Can send faxes, can't receive faxes

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 20, 2006 Posts: 1

Have a lexmark all in one. Can send faxes but have problems receiving. Says connecting, then just cuts off. Thought it was a problem with machine motem, but Lexmark sent a new fax, and same problem. Error message says remote fax error. Has anyone had this issue? What can I do?

SMULLINAX

Posts: 4750 · Vonage Forum **MVM** Joined: Aug 30, 2005 Posts: 4750

Here are a few things to try. First, check and see whether this problem only occurs with one sender or with everyone. If it's just with one, it might, in fact, be a problem with the sender. Second, plug a phone into your Vonage fax line and make and receive a few calls. See how things sound. Third, run the forum VoIP test and see how the VoIP quality checks out. Fourth, carry the fax machine to somewhere with a POTS line and see if it works correctly there.

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2006 Posts: 2

We've tried EVERYTHING that Steve48 suggests for a resolution of our vonage fax problems; essentially our conclusion that we have now is that our fax (brother 1270e),machine, a dedicated, single purpose fax machine works when it's on a traditional landline but we get the error message "poor line quality" when it's on the Vonage line...when the Vonage line works.

We're a real estate office; and the faxes that we receive (or don't receive) literally represent thousands of dollars to the company.

Our solution? We had to order a new dedicated traditional land based fax line from the phone company. Now we have two fax machines, and two dedicated fax phone lines (VOIP and traditional), because:
1) Vonage says that they cannot port the fax number
2) Vonage says they can't call forward the fax number
3) Vonage keeps saying, don't worry, now it's fixed.
4) All of our business cards for the last 6 months have the vonage fax number as the key fax contact, so we can't dump the line, and have to settle with a mediocre solution at best.

Woo-hoo-woo-hoo-hoo.
BTW, seen the stock price lately???

Here's my request....
does anybody know of a solution whereby,
If the Vonage fax line fails (a given) we are able to receive a copy of the fax either through:
1) immediate transfer to the number we had to buy that works, or
2) it is received dually through a PDF, or
3) YOUR SOLUTION???
I'll try anything that might work. Seriously, this has cost us big time. We cannot afford to have marketed ourselves without a working fax number. Imagine getting your email, oh, 33% of the time...and when you talk to your ISP, after 45 minutes they tell you it's fixed for sure this time....don't worry...

Woo-hoo-woo-hoo-hoo.

HELP!

Posts: 2 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2006 Posts: 2

Started reading more of the older posts...sorry to say my problem is not new. Look at this...2004. Guess that they didn't see it as important enough to fix.

If anyone's got a solution that will work for us as a backup, I'd really appreciate it.
Thanks again.
Motoscott

Posted: Thu Sep 30, 2004 5:30 pm Post subject: Faxing on Vonage does not work

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Just face it - fax over IP is not reliable enough. I have tried and tried, but to no avail. Just get a cheap POTS line for fax. I have been with Vonage for about 6 months, but recently the quality of service has dropped dramatically : 6 out of 8 faxes fail, I have no dial tone at least once a week and have to reboot...VoIP just is not viable yet. Let the techies test it for a year and go thru the pain, return in a year once it's working.

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 25, 2006 Posts: 1

I have a small business, that requires that I receive/send faxes and send data via the same modem. I have no knowledge concerning dedicated fax machines. All the following is related to an internal fax/modem card running on Windows XP. I have screwed with this a bunch. I have been fairly successful in getting the inbound and outbound faxes to work. For Modem settings, I use 38400 baud setting and "ATM0" in the Advanced Tab. The ATM0 setting turns on the sound associated with the modem use. It helps you trouble shoot because you can hear what is going on.

The key to getting the XP software fax to work is:
Downloading the software off the XP install disk
Select Start>Control Panel>Printers & Faxes to load the Fax application
Follow the steps in the "Fax Wizard", set up the CSID & TSID in the with your fax number only.

The key to getting the data modem to work has been using the *99,*70 settings and not having any fax related processes or applications running while using the data modem. Use Ctrl>Alt>Del to see what is running in the background that might be blocking the data modem. The *70 is a good idea to prevent inbound calls from mucking things up.
I do not know TiVo related problems at all, but from what I read it is a similar problem to getting the modem to work in a data mode.

