I'm sure you've been there.  An agent tells you to fax the contract to her home fax machine.  So  you press the send button and wait for that lovely squealing sound of fax machines talking to each other.  Instead, you hear "Hello. Hello?" and a click of someone hanging up. 

You're not quite certain if they gave you their regular phone number by mistake or whether they have a machine that they need to switch over in order to receive a fax. You go check the numbers you wrote down to see if you made a stupid mistake. 

You decide to call them up to let them know that you are going to send a fax and to verify the number is correct.  But now when you call expecting to speak to that person again, you get belted with that lovely fax machine squealing sound. 

Now they see that nothing came through on that fax so they call you up to tell you that it didn't come through.  Unfortunately, at the very same moment you figure that now that they have the fax machine switched on, you'll go ahead and try again.  With them trying to call you, you end up getting a busy signal. 

This usually always happens when you don't have any time to spare.  You thought that it would take you a couple of minutes.  Instead, it ends up taking you a half hour just to send a stinkin' fax.  It might have been quicker to just drive over and drop it off in person.

If you don't want to get a dedicated line for a fax machine, you should really consider using something like Efax where people will never get a busy signal.  Your faxes come in as a PDF file in your email. It makes it so much easier then to forward it on to another party.

I feel much better getting that off of my chest.