international dialing prefixes so you'll NEVER get one fax number that "works" globally, there are too many global idiots to use it.

Subscribe to a service that offers "fax to email" and presents your faxes (sent to a regular phone number form a regular fax machine) to your email account. If your clients can't figure out international dialing...subscribe to as many as you need to get them local numbers.

[QuickMick]

this is kinda cool, they give you a number, then automatically email your faxes to you as an attachment. not free, though

Fax Numbers - Start Faxing Online Today with eFax

[edguy3]

I've used efax for many years. Mostly in the USA, but also in Europe.
The experience has been great.

Believe it or not there are still industries in which regulations require faxes and do not permit email.

[QuickMick]

true, edguy, in the financial services industry i cant email anything that has client information on it, as it is not secure enough. kind of a pain, especially with clients who travel a lot and i need a signature, they always seem to say, 'just email to my blackberry and ill fax it back.'

[joeleitz]

Thanks for the link QM, that site does have some international toll free numbers but no worldwide toll-free. Still, getting me down to 4 numbers would be an improvement!

To everyone else, I'm not stuck in the stone age, I have [edit] setup with MetroFax, and I love it, but the numbers they offer aren't giving me enough coverage.

.. however, most of the people I get faxes from DO live in the stone age.. "We can't email that, but we can securely send it by Fax?"


Honestly it looks more like a teleco issue and not a lack of interest in providing a good solution.. I might just have to settle for a few #s over a single.

Thanks for the input!