eFax Hell?

RH Wesson asks: "We use eFax to distribute a 3 page fax once a week to about 75 customers of ours. Yesterday we uploaded a postscript version of our 3 page fax instead of the usual PDF version using the eFax Manager on Windows. We started getting calls from our customers about a 300+ page fax of garbage (it was really postscript source) We spent hours with eFax requesting them to stop the sending of the garbage. eFax was never able to stop it, in fact we spent hours trying to determine if the fax was even in their queue. In short we lost a lot of business that day and managed to piss off ALL of our customers at once. We are going back to using a regular fax machine. Has anyone else had a situation where the danger of technology loosing you business outweigh the efficiencies gained?"

Re:Why did you upload a PS file ?

[jon787]

Efax does not accept them as far as I know.

From: eFax supported File Types [efax.com]

Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) All versions PDF
Adobe Postscript All versions PS
Encapsulated Postscript All versions EPS

eFax DOES support PS

[Gothmolly]

As seen here> [efax.com]
Sounds like they screwed you, dude.

Or you had some app that barfed out nonstandard PS code.

"Loosing"

[antizeus]

See here: Loose-Lose [bgu.edu]

I happen to write fax server software.

[stvangel]

It's the #1 fax server in the country and quite probably the world. Modesty forbids telling you which one, but it starts with an 'R'. I didn't write the core code, but I've written a lot of the additional functionality and touched the majority of the code base over the years. I trust it to be nice and stable, and it has a reputation for reliability and consistency.

Having said that, whenever I send a fax I always send it with "Hold for Preview" so I can look at it first. There is often a big difference between the way a document looks when printed and it looks when faxed, and I want to make sure it looks good and is exactly what I want it to be. The best you can get out of fax is 200x200 black & white if you want to have any general compatibility with the fax machines of the world. If for some reason I can't preview it, I send a test one back to myself and make sure that looks ok. Then I forward it to the real destination or send it to them with exactly the same settings and the exact same source.

People have said "don't you trust your server" and I'm like "would you type a letter and print it out and mail it sight unseen?" There are often differences between the on-screen representation, the printed output, and the faxed output. In particular if you don't realize that fax resolution is 1/6 to 2/3 the resolution of a document printed on a regular printer. I've had people try to fax 600dpi color photos to a 200dpi black and white fax machine then complain about how bad it looks. What do you expect? You have to understand the limitations of your media.