Making the Switch to Electronic Faxes
We run an office and a technology company and I find faxes a pain. They come in and they need to be sorted and stored, so they take up space and paper. I also find maintaining our fax machine a pain. Our fax machine is a nice little Panasonic – but it is old school and requires a roll of carbon film instead of ink for printing. It runs out every few weeks and swapping it as well as shopping for supplies is a pain. Worse yet, when I looked at the used carbon films last week I realized how inefficient they are. The carbon pages are wasteful, as is using paper to receive faxes. Besides, filing electronic documents is much easier that filing paper documents (clutter, physical office space, searchability later on).So…we’ll be making the move to eFaxing solutions soon. Here are a couple we are looking at:
http://www.efax.com/ (highly recommended by a friend)
http://www.myfax.com/ (looks pretty good)
Do you have thoughts on these providers or any recommendations?
P.S. For any of you who are mobile workers, eFaxing seems like a great addition to your toolbox.
Copyright © 2000-2009
1:58 pm
I’m a big fan of Send2Fax after research and testing several. Your “friend” who recommended efax may not technically qualify for that title.
http://www.workhappy.net/2005/06/send2fax.html
2:39 pm
We’ve used efax.com at our company for many years. We have one efax number, and all faxes go to an email address that forwards to everyone here. If the fax is for you great, if not, delete it. It works well.
3:34 pm
I use eFax also, but just the free version since I get maybe 1 fax every month… It would be great to find a system that we pay for how many we get.. I do like eFax though it seems to work every time I need to use it
6:58 pm
Hi Mike,
I have been using j2.com for more than 6 years now, they are fine.
7:25 pm
I rarely need to fax or receive faxes, so I found trustfax.com, which gives me a 800- fax number at just $20 / year. That level of service gives me 70 fax pages sent/received per the year. If I need more, TrustFax allows me to upgrade to other levels.
7:48 am
Thanks everyone – looks like this isn’t going to be an easy decision
8:05 am
Hi everyone, I’ve been using eFax.com for about 6 months now on the $12.95/mo plan, and I was just informed that the price is going up to $16.95/mo for 130 faxes received / 30 sent per month. The only way to lock in the $12.95 would be to pay for a year at once, but then it goes back to $16.95 after that anyway. I would like to get on a cheaper plan or a pay as you go. $17/mo for how many faxes I send/receive is a lot. And their stupid proprietary software bugs me with ads when all I use it for is converting the fax to PDF.
Looks like a switch to TrustFax or Send2Fax is in order. Thanks for posting this and in turn introducing me to some cheaper and it looks like better alternatives.
8:48 am
So, after reading about my alternatives, I’ve attemped to cancel my eFax account…. I think we should start a new saying on the web: You can tell the quality of a web service by how easy it is to cancel.
First off, there were no links on their website for cancelling anywhere. I even looked through all their FAQs. Then I called Customer Service, went through about 5 menu selections to be told by a recording to go to http://www.efax.com/cancel to open a chat window with a representative (which btw, only works in IE). I tell him to cancel my account, and he then proceeds to copy/paste huge paragraphs about re-evaluating on a 2 month free trial, and I say, “No, I’m not interested, just cancel my account.” To which he replies again, “Well, this 2 month trial.. blah blah blah… and we’re just going to set that up for you, and then you can contact us again in 2 months if you’re unsatisfied…” And I then had to tell him to cancel my account again, and finally, I’m cancelled. We’ll see if they continue to bill me or not.
I hope that helps sway your decision.
9:12 am
Wow…thanks for sharing Ryan, and I’m sorry to hear you had such difficulty.
On the up side, I trust it’s not just me who will benefit from your post. Again, thanks for sharing.
11:41 am
I wonder if efax subscribes to AOL’s training manual.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIVZ9b0RgmY
11:55 am
That video was hilarious!
