Call waiting is messing up my faxes. What should I do?
I am trying to send faxes via a dedicated fax line but the call waiting code keeps dialing before the number I want. I then get a voice message saying that I have dialed an incorrect number and that I must consult the instructions. When I disable call waiting it still does it. What should I do?
If it’s a dedicated fax line, you should call the phone company and cancel call waiting.
If you can’t do that for some reason, you need to cancel call waiting on a per-call basis. The usual way to do this is to dial *70 or 1170, but there is often a delay after you dial *70 or 1170 before a new dial tone starts: if your fax machine doesn’t wait for the second dial tone, the telecommunications company won’t hear all the digits that it dialed, so you’ll get a message saying that you dialed an incorrect number. You need to make sure that the fax machine dials the call waiting code, then pauses for a couple of seconds, then dials the real fax number. Check the fax machine manual to find out how to pause while dialing.
You can’t disable call-waiting on a per-call basis for incoming calls, so you still might be interrupted by call waiting tones when receiving faxes.
Do you have a question about faxing? Send me your fax question.