Why a fax fails, and what it costs you

This is the complete list. It is the same set the product itself uses to classify a carrier’s answer, so nothing here is a generalization about fax — it is what your record will say.

BusyRetried

The recipient's line was busy.

No answerRetried

The recipient's fax machine did not answer.

Not a fax lineTerminal

Nothing answered as a fax at that number, so we stopped trying.

Invalid numberTerminal

That number is not a valid US fax number.

Call rejectedTerminal

The receiving system rejected the call.

Network errorRetried

The fax network reported an error on its side.

Not dialedRetried

We could not place the call, so that number was never dialed. This was a problem on our side, not with the number you entered.

Document rejectedTerminal

The fax network could not process the document.

Pages incompleteRetried

The receiving fax system stopped before it acknowledged every page.

FailedTerminal

The fax network did not tell us why.

A fax machine is a telephone, and a busy signal means somebody else is sending to it right now. Small offices frequently have one line, and the middle of a weekday morning is exactly when everyone else is faxing them too.

So the five reasons marked Retried above — a busy line, a line that does not answer, a network error on the carrier’s side, a call we could not place at all, and a call that dropped part-way through — are dialed again, up to 3 attempts, 2 minutes and then 8 minutes apart. You do not have to do anything and you are not charged per attempt; it is one fax at one price however many times we dial.

The other reasons are terminal the moment they happen, because repeating them cannot change the answer. An invalid number is invalid on the second dial.

A busy signal tells us something is on the line. Silence does not: a call that connects and never negotiates might be a bad line, and it might be somebody’s desk phone. The fax network reports the two the same way and cannot tell us which, so one silent call is not terminal.

two in a row is different. When 2 consecutive calls go out and no fax answers either time, we stop there and record it as Not a fax line rather than spend the remaining attempt. That is partly for you — the answer is not going to change on the third dial, and waiting 8 more minutes for it helps nobody — and partly for whoever is on the other end, who did not ask to have their telephone rung three times by a fax machine.

A busy signal in between breaks the run, because a line that was in use and then was not is something answering. It is only the consecutive silences that count.

This one has a specific cause worth knowing. Usually the number works and is simply not a fax number — a person or a voicemail system is on it. The common version is a main switchboard number taken off a letterhead, or an office’s general number found on a website, when the fax number is a different line entirely. The other version is a fax line that was disconnected and now rings out; both end the same way here, because from our side they look the same.

Go back to the document that asked you to fax something — the notice, the form instructions, the cover letter — and use the fax number printed there rather than a general contact number. We do not look numbers up for you, deliberately: a number we supplied that had been reassigned would still produce a confirmed transmission, to whoever holds it now.

When a call drops at page 22 of 30, carriers report that as a success with a page count of 22. It is an accurate report and a misleading one: 8 pages of the document are not at the other end.

A count short of what we sent is treated as a failure — retried, because the physical event behind it is a lost line and lines come back, and never charged. The cost of that choice is that a machine which reliably quits at page 22 receives those pages again on each attempt. That is the lesser harm compared with abandoning a fax that lost its line on the last page. What a confirmation proves has more on why the page count is the number to look at.

One reason on the list is not about the recipient at all. Not dialed means the call was never placed — our fax account was restricted, a sending limit was reached, or we could not hand the document to the network. The number you entered was never used, so there is nothing to check and nothing you did wrong.

It is retried like the others, because most of these causes clear within minutes and the next dial goes through. The ones that need somebody here to fix them raise an alert when they happen, which is the part a further attempt could not do. Either way your record names this reason rather than blaming the fax network or the number, and you can send the same document to the same number whenever you like.

Nothing. There was no charge to reverse. Pressing send places an authorization — a hold — and a hold becomes a charge only on a confirmed transmission. When the attempts are exhausted the authorization is released.

A released hold can still be visible on a card statement for a few days, because that timing belongs to your bank. It is not a charge and it does not become one. There is no refund to request and no form to fill in; see sending a fax without a subscription for how the one payment works when it does go through.

You also get an email either way, naming the reason and linking to a page where you can try a different number. The record keeps every attempt, with its own timestamps and its own reason — not just the last one.

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