Fax it to Me

In the past two weeks, I have been asked to do something involving fax twice.  One was a bank, asking for my employer's fax number.  The other was Medicaid asking for a fax with ID and car insurance information.  Whenever something like this happens, it makes me wonder, "Do you realize that fax was obsolete over 10 years ago?"

My parents got their first scanner around 2000, and they were a bit behind on technology.  This did not totally obsolete fax, because dial up internet was still common, and it could take 30 minutes or more to upload a half decent scan.  Back then, modems often came with software for faxing from a scanned image, mostly for backward compatibility.  This was faster than email, because the image quality could be dramatically reduced, but few people ever used this technology, for the reason I am going to discuss next.  By 2005 though, internet speeds and computer technology had outstripped fax to the point where it is no longer worth wasting the money on the machine and the extra phone line.

The second problem is that even when faxing was still cool, normal people did not have fax machines.  I can understand the bank asking for my employer's fax number.  They may be behind the times, but there was a time when most businesses actually used fax machines.  Even small home businesses often had fax numbers.  The thing is, fax machines were never household appliances.  When Medicaid asks for a fax of anything from someone they provide insurance to, they are asking that person to find a business that still uses fax, and get permission to use it to fax information (and keep in mind that Medicaid patients almost certainly cannot afford the hardware and the extra phone line).  The thing is, even copy stores, where normal people used to go when they needed to send a fax, don't typically have fax machines anymore.  Their copiers can almost certainly email a scanned image, but fax machines are ancient technology, even to them.

The absurdity of it all is astounding.  There are still businesses that buy fax machines and spend money on extra phone lines for faxing, when they could just be using the scanners that come built into their printers, and the email programs on the computers that they are already using.  Some printers even have an option for emailing a scan directly, without even needing to open your email program.

The moral of this story: Don't assume that someone you need information from has access to ancient technology that has been obsolete for over a decade.  They probably don't.  If you can't be bothered to use the modern technology you already have to replace expensive processes no one uses anymore, you are probably a burden on society that needs to be put down and replaced with something that can keep up.