DerbyDad03 wrote:
On Apr 13, 7:40 pm, metspitzer wrote:
When I bought my printer, I got it with a fax machine because I still
need it. Many people will let me scan something and email it to them
to avoid a long distance call, but not everyone.

I called the bank today to dispute a direct draft charge to my
checking account. The girl said she would fax me a form. I asked her
if she could just email it to me. She said....no sir, we can't do
that.

So I am waiting on a fax as we speak. I only have one line so my fax
and voice share the same phone number.

Fax machines should have died 15 years ago. They should at least give
them an email address.

It's all about the signature...


Sure, but there are lots of ways to do that aside from faxing a paper
document. Lots of organizations are stuck in the past because of inertia
or just pinching the pennies too much. Think about Fedex or UPS as an
example. 15 years ago the driver handed you a clipboard and indicted
what line you needed to sign. Now he hands you a computer and has you
sign on a screen with a stylus and minutes later your signature can be
viewed on their website.




We fax documents all the time. Documents are signed in our office by
our clients and ourselves and then faxed to insurance companies,
banks, lawyers, financial institutions, etc. Due to compliance
regulations, all documents get approved by one of a small number of
people and then faxed from one central fax machine. This fax machine
not only faxes the documents to the recipient, but it automagically
sends an image of the fax to a centralized storage server for
archiving purposes. The paper copy is also filed and eventually sent
off site for hard copy archiving.

To do this via e-mail or e-fax, we would have to set up a centralized
scanner, either networked to the PC's of the operations staff that
actually does the faxing, or attached directly to a centralized PC -
which would have to be set up with individual accounts for each person
in operations since compliance rules don't allow anybody to do
anything under a shared userid. The operation staff - not the most
tech savvy group around - would need to understand how to access the
documents, address them correctly (is it an e-mail or an e-fax?) and
then send them. They would also have to receive documents, print them
out and distribute them. Since we send and receive dozens of multiple-
page documents every day, there is way too much chance for errors.

Somehow a single machine with a simple numbered keypad just seems so
much simpler - read: idiot proof - for sending and receiving
documents.

Maybe that's why they've lasted so long.