Brother and the Great Printer Con.

Did you know that printers can be dishonest? Or should I say, that printer manufacturers design printers that lie to you?

How often has your printer refused to print by telling you that such and such a cartridge is "out of ink" "Low on ink" etc. etc.? Have you ever thought to check the offending cartridges? I have. In the case of my Brother MFC-240C printer the cartridges are usually fairly full of ink when it decides to reject them: ink sloshes in them and is visible in a little window. These are not empty cartridges, they have the heft and slosh of fairly full ones - yet my printer says they are empty and need changing. Now, who on Earth could have a motive for making a printer that lies? Well, Brother, of course, since they make the replacement cartridges and design those cartridges to make them non-interchangeable with others, so that you are forced to buy from Brother. I wouldn't mind this were it not for two obvious facts: prices of cartridges are inflated by this monopoly situation - and the cartridges are not even remotely empty when I am forced to change them.

What Brother (and I hear, other printer companies, too) are doing is illegal. There are even class law suits relating to this practice working their way through the US courts.

I, personally, will never buy another machine with the label "Brother" on it, after my experiences with this particular printer. Not only does it lie about when it needs new ink (it once asked for a new black ink cartridge the same day that I had just given it a new one - and I had printed nothing!); but it mangles paper as if that is its specific design purpose. On one particularly memorable day, it mangled paper on six consecutive attempts to get it to print one sheet of paper. This necessitated a lot of time pulling fragments of shredded paper out of its innards. As machines go, this printer is a piece of rubbish.

Of the two offences - printing incompetence and ink deception - ink deception is the harder to take, for it implies that the machine has been specifically designed to cheat each and every customer who buys it. That says a lot about the corporation that manufactures it.

So, the next time you are shopping for a printer, I would think of my story about the Brother brand. However, it might be difficult to find a brand that doesn't cheat you in this way for both Epson and Hewlett Packard are being sued, in class action suits, for just the same offence of which I have written. So, that is at least three brands to avoid in the matter of printers, then.

Good luck on your electronic shopping.

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