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?"

Comments

Why did you upload a PS file ?

[linzeal]

Efax does not accept them as far as I know. That would be mistake #1. What advantages would a PS file possibly have over a PDF, did you just want to try to save in a new format willy nilly? Do you run a business or a fun house?

Re:Why did you upload a PS file ?

[E_elven]

You forgot to read the small print:

P.S. Muhahaahaaaaa!!!!!!!!111

Bwahahaha

[snorklebarf]

Sorry, that's just funny. But I shouldn't be laughing at your problems.
Aaaaanyway, the "dangers" of modern day technology! BAH! The SAME THING happened to me ..well, not the SAME thing.. with a regular fax machine. I was going to send a 4 or 5 page fax to a partner... with the fax machine that was known to be "acting up". I just put the papers in the tray, hit the speed dial and Send and left.... only to come back about an hour later to find that the fax was still transmitting. Next day I got a call from our partner, telling me i owed them a roll of fax paper :). Thank God for office supplies.

Heh

[Jerf]

Only with computers can you make millions of mistakes per second.

Test fax

[k4_pacific]

Perhaps it might be prudent to send the file to a single fax machine first, to make sure that this won't happen in the future. As for the current siuation, perhaps you can fax your customers some blank paper to make up the loss.

Next week on Ask Slashdot:
Same guy writes: I faxed my customers an apology for crapflooding their fax machines, but eFax misinterpreted the PostScript file again and they got another 300 pages of garbage. They're really pissed now. Man, is eFax screwy or what?

Yup

[DesScorp]

"Has anyone else had a situation where the danger of technology loosing you business outweigh the efficiencies gained?"

It was called Windows...

Re:You changed formats and didn't bother to test i

[raju1kabir]

This is limitation resulting from first generation 20th century software. 21st century software will note that a person is sending an unusually large document and check (using OCR and a spell checker in the local language on the random portions of the file) to see if it is a rogue transmission

Good God, I hope not.

It looks like you're trying to write a letter! Would you like some tips?

Sounds familiar? That's what you get when some idiot programmer decides to try to outsmart the users by guessing what they're doing: An unholy pain in the rear that every halfway-experienced user makes it their first order of business to deactivate with extreme prejudice before trying to make productive use of their a computer.

When I am trying to crush a deadly snake that is slithering across my thumb, the last thing I want is my Microsoft Hammer beeping at me and refusing to deal the blow because there's no nail around and it's worried I might accidentally hurt my thumb.

Pwned!

[Glonoinha]

Yet another successful project spearheaded by the Sales Prevention Team!

Tune in next week when we bury our customers in Spam, sell their contact information to telemarketers, and (yes!) actually call them at home while they are eating dinner.

Customers getting complacent or even borderline happy with your service?
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Call us and we will send one of our Sales Prevention Professionals right over to straighten matters out. No job too big, no product too good - at SPT we guarantee results!