A senior executive at a major UK food company once called tech support. She was in a fury after her fax failed to send. She then found out she had been using the photocopier the whole time. According to a story in The Register's On Call column from August 28, 2026, the anonymous reader, called "Orson," is a former Facilities Manager. He told the story about a Company Secretary who tried to send an urgent fax late at night. It did not work. This guide covers the case where an exec could not identify a photocopier, which made for a fax-inating tech support call. You can also read China Orders Massive Tesla Recalls Affecting Nearly 3 Million Vehicles Over Door Safety and Driver Monitoring.
What Actually Happened During the Tech Support Call?
Orson told The Register he answered the complaint by walking through the executive's process step by step. "I asked her to show me what she had done and watched as she placed the document on the in-tray, used the keypad to dial the number, and then hit Enter," Orson said. After the whole sequence failed to send, he gave the diagnosis. "I told her she was trying to use the photocopier."
Why Do Multifunction Printers Confuse Users So Easily?
The Register's explainer section described fax machines as devices that "packed a low-res scanner, a nasty printer, and a slow modem into a small appliance" with a numeric keypad for dialing. Modern MFPs still have all of those parts, but they hide them behind mode-selection menus that vary by maker. HP, Canon, Brother, and Xerox all use different default interfaces, and many offices never set up their devices the same way after install.
According to past reporting cited by The Register, email killed fax use in most Western markets by the late 1990s. Japan kept fax as a main business tool well into the 2010s. Makers still bundled fax hardware into MFPs for years after that, because the parts cost was tiny and corporate buying contracts still listed fax as a required feature.
What This Means for IT Support Teams
Stories like Orson's show a lasting gap in workplace tech training, and it has only grown as devices pack more functions into one box. IT teams that roll out MFPs without clear labels for the fax function, or that assume top-level staff will just figure out mode menus, end up with repeat support tickets. According to best practices from managed print services providers, color-coded buttons and physical overlays can cut down on misdialed-mode calls a lot in workplaces with mixed experience levels.
For tech support staff, the story also shows why visual confirmation matters during troubleshooting. Orson's method of asking the user to show each step in person, instead of taking a verbal description, found the real cause in minutes. This diagnostic approach is still standard in help desk training and is often the fastest way to solve a problem when users cannot say what their device is actually doing. Whether you are new to the case of the exec who could not identify a photocopier or already know it well, the sections below have you covered.
What's Next for Office Hardware Confusion
As offices keep moving to cloud-based document workflows and paperless processes, stand-alone fax functions are disappearing from new MFP models. But healthcare, legal, and government sectors still need fax for compliance reasons, so hybrid devices will stick around for years. Forward-looking IT teams should check their MFP setups, label function buttons clearly, and run short onboarding sessions for any staff who last used office tech before the smartphone era.
The Bottom Line
A photocopier cannot send a fax, and a fax machine cannot make a copy, at least not without the user first picking the right mode. Orson's story, in The Register's On Call column on August 28, 2026, is a reminder that hardware convergence without user training leads to predictable, and often funny, support failures.
Frequently Asked Questions
A: The story was published on Friday, August 28, 2026, at 07:37 UTC. It was written by APAC Editor Simon Sharwood.
A: The multifunction printer in her office had a numeric keypad that looked just like the one on the old stand-alone fax machine, and she did not know the device had been swapped out for an MFP.
A: According to The Register, email killed off faxes in most Western markets in the late 1990s, though Japan kept using fax well beyond that point.
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