switches

Most new dedicated fax machines will direct a call to itself or to the phone/answering machine. EVERY answering machine will let you plug the phone into it to take a call. A waste of money for anyone who doesn't have an ancient fax machine they don't want to upgrade.

This device works perfectly! It has many features and modes of operation but here is how I set mine up for basic use: I connect my incoming phone line to the input port, my answering maching w/phone to the TAD port, and my fax machine to the fax port. When a call comes in the Comswitch "picks up" the call on the first ring and listens momentarily for a fax tone. If there is a tone it immediately switches the call to the fax machine and then transmission begins, if it is a voice call it immediately switches to my anwering maching which then begins ringing, working as it usually does with any incoming call. For my answering machine connection, the only difference from before the Comswitch is that there is one addtional ring before the call actually starts to ring on the anwering machine. However, all of this is invisible to the caller. It also is supposed to work with voice mail systems too.

I've got a Canon D680 Fax/Printer on a dedicated phone line. I wanted to utilize this underused phone number as an "info line" for my business with an out-going message on an answering machine. Even though the Canon has some setting for a tel/fax, I was unable to get the answering machine to work with the Canon by direcly connecting the two. Furthermore the Canon instructions said something about you needing to make your outgoing message very short, which I don't want to do.

Enter the ComSwitch 5500.

Plug your hot phone line into the back of the 5500, plug in your answering machine, plug in your fax machine, plug the power into the wall and presto --- it worked perfectly immediately without any tweeking!

Every call routes automatically & correctly to either my fax machine OR to my phone answering machine. The caller can't really discern any switching going on. It's very impressive, and quick.

It comes preprogrammed. If you need to make some changes to it the instructions talk about this but since I didn't need to I didn't even bother reading the instructions.

I recommend the ComSwitch 5500.