Fax and Procurement 2026: Chasing a Foreign Supplier

Short answer: when a German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Belgian or Canadian supplier stops answering both email and phone calls, fax remains one of the few channels that physically lands inside their department, often right next to the printer that spits out purchase orders. It is no substitute for a formal notice, but it does unblock situations: supply shortages, a confirmed order that was never shipped, a disputed invoice, a case number that needs chasing. The rules that work: dial 00 + 49 / 39 / 34 / 351 / 32 / 1 from France, 011 + the country code from Quebec, dropping the regional zero everywhere except in Italy; write a single page carrying the order number and a deadline; send during the recipient's local business hours; and keep the transmission report in the purchasing file. A chaser fax does not replace the commercial relationship — it makes it traceable.

About MondialFax. This article is an informational guide, with no connection to any telecom operator, chamber of commerce, debt collection firm or official directory. MondialFax sends faxes free of charge and without registration to seven destinations (France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Italy, Portugal, Canada) from a browser, with a daily sending limit. It does not assign a number and does not handle incoming faxes. See the supported countries page and the dialling code directory.

Why fax resurfaces in cross-border purchasing

In a French or Quebec purchasing department, fax is no longer a routine channel. It reappears in one very specific case: silence. The email goes to a generic alias (info@, sales@) that nobody has monitored since someone retired; the switchboard dumps you into a voicemail in German or Portuguese; the supplier portal asks for a login your contact created in their own name. What remains, on the letterhead of older documents — a 2019 quotation, a certificate of conformity, a delivery note — is a Fax: or Telefax: line the company never removed.

That line often survives because the fax machine has become an internal fax-to-email mailbox, wired to the shipping department or to accounts payable. Counter-intuitive result: in a German or Italian industrial SME, a fax sometimes stands a better chance of being read the same day than an email sent to info@. The three workflows where this effect shows up most:

• order confirmation or cancellation: a workshop still running on paper job sheets prints faxes straight into production planning;
• invoice disputes or notices of claim: accounts payable wants a dated record, not a discussion thread;
• requests for mandatory technical documents: safety data sheet, material certificate, preferential origin declaration demanded by your freight forwarder.

The first two are about commercial leverage, the third about documentary obligation. In all three, what matters is not how elegant the letter is but the fact that a sheet of paper comes out, somewhere, with your order number on it.

Before sending: check the number is still alive

A fax number printed on a 2019 document may well have been disconnected since. Outside France, the switch from copper to fibre has wiped out a great many analogue business lines: Germany has completed most of its IP migration at Deutsche Telekom, Spanish and Portuguese operators have shut down their PSTN exchanges, and in Canada business POTS lines are routinely withdrawn or repriced. We cover these deadlines in the end of copper outside France.

The practical test, in two minutes:

1. Call the number by voice. A shrill carrier tone = a modem on the line, a good sign. A human voice, a voicemail, or silence followed by a busy tone = line repurposed or dead.
2. Send a cover page on its own, with a "test page, please disregard" note in the recipient's language, and check the transmission report.
3. Look the number up on the supplier's current website, not on your old document: in the German Impressum (legal notice), the Italian dati societari (company details), the Portuguese Contactos (contacts) section. These legal pages are kept up to date far more often than sales brochures.

If your reference documents are nothing but badly scanned PDFs, a small desktop scanner with an automatic document feeder will save you from sending unreadable grey pages across Europe — legibility is the number one cause of a wasted chaser, as explained in our guide to unreadable faxes.

Dialling the number: the detail that sinks one chaser in three

The number format is the most frequent mechanical cause of failure. A quick recap, from the sender's point of view:

From Quebec, replace 00 with 011 — except for calls to Canada and the United States, where you dial 1 + area code. Italy is the classic trap: a sender used to Germany drops the zero from 02 and lands on a non-existent number. Full details are in the international fax number format.

Another rule that is often forgotten: a fax does not arrive at a desk, it arrives at a number. If the supplier has a general fax plus a "shipping" or "accounting" fax, use the latter. A dispute fax received at the switchboard takes three days to find its department; received at accounts payable, it is handled the same day.

What a supplier chaser sent by fax should contain

Forget the two-page business letter. An effective fax fits on one sheet, reads in fifteen seconds, and gives the recipient everything they need to act without calling you back.

The structure that works:

• Header: your registered company name, your EU VAT number or Quebec enterprise number, a direct phone line and a monitored email address.
• Subject line in the recipient's language, with the reference: Bestellung Nr. 2026-4471 — Liefertermin (Order no. 2026-4471 — delivery date), Ordine n. 2026-4471 — sollecito (Order no. 2026-4471 — reminder), Pedido n.º 2026-4471 — prazo de entrega (Order no. 2026-4471 — delivery deadline), Purchase order 2026-4471 — delivery status.
• Three lines of context: what was ordered, when, what is missing.
• One single, dated request: "please confirm the shipping date before [date]".
• Your preferred reply channel: a named email address, not purchasing@.

The body of the attached document (purchase order, disputed invoice) stays in its original language, untranslated. We develop this logic in the article on what language to use for a fax sent abroad.

