What is an acceptable failure rate for PC based faxes

[Guest guest]

I’m wondering what others consider an acceptable failed fax rate. With our previous external fax/modem we had problems getting faxes from one hospital and occasionally from a few other offices but otherwise it worked. Other local offices seemed to fax flawlessly with the same locations we had problems with while using the same fax/modem we used so the problem appeared to be a mysterious combination of phone lines and /or fax machine idiosyncrasies. A month ago we upgraded to a high end fax card and haven’t missed any faxes since then that we know of. Of course, you never know for sure about missed faxes since the delay in discovering a message that was never received may be somewhere between very long and never. Given that the success of fax equipment appears to be dependent upon characteristics of phone lines, other faxes we communicate with and who knows what else – what is an acceptable fax failure rate? What have others come to live with and accept as the norm? Are there communities where there has been a movement toward using common fax equipment or common internet based fax services as a way of improving fax reliability or perhaps communities that have managed to move beyond faxes as the common communication medium?