I came across a service called Celery that offers “computer free emailing.” It’s aimed at the computer illiterate who want to be able to send and receive emails.
Essentially it’s an extremely expensive fax service. Your friends and family email Celery who then faxes those emails to you. If you want to reply, you fax it back and Celery will email it to the recipient.
I guess there could be a market for some people, but the price seems outrageous to me. What’s the consensus: Rip-off or valuable service?!
$25 a month doesn’t sound too bad for someone who doesn’t want to pay for dialup or broadband, or deal with computer hassles. No spam, no viruses, no calls to tech support, no visits from GeekSquad or whatever, etc. Some people might find the convenience well worthwhile.
Try MyFax.com for $10 a month, up to $100 faxes-You email their fax number @myfax.com& they receive your page(s). You get an 800 number to get faxes back via email!
Thanks BubbaRay.
If you take a look at how my own mother (who hates computers) sends an email, she simply handwrites “Andrew” at the top of the page. Then presses 2 buttons. Or, she can write “family”, and that will send out 25 emails simultaneously. Dan, you can’t do that with the fax services companies. I can’t see my 79 year old mother punching in 23 telephone numbers and sending the same piece of mail 23 times. Writing “family” at the top of the page is a lot simpler.
We married my mother’s world (handwriting, tv, phone & newspapers) with ours – PDA, laptop, cell phone.
What’s cool is that our customers never use the term “email”, because they know that Celery invented something for them, and they are right. So, they use the term “I received a Celery”, “I sent a Celery”… BTW, the cost is technically $8.25/month for black & white service or $11.58/mo for color service. We sell the color fax machine ($120) to make it simple for the person who lives in Cleveland to purchase it for their parent in Florida.
Thanks all, we realized that we need to do a better job of explaining our pricing ; )
23, Andrew, I tried to email my lawyer (of 20 years) last week and still haven’t gotten a reply. Was giving him a new assignment for real cash. He hasn’t replied yet. Going through the telephone is so painful — he’s in a meeting, he’s out of town, he’s at lunch, let me take a message, etc. And if I do get through after 10 minutes of wasting my time, he says, “well, why didn’t you just send me a fax?” Good grief.
Good luck to you.