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Articles
| Back To List | FAQ(s) found under General Info | Showing 1 Of 3 | Next |
| Stopping Junk Faxes 2006-01-26 |
| by Jordan Fox The fax machine in my home office rang just after midnight a few nights ago. You can imagine the thoughts that spin through your head when a call suddenly interrupts your sleep at that hour. As I shuffled the short distance from my bedroom to my office, I muttered, "This had better be important." It wasn't. It was just an unsolicited broadcast fax announcing a business conference that I had no interest in attending. The dreaded "junk fax" had struck again. That will teach me to keep my fax machine on overnight! As long as I was up, I e-mailed the sender and stated in no uncertain terms that my name should be taken off their broadcast list. Did they comply? Remains to be seen. Are you being plagued by junk faxes? If so, is there anything you can do about it? Unsolicited faxes are often a violation of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act of 1991, which is found in Title 47 of the U.S. Code, section 227. The law states that it's unlawful "to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine." So, if you're getting junk faxes, you could conceivably contact your attorney if the problem persists. Breaking that law can result in a $500 fine per violation. In other words, every unsolicited fax could cost the sender $500. And these fines can be tripled if violations are committed willfully or knowingly. The company represented in the fax is liable under the law. They may or may not be the actual fax sender, but in any case, the sender is required to provide on the margin of the first page the date, the time, the sender's identity, and the telephone number of either the fax machine or a phone number where the sender can be reached. "Before the law was passed nine years ago, it wasn't uncommon for a backlog of junk faxes to pile up here on weekends and greet you on Monday morning," says Dave Fantle, PR director for Wisconsin Gas Co. in Milwaukee. "But things have gotten better since then. We have about 30 fax machines throughout our company headquarters, and there are occasional fax solicitations, but they're mostly ignored and thrown out. There's no company policy about them." Writing in PC World magazine several years ago, Dennis Eskow explained that junk faxes are like e-mail spam, except with the former you pay for the ink and paper. "The solution is pretty much the case as with unwelcome e-mail: Let the junk fax pushers know you won't take it, and contact your local phone company and Better Business Bureau authorities," he suggested. Like unwanted telemarketing calls and spam, their information age cousins, junk faxes are considered a problem-or at least a nuisance-by some in corporate America today. Vaughn Werning, NEW Cooperative, Fort Dodge, Iowa, agrees. In a recent e-mail to OfficeSolutions magazine, he wrote, "I oversee most of the faxes that are received by our firm and get swamped with so-called junk faxes. Many of these are solicitations for discount travel packages or computer equipment. But our firm doesn't want our fax machine tied up by them. Whenever they have explicit instructions on how to be removed from their lists, I follow them. This has worked to a great extent, but I do have a few firms that continue to fax us their material despite our request." Dr. Jerry Zelm, a chiropractor and occupational health consultant based in Oconomowoc, Wis., says his Back 2 Health Co. gets a lot of junk faxes. "They're a nuisance, like the phone calls we get from telemarketers. We quickly look at them and then toss them. I'd say only one in 25 is helpful and worth keeping." One of the problems with junk faxes, according to Zeim, is his company's inability to send any faxes while the junk faxes are tying up the fax machine. "When we get a chance, we do respond to an offer by a company called The Fax Police. They're a free service intended to keep fax lists clean, and they ask recipients of unwanted faxes to fax them to their offices. If you fax them to 303/299-9312, they'll contact the offending companies and have your number removed from their lists." In San Jose, Calif., Yvonne Knight, a receptionist with DRB Partners, an advertising and public relations agency, is very much aware of the problem. According to Knight, her company gets approximately 20 junk faxes each day, many of them after hours. "I come in to work in the morning and find them. Maybe 99 percent of them are selling things such as vacation trips. I just toss them in the wastebasket." Kari Anderson, executive director of Association Management Partners in Springfield, 111., sees her share of junk faxes too. "They're usually from travel agencies or insurance companies trying to sell us their services. The trouble is they're costing us money by wasting our fax paper and ink. It's not a huge amount of money, but that's not the point," she says. Anderson just throws the unsolicited faxes in the wastebasket but says she'd welcome better ideas to deal with the problem. In Montgomery, Ala., Stephanie Turner, office manager for the law firm of Crosslin, Slaten, and O'Connor, P.C., believes junk faxes are a problem, "but not a major one," she says. "We get a lot, and when we do, I try to phone the senders and ask them to take our name off their lists. That's helped somewhat, but it's time-consuming." Andy McCormack, corporate operations manager for Smithereen Exterminating, headquartered in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, 111., gets about four or five junk faxes each day and considers them a nuisance, not a real problem. The offenders are usually travel agencies and employment agencies, he says. "The fax machine is located just outside my office, and the junk messages immediately wind up in our recycling bin. We don't take the time to ask to be taken off their lists. We're so busy, it's just not worth our effort." In Kansas City, Kan., David Bulk, operations manager for Rhodes Chemical Co., doesn't believe the few junk faxes his company receives are a real problem. "They're generally from local radio stations hyping contests or from computer training companies selling courses. I suppose we could lax or phone them back and ask them to stop, but we really haven't felt the need to do so." Miller Brewing Co. has fax machines in each of their numerous departments at their corporate headquarters in Milwaukee, but PR director Mike Brophy hasn't heard that junk faxes are much of a problem. "We don't have any sweeping measures to get rid of them," he says. If you're looking for ways to cut down on your unsolicited faxes, consider these two creative, attention-getting suggestions: To really make your point with the junk fax offender, create a complaint letter with your computer. Use a large type font. A 72-point font (one inch in height), for example, produces (for a two-paragraph, one-page letter) about 18 pages of text that can be read from across the room. Fax the letter to the culprit. One person who used this technique said he received apologies from several CEOs whose staff members brought this novel style of complaint to their attention. Or, use the following text and fax it to the offender: "YOUR UNSOLICITED FAXES ARE NOT WELCOME HERE. PLEASE READ THIS AND IMMEDIATELY CEASE AND DESIST SENDING THEM TO THIS FAX NUMBER <insert fax number>. "Under U.S. Code Title 47, section 227 (b) (1) (c): "It shall be unlawful for any person within the United States to use any telephone facsimile machine, computer, or other device to send an unsolicited advertisement to a telephone facsimile machine. "A 'telephone facsimile machine' is defined in Sec. 227 (a) (2) (B) as: 'equipment which has the capacity to transcribe text or images (or both) from an electronic signal received over a regular telephone line onto paper.' "Under this definition, an e-mail account, modem, computer and printer together constitute a fax machine. The rights of action are as follows: Under Sec. 227 (b)(3)(B): "A person or entity may, if otherwise permitted by the laws or rules of a court of a State, bring in an appropriate court of that State- "(A) an action based on a violation of this subsection or the regulations prescribed under this subsection to enjoin such violation, "(B) an action to recover for actual monetary loss from such a violation, or to receive $500 in damages for each such violation, whichever is greater, or "(C) both such actions. If the court finds that the defendant willfully or knowingly violated this subsection or the regulations prescribed under this subsection, the court may, in its discretion increase the amount of the award to an amount equal to not more than three times the amount available under subparagraph (B) of this paragraph." That should do the trick. Good luck. This article is from the July edition OfficeSoultions Magazine. |
| Related FAQs In This Category |
| • FTC Do Not Call Update |
| • Unsolicited Broadcast Faxing Laws |
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