Technical problems can seem complicated if you don’t know the root cause.

In this story, an employee was told that a customer couldn’t send or receive long-distance faxes.

He investigated the problem and contacted the long-distance carrier.

After hours of conflicting details, one small setting finally revealed the real issue, but he’s still annoyed at the way the situation ended.

Read the full story below for all the details.

Fax is cursed

Customer says they can’t send or receive long-distance faxes.

They call their fax vendor first, rightfully so.

The vendor tells them it’s a phone company problem.

Now, the customer is convinced our service is busted.

This man started investigating what the real cause of the problem was.

So, I start digging.

I found out local faxing works, and outbound faxing works, too.

I call their long-distance carrier for them to verify the account is fine.

To be extra sure, I even switch their long-distance service over to us and re-test.

Still “not working.”

He noticed that the customer’s reports were contradicting.

Meanwhile, I’m getting info drip-fed to me. Half of it contradicts the other half.

First, they “can’t send or receive.” Then, it’s “actually we can send.”

Then, it’s “we might be receiving?”.

After 3 hours, the real detail finally comes out.

He realized ECM was the problem.

They’ve been receiving faxes the entire time. They get page 1 fine.

Then, page 2 prints over and over, or partial pages.

At that point, it clicks instantly.

ECM retry loop. Not the carrier. Not our hosted phone service. Not long distance.

The problem was fixed, but no apology or thanks was given.

They disable ECM and everything works immediately.

End result: Fax works.

No apology. No “thanks.”

And I find out the fax vendor was telling them they’ve “heard a lot of complaints about our phone service.”

He concluded that fax was cursed.

I know fax is ancient garbage. I know this comes with the territory.

But spending half a day proving something isn’t your fault is maddening.

It only starts working with zero closure.

Anyway, fax is cursed.

Let’s check out the comments of other people on Reddit to this story.

This user shares their personal thoughts.

You were causing the problem, says this person.

Just be honest, advises this person.

Here’s another honest opinion.

Finally, short and simple. Lol.

Some customers don’t have “Thanks” and “I’m sorry” in their vocabulary.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.