Generally speaking, the United States Postal Service does not offer fax services. The USPS is mainly concerned with mailing and shipping services, including sending letters, parcels, and providing postal-related products. While the USPS is known for offering a wide range of services to meet the needs of individuals and businesses, faxing is not one of them.
Since email, cloud sharing, and other methods of digital communication have taken over, faxing has become somewhat obsolete. Due to this, the USPS has refocused its business on services directly related to mail and packages. For this reason, they’ve never expanded into faxing because such a service would be regarded as antiquated and too less efficient.
Alternative faxing options near the post office
Though the USPS itself does not offer fax services, you can still find some convenient alternatives nearby. Most office supply stores, copy centers, and even some pharmacies will offer faxing services. Here are a few common places where you can send faxes:
Larger pharmacy chains, including CVS and Walgreens often have locations with faxing services. These are typically not full-service places but will do in a pinch for limited needs.
Subscription Services
Many of these involve subscription services, though most will allow a limited number of faxes for free to first-time customers or on a trial basis.
When to use a fax
Despite the commonality of digital communication, there indeed are places that can well be served by faxing. These include:
Transmission of sensitive documents: Faxing remains in use today in health and law industries for securely sending documents.
International communications: Sometimes, faxing works easier when it is required to send documents out to countries with very limited and/or unreliable internet access.
Legal or formal purposes: Sometimes, documents to be signed or transmitted officially may still have to be sent via fax for validity.
Even though the United States Postal Service doesn’t provide fax services, there are some other ways this can be done. Such office supply stores, copy centers, and online fax services make this process easy and pretty inexpensive to send and receive faxes. If you are someone that faxes often, taking a look at these options when you have the time could ensure that when needed, you can continue using this service. However, given that digital solutions keep on getting better, perhaps it’s about time to jump to more modern ways of transmitting documents when possible.