[PLUG] Off-topic Rant: Don't Buy Brother Products!

[Casey Bralla <MailList@nerdworld.org>]

A month or so ago, my Brother DCP-7065 printer started giving me "Toner Low" error messages. I was pretty sure the toner was still good, but the printer refused to work and would only flash the toner low error.

 

I considered buying a new toner cartridge, but hesitated because (as we all know) a new cartridge is almost as expensive as a new printer.

 

I concluded that the printer was likely dead and a new cartridge might not fix the problem. If this theory was correct, a new cartridge would not fix the problem and would be a waste of $100. Instead, I bought an HP. (Brother's Linux support is hit or miss, anyway, although I generally like their equipment.)

 

 

This morning, I was reading on-line about laser printers and how they play games with the cartridges. They mentioned that a hard reset might clear the low toner, and even listed the button sequences to do the reset for a different Brother printer. A little googling and I found the sequence for my printer.

 

Luckily, I had not yet thrown away the printer (it was sitting in my e-waste pile). 10 minutes later, my old printer came back to life.

 

I am really ticked at Brother. The only good news is that they outsmarted themselves and lost a customer. They tried to trick me into buying another expensive cartridge, and instead I bought a competitor's product (that has aftermarket toner cartridges at half price).

 

So, to my friends at Brother, I say "Good riddance to bad rubbish"

 

Casey Bralla

 

Chief Nerd in Residence

The NerdWorld Organisation

www.NerdWorld.org

___________________________________________________________________________
Philadelphia Linux Users Group         --        http://www.phillylinux.org
Announcements - http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug-announce
General Discussion  --   http://lists.phillylinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug