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Vonage FAX?

TSgt Mark Hansen emailed the other day from halfway around the world:

Hi Chris, I saw your webpage about Vonage and am asking for your help. I am in the Air Force stationed in Korea, and all Vonage users here are banned from using Vonage equipment on the ISP’s network, who offers their own VoiP service. They do this by blocking all port 50 traffic on their network. So basically, all bases in South Korea have this ban in effect. I went with Skype instead…

Anyways, I am trying to FAX a copy of my orders to Vonage so they can release me from the account and reimburse me. (I’m not holding my breath) I spoke to account management the other day and was given 1-732-528-2669 to fax it to them, but this is not a FAX number. I have a suspicion that theyre going to use the excuse that I never sent my orders in… how could I when the number they gave me isn’t a working FAX number?

I was curious to try FAXing over a Vonage line, but certainly never had to deal with FAXing something to them. He followed up almost immediately:

I got another one from Acct. Management… 1-732-834-0189. I havent verified reciept and closure of the account yet, I have to wait 72 hours, then call back to their wonderful customer service staff and verify…

I actually made the rep stay on the line to ensure it was a working FAX, so I called the wife on the calling card and asked her to call the number to see if it was an actual FAX machine… (remember, I havent verified they actually received it, once I do, I’ll let you know).

If you’d like, you can publish it on your site once verified to assist other Vonage victims… er, customers) They said I had to FAX it to them because they don’t have email… Multi Billion corporate entity and they don’t have email… Hmmm.

Anybody else have any experience(s) with Vonage FAXing?

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15 Comments

if you can get a Linksys RTP300, it will support T.38 Fax over internet with Vonage. It’ll work flawlessly regardless of QoS, jitter, or latency as it terminates the fax call on the RTP300. I haven’t had a problem since I switched to it.

Fax & Vonage are almost mutually exclusive terms. If you can manually override your machine to tell it to connect at 9600, you might have some luck, but in our experience with both home and business accounts, they can’t claim to support faxing at all.

At one point I had a home office for myself, aside from my real office and used a single vonage line. I did occasionally use it as a fax line, and had to do some minor configuration on the fax machine to make it work. (mostly with transmission rates) As long as you have a pretty consistent stream of bandwidth, I didn’t notice any problems.

Fax is such an ancient technology… When will this madness end?

I personally use comcast for voice and fax. I got my guy that runs my business, and two personal homes to give me a permanent special for $4 a fax line, but it;s normally $10 which is still not a bad deal being it’s free domestic long distance faxing.

I tried vonage and personally i didn’t like it or maybe it didn’t like me because i have comcast. i have no idea but never had any issues with comcast voice. they also had a muck up (what a suprise) in billing and i get the triple play promotion for two years for my office, and two homes. So maybe it’s who you talk to or whatevr i don’t know but i have never had anything but good things to say about comcast….i know i am, what seems like, 1 in a million who loves comcast.

Clive Mansbridge

April 26th, 2008
at 4:32am

I’ve been using Vonage for about three years. Apart from an initial delay in having my existing Bellsouth number transferred, the service has been near flawless. I have two lines, one for voice and the other for fax. I’ve never had a problem sending or receiving faxes that was solely Vonage related. My only gripe is that our Comcast broadband connection goes down too frequently but Vonage can’t do anything about that. I do have it set up so that if there is a temporary connection disruption, voice calls are automatically re-routed to my cellphone number. That works like a charm too so I find it hard to understand why some users have so many problems.

I fax 2-3 times a week over our Vonage Account. Works fine.

Well, I have Vonage. And, I fax through their service all the time. But I have never faxed directly to them. As far as I’m concerned, it is the same as faxing through a normal land line. But I’m glad to hear anything about services I have to keep on top of any short comings or even positive feedback.

I’ve never had any issue faxing anything over a Vonage line, as I do have my fax machine on my regular Vonage voice line. So whenever someone needs to fax me I just tell them to call ahead so I can let the fax answer. However, I’ll agree that Vonage customer service can be quite contrary and give mixed signals as well as shady answers among speaking to several agents. Most of the customer service reps that I’ve spoken to have been either from the Philipines or Chile, but that’s no surprise. It looks like if they’re the number one digital phone service they could actually have American customer service people.

I’ve been faxing over a Vonage line for almost three years- no problems whatsoever. I’ve been very happy with Vonage service. I pay $18.04 a month for the 500 free minutes plan (of which we maybe use half). That’s less than half of what Verizon would charge- probably a third if you count the long distance. My church has had four Vonage lines and saves over $200/month compared to commercial POT service. I’ll be happy until (and if) I can transfer my number to http://www.majicjack.com service and then save another $15+/month.

For TSgt Hansen:

I’ll fax it for you. I have a 1-800 fax number from TrustFax (I pay for the service - it’s not free) that I can send and receive any fax from/to.

The way it works is I scan the document into my computer as a .pdf, send it to Trustfax with the number to fax to, and they do the rest - I even get an e-mail from them saying the fax did/did not go through.

V/R

SFC Wayman, Seoul, S. Korea.

Chris,
I have been using Vonage for about two years and have never had any trouble sending or receiving faxing. I have two Vonage lines and use a line switcher to switch a fax machine between the two lines.

I would guess that if the ISP is determined to block faxes that their us little you could do.

I did try the same thing with Gizmo Project and was never able to get the fax to work.

Vonage FAX?TSgt Mark Hansen emailed the other day from halfway around the world:Hi Chris, I saw your webpage about Vonage and am asking…

has anyone tried the following configuration?

vonage box -> phone line -> Y splitter -> 2 phone cords, one to fax machine and one to phone line.

when i try it, i get both a dial tone and a womans voice from the vonage box saying i’m not plugged into the correct port. when i disconnect one or the other from the Y splitter, the remaining one works fine. any ideas?

fax line with 500 local and long distance minutes of outgoing fax service to the US (including Puerto Rico) and Canada, plus unlimited incoming faxes each month. Residential account you get a Vonage fax line for $9.99 per .[Chris Pirillo] Vonage FAX?: Anyways, I am trying to FAX a copy of my orders to Vonage so they can release me from the account and reimburse me. (I’m not holding my breath) I spoke to account management the other day and was given 1-732-528-2669 to

I’ve been with Vonage for a few years, no problem whatsoever except sometimes on international calls to Latin America, never USA, Europe or Australia.
Even the Vonage customer service were a little confused about the Fax Service, they have a free fax you can use to send faxes over the internet that can handle Word files, pdf (single color), jpegs and some more. But to send faxes the best solution seems to be WinFax (no fax machine, just your computer and a scanner).
To make it work you have to either have a dedicated phone line or do as I do, which is simply unplug the line that goes out of the modem-fax board to the home phone wires. Easy and cheap.
This is only to receive faxes, if you’re just sending you don’t have to unplug anything.
Good luck

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