It seems that there are still financial services that require paper, or at least faxes.
I have to fax something to Texas (U.S.) and I’m in Switzerland. So even if I had a fax machine, or went to the post office, it would be a bit pricey to fax 24 pages.
I know there are efax solutions, so I’m looking for some recommendations.
Thanks!
Since the OP is looking for advice, let’s move this from GQ to IMHO.
Windows 10 has “Windows Fax and Scan” built in. Type “Fax” in the Start Menu search bar and it will come up.
It works well.
What about scanning the document(s) to PDF and emailing it?
The point of the op is that there are still places that require a fax. Here in the US, fer instance, the Treasury only accepts documents by mail or fax.
And the tricky part of the Windows fax app is that you still need to have your comp hooked to a modem with an actual phone # in order to send.
There are internet fax services here in the US such as efax. I don’t know about europe.
I used fax.plus recently and it was fine. The documents were delivered, which is about all you can say for a fax service. I only had a few pages so it was free, but $0.20 a page won’t break the bank.
The international part doesn’t matter, right? Just find an efax service in the US and upload your documents.
Does the fax have to be 24 pages all at once?
FaxZero will let you send a fax to Switzerland for $1.99, but there’s a 15-page limit. If you can break your document into two faxes, that could work for you.
I used FAX.PLUS just yesterday. Worked like a charm.
I’ve used Hello Fax for several years and not had any issues. I have a monthly subscription, but they do have per-fax rates ($0.99 for a fax of 10 pages or less, plus $0.20 per additional page, to destinations in the US/Canada/UK; overseas destinations are charged at higher rates).
This only works if you have a multifunction printer/scanner at home - such machines usually have fax capabilities as well…but that’s what I used the last time I had to fax something to the States. I just got a length of phone cord and plugged it in to the phone jack.
I would’ve used the big box office store, but they were having trouble understanding the long string of numbers for international calls. 
*
Still, if I didn’t have the multifunction, and if the Officeworks staff were a little more able, I’d have probably gone through them. Convenience would outweigh the cost, to me.
*To be fair, I hadn’t looked up the procedure when I went over there, so I didn’t have it on tap either. Still, you’d think there’d be someone there who’d faxed something internationally before, or that they’d have a guide somewhere about the place.
Set the documents in good lighting, photograph (individually!) with your phone. Crop appropriately, attach to email!
Done.
In the text of the email, tell those lazy bureaucrats to figure out for themselves how to get emailed images into their fax machine. They’ll love that.
I faintly recall from early in the email or fax debate a comment or three about faxes being in a different legal class than email and attachments. Faxes, by using the phone system, invoke telecommunication laws or some such nincompoopery. If true that may the reasoning requiring faxes for some documents.
Are you sure you mean fax, and not telex? There was some discussion of this in a thread about telegrams, hinting that that creating a legal document was one of the reasons someone might still send a really expensive telegram today. I’m sure lawyers and bureaucrats still love faxes in any case.
Maybe. It was several dozen bottles of Kessler’s, cases of ale, and multiple teenagers ago. I recall it as fax only because I didn’t have that capability and needed it. I don’t recall using or needing telex to send something.
If you’re sending it on your phone it’s going over the same lines.
I’ve sent documents, with signatures, this way without issue.
It may have once been problematic, but I don’t think it is still.
What you really want is some sort of acknowledgement that your e-mail or fax with an important signature did not disappear into the void.
It’s not being received at the same location, however.
I once worked in an office where incoming faxes were automatically routed into a document management system; there was no corresponding automation on emails. If you sent me an email with attached images, getting it into the system meant I had to manually assemble those into a PDF and fax it to the correct number. For the stuff I worked with, that was acceptable; for some kinds of legal/financial documents, however, I can certainly see company policies if not actual regulations that say employees are NOT allowed to assemble and rearrange documents for customers. If OP is sending to an institution with a similar arrangement, his email is going to sit in somebody’s in-box until the somebody replies to tell him that was not an acceptable submission and if he wants his documents processed he needs to follow the instructions.
That doesn’t seem to address OP’s issue at all. They need to fax the document, because the financial firm only accepts hard copies, either through old-fashioned mail or by fax. Email won’t help.
You may get some satisfaction by sticking it to bureaucrats that way, but it doesn’t actually do you any good. The random low-level bureaucrat who gets the email has no ability to change the regulations or corporate SOPs. They’ll just ignore the email, and you still haven’t actually gotten the documents to them in a form they’ll accept. It’s your problem, not theirs, that you’re not complying with their rules of acceptance.
This issue has come up at least a couple of time recently on the Dope. I realize that for most folks it seems incomprehensible that anyone still uses faxes much less requires them. But the fact is that in some fields, such as medical records and testing, and judging by the OP, at least for some purposes financial firms, actual hard copies of documents are required, and faxes are counted as hard copies while emails and e-documents just aren’t. Whether that still makes any sense in 2021, it’s the way it is.