A couple weeks ago, our fax machine stopped working. Common sense just tells me that actually buying a new one would be like buying a new Sony Walkman cassette player… stupid. And we’re kinda wannabe hippies, so we’re trying to have a completely paperless office. And the whole paperless thing is going very well, except for the annoying fax thing.
Every health insurance company we work with in Colorado still does some administrative correspondence by fax. I just got off the phone with United Healthcare. The lady told me that she would be able to email me a form that I needed to fill out. It’s in “pdf” format, so I asked if I could just fill it out electronically and email it back to her.
She said “unfortunately, we don’t have that capability”.
“Can’t I just email it back to the address that it was sent from?” I asked.
“No, that mailbox isn’t monitored.” She replied.
So, now I have to print it out on my end just to fill it out and fax it back to them. And on their end it will print out of their fax machine in a barely readable format. Wouldn’t it be easier to just tell the person who is monitoring the fax machine to start monitoring the email address?
Just to be able to get things done, I reluctantly signed up for one of those electronic fax services where I’ll now start receiving the faxes as an attachment to an email. This way, I can still maintain my paperless office by doing everything electronically. I’m just paying an extra monthly fee to do the same thing that should be done for free by email. If you happen to be one of those people that requires documents to be sent by fax instead of email, you’re scum.
