It’s not lazy, it’s owed to german liability laws and habits in government.
Many trust more into the point to point transfer of fax machines since Email can easily be read by third parties (or so the assumption) and still isn’t recognized as easily as a official document or documentation. The same goes for official lines of communication – paper documents you send via Email are often not recognized by tax office or other offices, however, if you send the evidence or signed documents as fax, they are. For instance, if you loose your health insurance card to register at a doctor’s office, you can simply phone your insurance company and they will fax a payment confirmation via fax within minutes.
If someone sends an important document it’s their liablity to make sure it arrives, or they open themselves up for damages.
The alternative would be mail, and that’s just notoriously slow and anything but trustworthy. The days in which a letter was certain to arrive within 3 days are over. I’ve personally seen companies nearly loose thousands of euros because regular mail was too slow and missed deadlines, with a letter suddenly needing 10 days in transit instead of 3.
So fax it is.
It is an upgrade over telegraph. It is a great success.
3 comments
It’s not lazy, it’s owed to german liability laws and habits in government.
Many trust more into the point to point transfer of fax machines since Email can easily be read by third parties (or so the assumption) and still isn’t recognized as easily as a official document or documentation. The same goes for official lines of communication – paper documents you send via Email are often not recognized by tax office or other offices, however, if you send the evidence or signed documents as fax, they are. For instance, if you loose your health insurance card to register at a doctor’s office, you can simply phone your insurance company and they will fax a payment confirmation via fax within minutes.
If someone sends an important document it’s their liablity to make sure it arrives, or they open themselves up for damages.
The alternative would be mail, and that’s just notoriously slow and anything but trustworthy. The days in which a letter was certain to arrive within 3 days are over. I’ve personally seen companies nearly loose thousands of euros because regular mail was too slow and missed deadlines, with a letter suddenly needing 10 days in transit instead of 3.
So fax it is.
It is an upgrade over telegraph. It is a great success.
Not just in Germany:
[https://www.makeuseof.com/fax-machines-still-in-use/](https://www.makeuseof.com/fax-machines-still-in-use/)