Is 2019 Finally the Year to Ditch the Fax Machine?
Joel
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I believe the short answer is ‘YES’
I’ve never much liked faxes. They are slow, cumbersome and costly compared with modern email and cloud systems. Originally being patented in the 1800’s (before the telephone), use of fax technology peaked in the 1980’s to early 2000’s.
Ask anyone born this millennium about the fax machine and you’ll generally be met with a blank stare. Why? Because to 98% of the population, it’s a relic of the past, serving no useful purpose — just like tape cassettes, video cassettes, CD’s, iPods and so on.
But what about the business sector? Businesses need fax machines right? For legal documents, paperwork and so on. As much as we’ve been itching to ditch our fax line, for more than a decade we’ve taken that view. And for much of it, it’s been true. As a business, we’d receive multiple faxes each week from clients with various documents, forms and so on. But that’s just not true anymore.
For some time now, we’ve noticed the number of genuine faxes we receive falling off a cliff, and the number of spam faxes we receive increasing. We’ve held off for a long time, but it’s 2019 and we think it’s time to say farewell to the fax.
We ran the numbers and in more than 2 years, we’ve received only 2 legitimate faxes. That’s an average of 1 fax a year! And very close to zero in the next year we estimate, hardly worth the expense of maintaining a functioning fax system.
Our fax line has been cancelled as of today
Today, we made the call. Within the next 30 days, our fax line will be completely disconnected. I highly doubt you were about to, but please do not send us faxes, as they will go nowhere. Instead, send us an email. It’s faster, more secure, more versatile and more reliable.
Does your business still maintain a fax machine? Did you cancel it years ago, or perhaps just never had any need for it? My advice would be to run the numbers on how many legitimate faxes you’re actually receiving. Unless they’re very different to ours, is it time to cancel your fax service altogether? Or if you really must have a fax line, my advice would be to bring it into this century and switch your fax line to a machine-less ‘fax to email system‘. That’s what we had in place for the last 10 or so years, and found it to be a whole lot more convenient, more secure, and more cost effective. Will you miss the fax machine? Frankly, we’re happy to see it go.
