Ugh. I have hated faxes since the fax machine was born. Made even worse by the comedy, Office Space (oh, I've done my share of fax-busting, Casino-style), the dreaded fax is dead.
Or so I thought.
Starting this business has brought my hatred of the fax machine to the forefront, again. Ahem.
I really hoped that my hate affair with fax machines ended when I killed my last fax machine. Remember that crummy paper? Well, that was gone, but they still just sucked…until a couple of years ago when I went "faxless."
Most people want to go paperless. I just wanted to go faxless.
But no more. The dreaded fax reared its ugly head today when I discovered that there were only 2 ways to submit my Chamber of Commerce membership application – via mail or via fax.
Are you freaking kidding me?
Irony: The local Chamber of Commerce has no electronic means of accepting an application. That, in a word, is stupid. And greedy. I don't know how much it costs to run a Chamber, but I just paid $277 for a membership. You'd think with 800 member companies that they could afford a secure server or at the very least a secure online application (like box.net) that you could send your documents to.
Nope. None of that.
So I went to my tried-and-true electronic-fax-sending whiz bang online application, box.net. They use eFax to send faxes. Only now they don't. At least they don't for free. They used to.
In theory, it's simple: Scan the document you want to fax, upload to box.net, right click on the file and voila! choose eFax.
Only eFax wasn't listed any more. It's a "premium upgrade." Sure. Whatever.
Then I tried faxzero.com. Snazzy. Upload, enter in contact details. Send. Wait for email confirmation. Click the link. Wait.
I got a "cannot send fax" message. WTF?
Then I tried GotFreeFax.com. It is nearly identical to faxzero.com.
Except that it works!
Yippee!!!
Long story short: I will now use GotFreeFax.com. It's super simple and it works. And it's free.
(I know, free in this case cost me time. I could have saved time by taking out my wallet. But my disdain for faxes and fax machines and paid-for services that used to be free with no announcement of the change totally pisses me off.)
"It's super simple and it works. And it's free…"
Suitable for personal use since free services usually are limited in features, functionality and lacks customer support. Moreover, they're ad-driven.
@ Internet Fax — in most cases, yes, but in this case, it’s free up to 30 pages (if memory serves) and it’s NOT ad-driven. Pretty cool, huh?
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http://www.paygofax.com is another website that allows free outgoing faxes. For paid faxes it takes a CC (i.e. not PayPal like FaxZero or GotFreeFax).