What’s a Junk Fax?

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A junk fax is unsolicited commercial material sent by telemarketers through a fax machine to advertise products or services. Using fax transmissions in this manner falls under the same category of undesirable business practices as sending junk email and spam. As a result of widespread consumer complaints about the practice, fax advertising is strictly regulated in certain countries, most notably the US.

Direct marketers are always looking for cost-effective ways to get ads and requests into the hands of as many people as possible. A mass distribution of anything will result in at least a few responses. If the distribution can be automated and takes little or no time to perform, there is a high potential for gain, even at a 1% response rate. When the fax machine became a common business and household device in the 1990’s and the machine’s software developed to the point where a scan of a document could be transmitted to an automated list of hundreds of numbers, fax advertising became a big deal.

One person’s commercial advertising could easily be someone else’s unwanted junk. Unsolicited fax advertising in the US has become so problematic that consumer groups have demanded laws to limit it. The US passed a law banning all types of unsolicited fax advertising, but the business sector fought back until the law was changed to qualify the definition of an unsolicited contact. Since 2006, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has adopted a junk fax exemption for fax advertisements sent to any recipient with whom the marketer has an established business relationship.

If a marketer has done business with a recipient in the past and the recipient has given the marketer their fax number or the fax number is publicly available, the marketer is legally permitted to fax advertising to the recipient. The FCC requires the marketer to provide an opt-out phone number in the ad, however. Once the recipient opts in, it becomes illegal for the marketer to continue contacting them via fax. Under FCC regulations, anyone receiving an unwanted fax can file a complaint with the commission or sue in civil court, recovering a per-page fine and triple damages in some cases.

The FCC allows individual states to adopt stricter regulations on junk faxes than existing federal regulations. Many states have voided the established business relationship exemption for unsolicited faxes. Some states have increased the per-page fine for an unsolicited fax transmission by 500% or more of the federal fine. Telemarketers must be careful to comply with state law if the advertiser and recipient are located in the same state, regardless of where the actual fax call is placed.

Asset Smart.

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