I had to buy a new Hayes PCI v.92 modem card for $15. The old card that came with my 5yr old Dell PIII would not work with any settings I tried.

The best thing about using the modem/fax combination in the computer is I can save copies of faxes on my computer with out printing them. No dedicated fax machine=no tonner&no wasted paper. Also, I travel for my main job. So when I am on the road, I can look at my faxes remotely from my laptop via a remote connection via the web.

Good Luck

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Aug 16, 2004 Posts: 1

smullinax wrote:

Have a lexmark all in one. Can send faxes but have problems receiving. Says connecting, then just cuts off. Thought it was a problem with machine motem, but Lexmark sent a new fax, and same problem. Error message says remote fax error. Has anyone had this issue? What can I do?

SMULLINAX

I'm now having the exact same problem. I have an HP 1040 fax that has worked for over a year both sending and receiving faxes and just today has started giving me troubles. I can still send faxes without problem, but I cannot receive anything. The machine will sit and beep, but nothing comes through. I've tried it with 3 different senders and keep getting the same results.

The odd part is that I haven't changed anything in my setup recently and haven't had any electrical surges (all the equipment is on APC pro series UPSs).

I've tried resetting all the equipment on the line with no luck and now suspect that the problem is probably due to a change of some type by Vonage. I guess it wouldn't surprise me to see a company do something like disable incoming faxes on normal lines to help sell the dedicated fax line service.. If that turns out to be the case, I'll be dropping my 3 lines of service within the week.

-notlisted

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Oct 31, 2006 Posts: 1

I too have a LexMark all in one fax/printer. I have been unable to send faxes since Friday, but made no real attempt to fix until today. I rebooted the router and that seemed to have fixed my current problem. I have faxed and received successfully. Let's hope that I don't run into any additonal problems, as calling Vonage is more painful than the fax not working!!

Posts: 1 · New Forum Member Joined: Feb 26, 2007 Posts: 1

These VONAGE bastards have stolen 4 straight days from my life. Can not send or receive faxes throught their crappy service. Everytime I call I speak to some freaking Indian that I can barely understand. VONAGE you assholes deserve to go out of business.

Posts: 4 · New Forum Member Joined: Jun 19, 2007 Posts: 4

I got this working! I have a USB Creative Modem Blaster v92 modem that DID NOT work with the Vonage fax line jack. I could send faxes but not receive, because the fax line does not send out a signal high enough for the modem to detect. This is a common problem on this forum. I got around this by using my Canon MP780 All-In-One device. I connected the VONAGE FAX jack to my Canon MP780. Then, I connected the PHONE OUT from my Canon MP780 to my USB FAX MODEM. Thus, the MP780 converts the signal and outputs a signal strong enough for the PC modem to detect.

So, I have not been able to get the modem working when directly connected to the Vonage fax output, however if you have a setup like I do where I want my external fax device to take over when my computer is not turned on this works. I have my Canon MP780 set to receive after 4 incoming rings. Then I have my USB Fax Modem to receive after only 2 rings. This way, my PC always takes over when the PC is turned on.

My PC modem port speed=9600bps, Data protocol=disabled (i.e. ECM turned off). Compression=disabled, flow control=hardware.

I did set my Canon MP780 to have 9600 for transfer/receive speeds and transfer/receive ECM=OFF. I set it to work as both Fax and Phone. I configured it to take 4 rings before trying to receive the incoming signal as a fax. Hence, the PC always wins as the PC will answer the signal after only 2 rings.

I hope this will help you guys as I know there are several folks with the same wanted setup as myself. This works great.

Cheers.

Posts: 6 · Posted: Wed Jul 18, 2007 3:12 pm Post subject:

I just signed up for the fax line and i have the same problem. I can send faxes without any problems but when receiving a fax the line drops after a few seconds.

I am using a external GVC 33600 voice/fax modem that is connected directly to the Vonage Motorola adapter.

I called Vonage support and they said that they dont support fax modems ? what ? I explained that its same as a dedicated fax machine is it not ? My modem is a CLASS1.

I even tried with a US Robotics V.everything now thats a business class modem worth $300 US! same problem.

Now is it a poor signal problem as some people suggest ? or something else. I am tempted to go buy a dedicated fax machine to test but it seems by other people here that they have the same problem.

Anybody have any ideas or solutions ?