Kids, don’t try this at home:
http://www.freshbooks.com/help/269/
12:11 pm
What proprietary efax software for reading are you all talking about? You can set efax to use pdf from their web portal. And if you only use it to receive (as I do), you don’t need to install any software – other than Adobe Reader.
5:29 pm
By the way, I just checked with TrustFax and you can only send faxes to their numbers from North America.
And I went online to see what it was like to cancel efax and they were ready to go as soon as I clicked to chat. No difficulty at all. And they were happy to refund me the unused portion for the year.
5:56 pm
Rob – I think the investigative skills of those journalists you hang out with are rubbing off on you
Thanks for the update.
1:53 am
Go with J2.com. They’re great and my voicemails/faxes get attached as a WAV/PDF in an email. Plus they have local #s in Canada.
7:57 am
Here is another that comes highly recommend via back channel discussions: http://www.faxfreedom.com/home.html
12:50 pm
I use myfax for my solo law practice, and so far am quite happy. I don’t know whether this carries any weight with you folks, but myfax pays its taxes to the CRA just like you do.
EL
2:47 am
My office uses Snappy’s fax server and loves it.
12:26 pm
Please cancel my e-fax account.
12:27 pm
Please cancel my e-fax account
2:34 pm
[...] 3rd Place: “Making the Switch to Electronic Faxes” with 20 comments. “We run an office and a technology company and I find faxes a pain. They come in and they need to be sorted and stored, so they take up space and paper. I also find maintaining our fax machine a pain.” [...]
12:37 pm
we use Single Number Reach from Bell — about $39 / month — comes with “call director” to forward 10 extensions to other phones and a message inbox of storage of upto 20 faxes at a time. It’s not a bad option if you don’t have a central office but need a centralized phone number.
5:57 pm
I wish to cancel my e-fax account.
Gary Hofsommer
12:44 am
Gary – we’re not actually e-fax. You can reach them at efax.com to cancel your account.
1:46 pm
I had the same problem canceling. When asked for permission to resolve any problems, I replied “NO!!!!! Cancel my account. I have already informed my credit card company to dispute any further charges.” They canceled immediately and gave me a conformation number at my request.
11:29 am
please cancel my account upon receipt of this message.
3:11 pm
Hi Marie…please contact the company you are trying to reach directly…this is the FreshBooks blog and we are not a eFax provider.
thanks.
3:34 pm
Ridiculous! I’ve had to search google for links on how to cancel efax and finally found this site. Please cancel my account immediately. I did not want to go public but my emails have gone unanswered for far too long.
5:59 pm
I did not subscribe to efax.com! There is a $179.50 charge to my Visa account! I am disputing this charge.
Please issue a credit immediately!
thank you,
Linda Call
6:01 pm
Maybe Efax.com should not leave a message to contact this site to cancel Efax.com!!!!!!!
11:52 am
Linda and others, could you point out this reference to us? I’ve actually had an awful Efax.com experience myself, so I’m curious as to why people are getting confused and coming here to cancel their accounts.
3:23 pm
Efax sucks. I just cancelled the service. They start you off at $12.95, but don’t mention that each page over 120 pages is $0.15/page! The efax Pro is $20/month, and that includes 200 pages. Fax.com is $9.99/month, and that includes 300 pages, and each additional page is $0.12/page. I’m going to see how that goes. Canceling was ridiculous. They make you enter a chat room, where a guy keeps typing and telling you not to quit. Absolutely ridiculous. Search for other options!!!!!
