Wee hours rant: Never set a fax on automatic redial!

[Lydia Leftcoast]

It's 4AM, and I've just spent half an hour trying to get repeated attempted fax transmissions to my voice phone stopped. Yelling into the phone did no good--obviously, no one was monitoring it.

My cheapo phone doesn't have a caller ID screen, but I finally got the bright idea of going to the Vonage website and checking the incoming calls. From there, I used Google to discover that the culprit was a client in Japan. So I sent e-mail to my contact there as well as a fax to that number.

The fax attempts kept coming in. I finally looked up the voice phone number of the client and talked to a receptionist who told me that nearly everyone had gone home. (It's about 7PM there.) Finally, I got transferred to someone who had the power to stop the $%^&* faxes.

So the moral of this story is: If you have to send a fax unattended, don't set it to keep trying indefinitely. You may be driving someone crazy.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

1. Kick for sympathy and for the education of all people who work with

faxes. :-(

[some guy]

2. I'll sympathize...

:hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug: :hug:

I'm sorry you had so many fax-attempts coming to your non-fax phone number.

That would definitely suck.

:hi:

[Lydia Leftcoast]

3. Wow, all those hugs!

Thanks! :-)

[some guy]

5. one per fax attempt?

I was just kind of guessing, but I'll bet your phone actually rang a hundred times or more... redial after three minutes(?) x a few hours...

:crazy: I would be...

[Lydia Leftcoast]

6. It was more like a half hour with attempts every three minutes.

So ten phone calls, although it sure SEEMED like a million or so, especially at that hour.

[some guy]

8. well, okay

two hugs per fax attempt then. I'm sorry, I've given them, I can't take them back :)

You'll have to find some one else to give any of the un-needed ones to :D

It *was* at a late hour, and besides, no one else had replied to your thread at the time... I figured you could use extra.

They have a long shelf life, but they do get soggy in milk...

:rofl:

:hi:

[flamingyouth]

4. You have my sympathy!

Someone did that to us last week! Turned out to be a company in New Mexico, but the caller ID abbreviated their name so I couldn't look them up, and when I called them all I got was a busy signal. :banghead:

I can't believe the lengths you had to go to!!

[Midlodemocrat]

7. That happens to me all the time.

My 800# is one digit off from General Motors Acceptance Corporation's fax number and I get insurance reports all the frickin' time. I finally stopped trying to track people down and just let the fax come through.

They'll figure it out when they don't get reimbursed for their car repair.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. My fax number in Portland was one digit off from that of a headhunting firm

I'd get all these fancy executive resumes.

I prepared a bit of boilerplate to fax back to them: "The fax you just sent went to a private home, 503-abc-defg The correct number is 503-acb-defg."

[IA_Seth]

10. A fix for next time...

Transfer the incoming call to your fax....problem solved.

I've done it in the past, it worked for me.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

11. Excellent idea, but I wasn't thinking too clearly at that point, due to

a combination of sleepiness and rage.

[IA_Seth]

12. Believe me, I've been there! n/t