Yes. Of course if the company can show it was sending to the number with good intentions, i.e. they have the number from when he signed up for something previously, etc, they’ll be off the hook. But sending an unsolicited advertisement by fax is punishable as described.
Here’s a page from the radio show Troubleshooter that describes the procedure you should follow.
http://www.troubleshooter.com/data/columns/JunkFaxes.htm
I had this same problem and tried the following solutions to no avail:
[ul][li]*69 - didn’t work. “We’re sorry, call return is not available for this number.”[/li][li]Call blocking. “We’re sorry, call blocking is not available for this number.”[/li][li]Caller ID didn’t work.[/li][li]Got frustrated and cancelled all my fancy calling services none of which helped me avoid the evil fax machine.[/li][li]Called and got the ‘nuisance calls’ department at the phone company, they put a ‘trace’ on the line and when the calls come in you have to call the phone company and give them the time of the nuisance call. After a few weeks and several incidents of this, I called up and inquired - they said not a single call I had reported had been trapped. They say that if you don’t give the time to within 2 minutes of the actual time on their clock that they can’t trace it. So, I got them to tell me their actual time, reset my clock and started over, but the trace expired before the fax called back enough.[/li][li]Lived with it - turned off the ringer, etc.[/li][/ul]
The next step was to get a fax machine to receive the fax, but I never did - I just ended up moving anyway.
Believe it or don’t!
I had this happen one evening. So, I shouted into the phone, “THIS IS NOT A FAX MACHINE! YOU HAVE DIALED A PRIVATE PHONE NUMBER!”
…and it stopped…
My phone company (Telus) dealt with it the same way they do a harassing phone call. No charge, no fees, I just had to hit *57 after every call and the number was traced by their security department. When I had three, I called up the security department, told them I had three, and they contacted the sender and told them to stop. It did.
I get the same thing. One to three closely spaced calls, once or twice a week. Sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the afternoon. Never when I’m home (unless I’m using a sick day).
I tried *69 to no avail. One time when they called, I was home and repeated twice into the phone that they have a wrong number. No joy. It’s got to be automated.
The hell of it is that my answering machine won’t let me erase messages until after I’ve listened to them – no skipping allowed. So I’m occasionally treated to a full minute of “Beep… beep…”.
Wednesday was a new one. A pre-recorded advertisement. At one point it said, “Before I go on, I need your permission. Please say “yes” at the pause.” My answering machine didn’t reply. So the prerecorded voice went on with the spiel. The recording asked for some information. My answering machine didn’t reply. So the prerecorded voice went on. I probably should have paid attention to it so that I could see if there was a phone number.
Check your computer to see if it’s got software on it that’ll let you send and receive faxes (for example, my Gateway came with a program called megaphone). If not I’m sure there is shareware you can download that’ll do it. Let your computer answer the calls and the fax’ll probably have a return fax or phone number on it. Then you can call or fax them back and tell them to stop bugging you.
Eric
My Gateway came with “56K PCI Voice Modem SF-1156IV R9A”. Doesn’t say anything about fax capability in its name. I did a find on “fax” and got a lot of hits on my computer, but they seemed to be templates from Word, Corel and Ulead PhotoImpact. Doesn’t look like I have a fax modem.
It could be a computer using a war dialer. These things call every possible number combination looking for fax machines to spam. Or it could be some idiot who put his ISP backup nbr in as your own. This happened to me once, got 5 calls per day from some guy using AOL & putting my number in for his backup nbr for AOL.
I did call him a few times & asked him what are you doing? & he said something about his wife & aol but they changed the number.
So you sure its a fax tone & not a computer modem tone?
Thanks everyone.
I called the phone company yesterday (saving the calling of the police until I am holding the rocket launcher and crying hysterically). The nice woman on the other end told me that their policy would be to have me get caller ID and their great new program called privacy manager. I started thinking that this is just the phone company fax spamming me to get me to sign up for a $6.95 a month program that I really don’t need (aside from this one nuisance). Then she told me that “she had heard” that by pressing 0 0 0 0 (zero, four times) when I get the call from a fax that it will alert the machine that this is an invalid number and should get the machine to stop trying to call.
If this doesn’t work I will go for the blocking of the number - a buck and a half seems like a reasonable price to pay for sanity within my own house. I fear that with *69 not working that the blocking feature won’t take either – but I shall cut that cord when I get to it.
For the record – I have tried yelling into the phone when the beeping starts – it just mocks me and continues to beep. I have a cable modem for my Internet access – so it would be a major hassle to access the phone line via my computer. The thought that this could be multiple people scares me beyond the need for therapy and I might just have to get rid of the phone altogether…
But for now I sit by the phone and wait for the bugger to ring.
my wag is that the number that is faxing you is not a physical number in the sense. There is no actuall 10 digit number to call back on. Their fax is selecting an outgoing only trunk bypassing caller id, *69 etc…
Best way to handle it is to get the fax (how about call fwd yoru number to your office fax) and find out what’s on it. It’s possible that once it goes through it will stop.
Try plugging in your computer to your phone line & launch one of those programs you get with your modem that answer your phone & direct the incoming call to a fax, modem, etc all by itself then the program answers, finds out what kind of call it is & directs it & saves to your computer the call. youll know which kind it is.
TTY’s also give a tone.
Here’s what you do. If you find out that the offending fax number is a local number and therefore free then you take a few pieces of black construction paper, thread it through your fax machine and tape it into a continuous scroll.
Call the number and let the faxing begin. Hilarity ensues with lost toner, used paper and tied up phone lines especially if it’s over the weekend.
Make sure you *67 so they can’t trace your call.
I forwarded my phone to the office fax machine. When I received the ad, I saw that there were two numbers on it that you needed to call to be removed from the fax list. I called both of them.
I did receive one message a couple of days later with a fax tone on it; but instead of several tones, there was just half a beep. Nothing since then. fingers crossed