Three things to avoid at all costs, because they turn a chaser into an incident:

• any poorly calibrated legal threat: a fax is not a registered letter, and in Italy as in Germany formal notice goes through formal channels (PEC/certified email, registered mail, a lawyer);
• bank details: a chaser fax containing an IBAN is a gift to bank-account-change fraud, a scenario extensively documented by national cybersecurity agencies and banks;
• unnecessary personal data: the fax lands on a shared printer, and GDPR data-minimisation principles apply here as anywhere else.

Timing it right: local hours, public holidays, annual shutdowns

A fax sent at 9 a.m. Montreal time arrives at 3 p.m. in Porto and 4 p.m. in Milan: often after the last trip to the machine. From France the gap is negligible for continental Europe, but real for Canada: 6 hours' difference with Quebec, 9 with British Columbia. See our guide to faxing across time zones.

The calendar traps specific to purchasing:

• Summer shutdowns: many Italian companies close around 15 August (chiusura estiva, summer closure), as do Portuguese and Spanish manufacturers in August. A fax sent on 10 August sits in a tray for three weeks.
• National long weekends: Belgium, Germany and Spain have regional public holidays (certain Länder/federal states, certain autonomous communities) that do not appear on the French calendar.
• Year-end: chasing a German accounts payable team between Christmas and 6 January achieves very little; aim for the second week of January.

Field tip: record the supplier's local opening hours in their record, not just the number. A simple supplier record binder or an order-tracking notebook is enough for a colleague to pick up the file without you.

Keeping the proof: what a transmission report is worth in a purchasing dispute

A fax does not prove it was read. It proves that a transmission to a given number went through, at a given time, for a given number of pages. In a purchasing file, that record mainly serves to show the chronology of your efforts: first email, second email, phone call, fax, then registered letter or formal notice. It is that sequence, more than the fax itself, that carries weight if the matter ends up with a credit insurer or a lawyer.

What should be archived every time:

• the exact PDF that was sent, not a reworked version;
• the transmission report (number dialled, timestamp, pages, status);
• a one-line internal note: who sent it, why, what response is expected, when to chase again.

Our articles on fax delivery confirmation and archiving faxes go into retention periods and formats. For high-stakes files, many purchasing departments print a duplicate and file it in an elasticated archive folder: inelegant redundancy, but unbeatable the day the job changes hands.

Fallback channels, country by country

Fax is a plan B, not a strategy. As soon as the silence drags on, you need to know the official channel in the supplier's country — the one their lawyers and their accountants take seriously.

These ecosystems are described in detail in our country guides: Germany, Italy and Belgium.

What about a prospecting fax to a supplier?

Be careful not to confuse chasing an existing supplier with a sales approach. An unsolicited fax to a business falls under strict rules: in Europe, the "privacy and electronic communications" directive as transposed into national law makes advertising faxes subject to prior consent; in Canada, the National Do Not Call List and the CRTC's unsolicited telecommunications rules govern fax sending, with requirements on sender identification and an opt-out mechanism. Chasing an open order is contractual communication. Pitching your services to a stranger is prospecting — an entirely different regime, covered in our article on fax broadcasting.

Frequently asked questions

Does a chaser fax carry legal weight in Germany or Italy?

It counts as one piece of evidence among others, not as a formal act. For a formal notice, Italy expects a PEC message or registered mail, Germany a registered letter or action through a lawyer. Fax serves to document your chasers and to trigger a quick reaction, not to start a contractual deadline running.

Should you write in English or in the supplier's language?

Subject line and request in the recipient's language, the attached document in its original language. English works well in German and Dutch-speaking industry, less so in family-run Italian, Portuguese and Spanish SMEs. A few lines in the right language, even imperfect ones, are enough to steer the sheet to the right desk.

My supplier has got rid of their fax machine. How can I tell before sending?

Call the number: no carrier tone, a voice message or an immediate busy signal all point to a repurposed line. Then check the legal notice on their current website. If the fax is gone, ask by phone for a named email address and confirm it in writing.

Can I chase several suppliers in a single send?

No, and it is not advisable. Bulk sending counts as fax broadcasting, which is subject to consent in the EU and to CRTC rules in Canada, and most free services block it. A purchasing chaser is addressed to one named recipient, with a single order reference.

How can I send a fax without a fax machine from a French-speaking office?

An online service is all you need: a PDF, a number in international format, and sending from your browser. That is what MondialFax's sending form offers for seven destinations. On the hardware side, a desktop workstation UPS mainly protects your scanner and your computer — the fax network itself no longer depends on your premises.

Key takeaways

• Fax is not a purchasing channel: it is a tool for breaking deadlocks when email and phone have failed.
• Check the number is alive before sending: outside France, the end of copper has cut a great many business lines.
• Number format: regional zero dropped everywhere except in Italy; 00 from France, 011 from Quebec.
• One page, one order number, one dated request, one named contact for the reply.
• Never an IBAN, never a half-baked legal threat, never superfluous personal data.
• Archive the PDF you sent and the transmission report: the chronology of your chasers is what counts in a dispute.
• Know the country's formal channel (PEC, beA, eBox, electronic register, registered mail) for the next step.