That’s one of the platitudes I learned while growing up. So, ingrained as it is, it usually takes me forever to decide to purchase something. Whether I really need it or even it’s something I want on a lark. Note, I said “usually”, and that’s most of the time!
So that’s why I didn’t have any means to receive or send a fax until this past summer. Never mind that if I needed to fax something my drive to Staples was a good 10 miles round trip, and it cost me $1.25 for the first page and $1.00 each additional page. Even though deep down I just knew I single-handedly put the three kids of the Staples sales person through college with my trips back and forth to send faxes to appease my insurance carrier.
Between the fourth trip to Staples and the telephone call from one particular client who wanted something faxed to her for her meeting in California that evening, it finally became clear to me I really needed to cut the craziness in my thinking and get a fax machine. Like now! (I really had been thinking about doing so, but I just wasn’t quite ready to part with the money.)
Nevertheless, I began to look around the Internet in an effort to consider the options that might be available. I also read lots of pros and cons in posts on many of the message boards about various fax machines and online fax centers.
In the end, I chose a somewhat obscure (spelled “n.e.w” to me) online fax service; in fact, I hadn’t read any comments about it by anyone I knew. So far, I’ve been very, very satisfied with trustfax.com.
Briefly, the www.trustfax.com Web site outlines the following features in their products:
- Plans Start at Under $5 a Month
- No Fax Machine or Phone Line Required
- No Activation or Setup Fees
- Get Your Fax Number Immediately
- Toll-Free and Local Fax Numbers
- Easy Set Up - No downloading, No software, No hardware
- Sending and receiving faxes - anywhere, anytime - is easy
- 24/7 Email support
They have at least eight different plans; with some, if you choose to pay a yearly fee rather than monthly, you pay an additional 5 cents for each page sent/received over a certain number of fax pages. In my case, the yearly fee included up to 150 fax pages free. Anything faxed/received after that, costs 5 cents a page. When a fax is sent to you, it comes to your email box as a PDF attachment, or you can read it online at your secure fax email box.
So while Staples is missing me immensely (nope, they can’t convince me that next kid needs a college education with my money), I’m content to continue to use my online fax. I’ve discovered I also save time by not driving off to Staples into the sunset!
And in the end, isn’t that what we VAs are all about!
