L.A. Reacts to Junk Fax Attacks

Consider the fax of life, a tale of two cities.

While Washington, D.C., this week paused from its scandals, crises and politics to work itself into a lightning strike against high-tech “junk mail,” in Los Angeles, a smoggier but saner clime, the effort drew a different reaction.

In brief, Angelenos say they’re unfazed by junk fax.

They get them, plenty of them. They don’t like them. They don’t read them.

But they don’t pay them as much mind as the House did Monday when, by voice vote, representatives approved a tough measure to crack down on automatically dialed telephone commercials and unsolicited faxes.

President Bush suggested Tuesday that he opposes the House action (which still must undergo Senate consideration) so strongly that he might veto it.

Don’t have a cow, man, is the advice of some Californians queried on the topic.

“I don’t know anyone up here who doesn’t get junk fax” says Larry Hart, communications director for Rep. Dana Rohrabacher’s (R-Lomita) Capitol Hill office.

In Washington, junk fax--unsolicited advertising materials, sales pitches, press releases--are legendary. Lobbyists, press aides, public relations people and general malcontents (not to mention sales people peddling just about anything you can imagine) all vie for the attention of senators and representatives, networks and publications, by keeping the fax machines rolling at steady, and eventually costly, clip.

“It’s a unique problem because, unlike telephone or mail solicitations, junk fax winds up costing us, the taxpayers really, because it uses up paper,” Hart says.

While Rohrabacher did not vote Monday, Hart says the amount of junk fax generated in Washington “is obviously a problem. I supposed some of it might be interesting reading, but most of it goes right to the trash.”

In Los Angeles, where urban sprawl and choking traffic have made faxes almost as everyday as sunglasses and tans (indeed, there are now 2 million fax machines nationwide, experts estimate), electronic junk mail was once as common as bad screenplays, machine owners say.

“In the beginning, we used to get a lot of it,” PR Newswire editor Cherie Halyard says of the junk faxes that poured into the Los Angeles public relations information system. “But lately, it’s kind of stopped. You could always count on getting junk faxes on Friday afternoon, for stuff like business-oriented products, copy machines. . . .

“We used to joke about it, but it could be kind of annoying when you have a client who is supposed to be faxing you something and it beeps and you go over there and it’s just some junk fax. That’s disappointing.”

But, depending on the job, junk fax can be a sort of perk, a break from the doldrums.

“Everything we get is junk,” Chrissy Hamilton, office manager for KIIS-FM in Los Angeles, says with a laugh. “We get the zany, crazy things like dirty jokes and pleas for money and weird ideas.”

With six machines, the station is equipped for fax antics encouraged by deejays, including morning personality Rick Dees. “People will send us anything you can imagine,” Hamilton says.

Bill Smith, assistant executive producer for KABC-TV, observes that faxes are “just like mail, really. You pick and choose what’s important and toss the rest. I really don’t think about it that much.”

Andy Culpepper, a reporter and producer for the Entertainment Report, a Hollywood news service, observes: “If you can afford the fax machine, you can afford to be bothered. If it’s gotten to the point where someone gets a junk fax in their car fax machine, and they cause a pileup on the 101 (freeway), then maybe something ought to be done. Until then, who is really bothered?”

But fax users do complain that callers send too many pages (which cost a few pennies per, a sum that builds quickly). And those callers don’t number the pages. They send multiple copies. They call to say they sent a fax; they call to see if it was received. The paper runs out in the middle of a transmission. . . . Yada, yada, yada.

As vice president of marketing for Mr. Fax, an Irvine company that sells fax paper to 60,000 customers nationwide (and advertises chiefly via fax), Elliott Segal has heard the fax gripes. “We were worried that maybe our fax advertisements would bother people, so we asked our customers,” he says. “Most of them don’t mind at all.”

He says that in the “early days” of faxdom, there were junk ads for “everything from what we sell to funeral plots.”

But the practice has played out. Now, junk fax is rare, he says, adding, “I think that a lot of it is a media- and government-oriented problem. Newspapers and politicians can be overwhelmed by press releases and people seeking attention. . . .”

Mr. Fax joined the lobbying last year when the California legislature debated an even stricter bill regulating fax ads.

“The newer law in the House isn’t so much of a problem for us,” Segal says. “It allows people to block ads themselves if they don’t want them. We already offer that service, and we don’t send our ads during business hours. If people don’t want our faxes, there’s a number at the bottom they can call, but most people we send them to do want them and eventually they become customers. We’re not out there to bother people.”

But, pending the House bill’s fate and the growing perturbation of busy faxees, there soon will be products to screen faxes. Marcandy and Associates International announced last week that it will market a new “incoming restricter,” a $250 device that lets a user block unsought faxes and computer phone calls; only desired callers can get past the machine by using a code number while dialing a fax or computer line, explains Mark L. Allred, a spokesman for the Mission Viejo firm.

Others have found easier ways to deal with fax offenders.

“I tell them we won’t ever use their announcement if they do it again,” Barbara Shaw, KXEZ-FM community affairs director, says of those who tie up her fax machine. The station gets “pages of fax” from groups wanting the station to air their public service announcements, some sending the same spot over and over.

“That really makes me mad,” Shaw says. “It uses our paper, and it’s usually a case where they’ve waited until the last minute to send us an announcement.”

Judi Lesher, controller for Orange Coast magazine, feels its morally wrong to send junk fax: “It wastes time and fax paper, which isn’t biodegradable. People do have to advertise, and I hate to see government control on it, but it is annoying.”

Meantime, Eric Joe, executive secretary for the California Medical Assn. in San Francisco, has the thinking man’s solution to junk fax: “We just disconnect the line. I think there should be a limit to all this useless fax. This is a means of communications and when we get stuff addressed ‘To Whom It May Concern’ and ads for office products, it’s just getting in the way of urgent faxes.”