Actually had to do this last week. Had to poke around the website and finally found a link only to be put into a customer service chat with a badly scripted agent. It almost wasn't English...

I had to cancel 4 numbers in the past 6 months and each time as a different ordeal. In some cases i had to be transferred to another rep who was not briefed on my situation so I had to start all over again. Their cancellation process and customer service reminds me a lot of the old AOL days where canceling was an ordeal with the rep's almost begging you to keep the service and even when you did manage to cancel your service they would end the call with "you account is canceled however if you wish to reactivate your account again, just sign on within the last 6 months" and there was no way to prevent that.

Anyway... we all know what happened to AOL, lol. Efax better watch out or your customers are gonna turn against you and go for the next best thing.

My company has been considering using Efax. This certainly isn't helping their case.

This type of BS stopped me from getting Vonage. I hear that too is nearly impossible to quit.

Don't use eFax! Use MaxEmail -- I have had a fax account with them (their cheapest, one, at around $25/year) for several years now, and it's been fantastic. Best of all, they will never cut off your account if you accidentally use too many pages: you can just buy the extra pages at some small cost.

MaxEmail

I had eMusic once, and cancelled it once (didn't have the time to spend finding music I wanted to download to make it really worthwhile), and I remembered how easy it was. So much so that when I decided to join back up a year later, I had no qualms about it. Kept all my old info as well, too, so I could pick up right where I left off (so yay I had my old download history, but boo I couldn't take advantage of any free-music-for-subscribing offers. Still, all in all very reasonable.)

Another great way to cancel is simply to forget to update your email address that you no longer use. Then they cancel your account automatically after a few undeliverable emails to you (their newsletter I guess) and never let you know. I found out when a client tried to fax me their signed contract and it wouldn't go through. I called and they said it was canceled. Perhaps easier than your ordeal but certainly not great. They told me to just sign back up..instead I took my business to TrustFax which so far has been good.

I had emusic once. Or more accurately, someone else subscribed using my credit card. It took two tries to get them to cancel the account, because they told me it was my bank's problem the first time and that they couldn't do anything.

I sent them back a rather strongly worded email telling them, no, it's your problem, now fix it. they did.

efax is a dreadful service.I signed with with efax years ago when they first started. They lock you in, then raise their prices and you're stuck because they own your fax number. I finally bit the bullet and canceled last year after many years of their poor service, ridiculous amount of spam faxes and ever increasing prices. My advice - steer clear of efax.

I agree with the E-Music, the service gave me exactly what they promised and when I wanted to go on hold, one click did it. When I wanted to cancel, it was done. Easy-breezy.

Great business, just wish they had more music I wanted.

I use the 'free' efax, where they assign you a number out of your area code, so I'm not up on what the problem is on the pay side. I just use it now and then, for individual usage, not a business. For my limited usage it works OK. I'm sorta cheap so I tend to get the 'free stuff'.

@ncpeters: don't, the daily spams will make you want to tear your hair out.

@ncpeters: I'm not affiliated with this company, but I stumbled upon OneSuite Fax Basic for only $1 a month. I set it up for my father-in-law who just needed to receive faxes for his work, and this couldn't have been a more simple set up. Unlimited incoming faxes as PDFs (not some EFX junk) straight to his email address, and a local number, too. I'd get the $3 per month upgrade to send faxes as well, but it requires Windows - Mac and Linux support to follow soon (see [www.onesuite.com]).

No junk mail, no obnoxious advertising. You prepay for the year, and it's done. With all the too-good-to-be-trues out there, I'm still shocked this one still is.

efex is nice. it really is nice. i liked it alot. all but the re-occuring 10$ a month charge with no option to cancel without calling. theres months i dont fax. that i dont use the service.

but it is nice to scan something and fax it online.

but to cancel you have to call. and they auto debit your card each month for 10 no matter if you dont even fax that month. thats the only thing i dont like. the non option to cancel without calling. i let them hit my prepaid card a ton of times and then called. it was done in under a min.

If you guys are looking for a good fax service I recommend [www.myfax.com] They give you 30 days free trial and it was so easy to cancel, you just log in and hit cancel no talking to anyone. Only problem with the service your fax isn't set up "instantly" I had to wait about 24 hours for everything to work flawlessly.

I've been pretty pleased with fax1.com If you only need to send an occasional fax the prices aren't bad. The interface looks like something from 1997, and it is pretty particular about formatting the phone number (you can't omit the country code, for example), but it's all pre-paid (with the first buck free), there's no bullshit, and it works.

Hmmm I guess this is more recent than about 3 years. I had an account with them and canceled a while back due to lack of use, and really didn't haven any other problem other than calling them up, telling the rep I no longer wanted the service, and, after a quick pitch by him to continue under a different plan, closed up the account.

@GMFish: I had vonage for two years and had no trouble canceling it. They did offer me a lower price and a couple months free to stay but I already had my new service and didn't need the vonage line anymore. What I didn't care for about vonage was apparently you agree in the sign up terms to a $40 cancellation fee, I told the rep I didn't care for that and while I agreed to the terms and conditions, I don't remember that there and didn't like it but agreed to pay it anyway. A few days later I got an email from vonage customer service telling me that the $40 was waived as a courtesy. I'd use them again because of that.

Here's a great way to cancel your eFax account without talking to anybody. Have somebody fax you a document larger than 15 pages without your knowledge. This happened to me, and when I logged in the next time the system had absolutely to record of me at all. I tried for a half hour to log in, then checked my email to see of I had overlooked an email from them. No...so I called them. They instantaneously cancelled my free account after that single large fax without even bothering to send me an email telling me so. Of course, my entire fax history was destroyed.

I'll never use eFax again.

I canceled my account using the "Chat Now" button to contact a CSR. It was surprisingly difficult to cancel. It was comical to the point where I saved the text transcript. I really need to go find that and send it to Consumerist...