You can see fax delivery status in two places on PayPerFax:

  1. The web tracking screen after submitting your fax
  2. The confirmation email we send when transmission completes

When PayPerFax confirms that your fax was sent, this indicates a successful technical transmission confirmed through multiple automated verification steps. Here’s how we determine that your fax was successfully sent:

  • As part of the standard faxing protocol:
    • Individual confirmations from the receiving fax machine as each page was successfully received
    • A final confirmation signal when the complete document was successfully received by the receiving machine
  • When we can see a CSID (station identifier) from the receiving fax machine, we know that we connected to a remote device. This ID is shown to you in the confirmation email.

These electronic confirmations are part of the standard fax protocol and provide definitive proof that your document reached the destination machine.

Fax machines follow the T.30 protocol, an international standard that ensures reliability:

  1. Connection: Machines connect and exchange capability information
  2. Settings: Receiving machine confirms transmission settings
  3. Line Test: Both machines verify line quality and adjust speed
  4. Transmission: Document gets sent page-by-page with error detection and correction, as well as page-level confirmation
  5. Disconnect: Final, document-level confirmations exchanged

Each page transmission includes error checking to ensure data integrity. If errors occur, the machines automatically retransmit affected sections. This standardization means every fax machine speaks the same “language” – a machine in Tokyo can communicate perfectly with one in Buenos Aires.

Sometimes life gets in the way

However, sometimes the recipient may report they haven’t received your fax. This typically happens when:

  • Their fax machine received the fax but ran out of paper or toner during printing
  • Their machine’s memory was full, preventing it from storing the fax
  • Their machine had a print system malfunction
  • There are multiple fax machines using the same number
  • The fax was routed incorrectly within the recipient’s office

In all these cases, the fax was successfully transmitted through our system and reached their equipment, but local issues at the receiving end prevented the recipient from accessing it.

We’re here to help

Did you send a fax via PayPerFax but were notified by the recipient that they didn’t receive it? We can help by:

  • Providing a formal confirmation document with transmission details
  • Arranging a resend of your fax

Contact us for assistance with either option.