2012 comes early! Verizon admits fault!

[aodtech]

How many times do you grab your face with your hand when you get dispatched to a call something like "Can't send/receive/send or receive faxes, phone company was out and found nothing wrong"? Well today's customer was able to send faxes but not receive. Hooked up my handset to the line and caller ID on my cell phone had the right fax number. Called the fax number with my cell and it just rang and rang. Picked up the handset, got a clear dialtone... cell phone still rang, rang. Told the woman to call Verizon because the line is being forwarded or lines are crossed or something. Instead of closing the call I waited for her to make the call. As expected, the Verizon rep says that they can't find any issues. Would you like to talk to her? Gimme that f***ing thing!!! Listen lady... (it was a female rep who sounded American... another surprise). Immediately she says (paraphrasing) "While [customer] handed you the phone I found an error with the line test." So in a very noticeable [to the customer] tone I confirmed "So the problem is with the phone line, right?" BAZINGA!!

Here's the scenario: Customer has problems with faxing. It's easy for some schmuck from the phone company to come out and say that there is nothing wrong with the phone line, but as a technician I have to jump through hoops to prove to the customer that the problem is NOT equipment related, especially is the problem is intermittent. Score one for the Techs! F U to the jackasses in Bombay!

[Stirton.M]

In your case, the issue was pretty clear...I had a similar experience to yours, though in this case it was involving an internal PBX issue which was crossing the fax line with another fax line. The second line was fine to the desktop fax...no issues seen there on tx and rx, but the MFP fax line simply did not get the calls sent to it. They blamed the machine. That was, until I hooked up a line simulator and connected the two faxes to each other, sent and received without issue...and then proved the problem was the line when I placed the desktop fax where the MFP was plugged in.

We've also seen issues with VOIP enabled phone lines, DSL phone lines (those filters need not be placed on fax machines btw)...even phone lines that were incorrectly connected (out of phase), or as in your case, wrong phone number to that line.....

One tech I know carries an older analog phone with his car kit for situations like this. Nice immediate feedback to line issues involving incorrect line assignment.