Poll: Does your shop have a fax number?

[Mike Labbe]

Thanks in advance for your participation and healthy discussion.

Does your shop have a fax? Do you think one is needed why/why not?


Healthy discussion welcomed!


​

This is a quick and anonymous survey. The results will be compiled and posted, once it has expired.

 

[Mike Labbe]

We moved the shop to a new site this week, and made the decision that the fax machine wasn't going to make the cut. As a result, we terminated the dedicated fax number. It seems that the technology is obsolete and that most folks use email instead, and it's just a magnet for fax spammers. Most customers are on VOIP now, which isn't very friendly to fax machines, and I feel i is a dying/dead technology.

We'll probably keep the fax machine somewhere, like the basement/joining room, for outgoing only - for the once or twice a year that we want to send a fax.

I figured it would make an interesting poll to see how others do it in their shop, and if others have come to the same conclusion. Discussion welcomed!

Mike

 

[Mo Elyas]

I do. It's a virtual number with a virtual fax machine. I only get spam on it. :-(


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Randy Parrish CPF]

If i need to send one I use, https://www.myfax.com/free/

 

[Mark Roberts]

Switched to VOIP this year and now receive faxes via email. Can still send via software on the computer, but rarely do. Sure don't miss the spam faxes!

 

[Gregory K. Norris CPF]

Still have the number with the distinctive ring....but the machine is long gone. By the time it went, we were only getting restaurant menus and other sales materials. We do a lot of email and have for about 10 years. Customers seem to like being able to send a pic and the dimensions to speed up the selection process. They tend to be busy people and usually set a time to come in, which is helpful. I can have some suggestions waiting.

I have a number of customers who email photos for printing. I can have them ready a few days later so they can stop by for framing selections.

Faxes live on and will for a while since most court systems will accept faxed documents but do not consider email--even encrypted--to be secure enough. Look at the number of lawyers in a phone book--if you can find one--and you will see why office supply stores still have them!:shame:

 

[Cliff Wilson MCPF]

I still have a dedicated line and machine, but I only give out the number when there seems to be no alternative.

My wife works in UMass Memorial Hospital and they are required to use a FAX for a number of things including prescriptions.

 

[John Ranes II CPF GCF]

Still have dedicated machine and number. It's there and used seldom. The number of incoming spam faxes have diminished greatly over the past year... unfortunately the number of soliciting phone calls on my mobile phone have increased in that same time period. :mmph:

John

 

[Mike Labbe]

There's a great smartphone app to eliminate those calls. HIYA will not only give you free caller id with NAME, but also tells you the likelihood that is a solicitation call or not. It can also block those automatically, if you choose that setting. If you get a new one, you can also report it to the community - for others to benefit. The database tells you what kind of call it is (solar cell sales, credit card consolidation, fake microsoft calls about a virus, etc) It's a good lil app

I have our house phone (Voip) simul ring to my cell, so it catches both of them with the app.

 

[Mike Labbe]

Well we shut off/retired the dedicated fax # a month ago, when we moved, and no one has noticed or complained. (except maybe the fax spammers!) It was one of those Brother all-in-one laser printers with copier/fax/scanner, so I kept it hooked up to one of the extra PC's as a backup for printing - and for the unlikely case where we have to send a fax OUT.

 

[David Waldmann]

We actually have both physical machine/dedicated number used for physical paper outgoing (less complicated than scanning to email) as well as virtual/email for incoming and sending stuff that's already electronic.

We wouldn't have the physical machines except that we have to have two POTS lines for our alarm systems, so since we have the lines already we may as well use them.

I would guess that we get as many orders by FAX as we do from our online ordering system or email. It has always seemed to me that our particular collection of customers are technologically behind the times. So I was pleasantly surprised that when we converted from paper invoices to electronic (almost 2 years ago), that all but about half a dozen of our customers have either a FAX or email address. With the virtual fax/email option, as far as our system is concerned, everyone with a FAX number has an email address.

 

[Mike Labbe]

It has now been 4 months since we dumped the old dedicated fax #, and no one has noticed or cared.

The shop is currently using an ATA (analog telephone adapter) with voice over ip, going to a cordless phone base that has 4 handsets all over the shop. We ordered our first (Polycom) business IP phone last week, and it should be here next week. This device will plug directly into Ethernet to talk with the provider, and promises HD VOICE (voice clarity up to 4x greater than anything else so far, assuming the person on the other end has it too. most cell phones support this technology now, too) One advantage to the ip phones is that they're portable. I could get one for home (or take this one home), for example, and it would work the same as long as it was plugged into ethernet. For now, it's going to sit next to the main POS station at our design counter. For a provider, we are using Verizon BDV (Verizon Fios/Fiber Business Digital Voice). They are technically buying the voip service from cloud provider Broadsoft. We did have some serious problems at first with dropped calls, and eventually figured out that it was due to bad firmware in Verizon's newest router. It has a reliability issue dropping the signal every 3 minutes briefly, sensitive enough to knock out the ATA but not the computers using the internet. They downgraded us to the previous model, for now, until it gets fixed.