Even in this day and age, you sometimes need to send faxes. When is that dinosaur of a technology going to die out? Maybe when the Canadian government finally concedes that it is no more ‘secure’ a way of transmitting confidential information than is email and allows banks to complete transactions by email? But I digress.

The odd time I need to send a fax, I use Got Free Fax. I’ve been using this service for years and it has never failed me. You can fax up to three pages absolutely free, with no ads on the cover page.

I prepare the fax in PDF format and upload it to the site, bypassing their stock cover page. I then get a page saying that the fax was uploaded and that I was sent a confirmation email that I need to respond to before the fax will be sent.

The email always lands instantly. Once I click on the link for it, I get to a page saying that my fax has been queued, that I can come back and check the status, and that they’ll send a confirmation once the fax is successfully sent.

Within minutes, I get an email saying the fax was queued and then the one saying it was successfully sent.

In the fax I sent Monday, I asked for a confirmation by email that my request was processed and was told I needed to call the bank, which I did yesterday. They said I needed to sign a form that could only be faxed to me. They refused to scan and email it, citing privacy laws.

But get this, they had NO problem calling my mother for her fax number and sending it to her. They did ask how I’d get the fax and I replied that my mother and I work together and have a secure method of transmitting documents. *snickers* We hung up and I called my mother to give her a heads up and that she would need to… scan and email the document to me. Why fight red tape when you can conquer it? 🙂

I got the email this morning in PDF format, so it was child’s play to remove the bank’s cover page, insert my own, type in the name of the city and province in which I was signing the document as well as the date, then finally paste in a scan of my initials (to put next to the clause modifying the contract) and one of my signature. I saved the PDF and faxed it off. Bureaucracy conquered!