9:09 pm
Thank you so much for this blog. It helped me tremendously in knowing what I was about to deal with and prepared me well. Thank you most for posting the link to the chat room – I avoided calling the line alltogether. I use a Mac, and I tried Safari, IE, and Firefox, and only the last one finally brought up the chat and got me in the chat room. I used T3 connection speed, and even with that the browsers kept loading very slowly. I successfully logged in to chat, but by the time the page refreshed, the representative had already greeted me and had time to have a 5 phrase conversation wtih himself and terminate the chat. I tried again, and the second time it worked. Once I was in, the cancelation process went painlessly. I stated the fax number I wanted to cancel, and the rep asked for the PIN ‘for verification.’ As she was pulling up my account, she asked that I selected one of the eight reasons for canceling: 1) Moving to another provider; 2) Bought a Fax machine; 3) Business or role changed; 4) Short term project completed; 5) Financial reasons; 6) Problems with Faxing or Billing; 7) Dissatisfied with Quality of service;
Too Costly. I have a feeling that they are trained to argue any of the above reasons to keep their paying customers. I said my husband had an account with them already, and I was going to use his account when needed. I received no objections to that and a confirmation that my account was cancelled. I tried logging in with the fax number and the PIN, and the login failed, so it seems to have been canceled indeed.
I hope the above questions can help someone in chatting wiht the eFax rep, and that your experience will not be as horrible as posted in so many online blogs.
12:14 am
LOL, I find this thread hilarious!
9:13 pm
Hello Obie, please explain how you were able to cancel. Did Mike from Freshbooks cancel the account himself?
Here there Mike, I appreciate your candid review but listen here, I want my dagnab account canceled immediately. In addition to the immediate cancellation of my account I demand written confirmation and a refund of $51.91.
P.S. I see that you’re off gallivanting in the United States… probably on my dollar… approximately 51 of them!
9:54 am
Hey Furley – I have no affiliation with eFax and therefore cannot cancel accounts. I thought for a second you might be a FreshBooks customer so I checked our records for your email address and nothing turned up. If it is indeed FreshBooks – not eFax or any another service – who is still billing you erroneously, please contact us and we will immediately stop charging you. I have a feeling you are mixing me and FreshBooks up with another service provider, but please correct me if I am wrong.
As for gallivanting in the United States, Sunir and I attended a conference recently in San Fransisco and had the opportunity to take some of our customers out for dinner. It was a wonderful night and you can read more about it here.
11:16 am
I highly recommend ureach.com for your faxing needs, at least for incoming. They would charge you 12 USD per month or so (more if you use their voicemail) and they are worth it. They are essentially voice-to-email bridge.
All your incoming faxes would go to your inbox which can be accessed by web, email (POP and IMAP) and also IVR (call in to forward to another fax.) You can get toll-free or local U.S. number from them. They can automatically forward your incoming faxes to email address.
I use them for at least 5 years and they are wonderful,
12:46 pm
Does anyone know of a place I can keep my invoices and have them auto-faxed out once a week? I have to manually fax each invoice through my email (via myfax.com) once a week and it’s terrible. I have been doing this for over a year! My clients tend to not have email or don’t check it so the faxing is my only tool. I love the email feature freshbooks…don’t ever remove it.
Any Advice? God Bless!
11:14 pm
Please accept this notice as my final request to cancel my service. As per my emails to your company, I stopped using eFax, as a result of several technical problems, as of November 3.
Michael, I expect to see a credit adjustment by the end of the month.
Regards,
Robin Hecht
10:31 am
Robin – sadly I have no affiliation with eFax – FreshBooks is a totally different company who merely wrote a blog post about electronic faxes. I’m sorry I cannot be of further assistance a good luck with eFax.
12:12 am
LOL!! The thread exceeded expectations!
7:40 pm
Although I called and cancelled service with FAX.COM during the free trial period, they are presently claiming that they have no record of my cancellation and are being completely relentless in receiving payment for services I did not use. Ridiculous, sheisty…. and completely aggrivating.
4:35 pm
I tried efax for 30 days, seemed to work although hard to navigate.
After the trial and I was billed the faxes quit coming through. very frustrating. Tech support is in India, they are obviously given scripts to quite, could not trouble shoot or fix. Offered to give me another 2 months free while they “work it out”. I insisted on them canceling the service.
4:38 pm
AVOID efax !!!!!