Shout out to Brother

[Grant Lamontagne]

I admit it, I'm an HP guy.  I have been frustrated by so many printers from so many brands in the past that I swore I'd never buy anything but an HP again, because I've had less problems with them than anything else.

Then, a few years ago I was looking to downsize the printers I had- I had a B&W HP Laserjet, a full color HP printer/scanner/copier inkjet and a wireless Epson that also scanned and copied, but so slowly that I think it is still scanning an image.     I decided that rather than use them all for different things, I would invest in One Printer to Rule Them All and I set about getting an all in one color laser that could print wirelessly off a network and had an automatic document feeder, because feeding multiple documents one at a time into that stupid Epson (which was a gift) took forever.

I went to Staples to get a nice HP model that did everything I wanted it to, and, while talking to the sales associate he pointed out this Brother machine that was $100 cheaper.  I immediately decided it was worth the extra $100 to stick with the HP machine.  Then he told me that the Brother had been on sale the week earlier, and that he'd probably be able to get me the sale price of another $100 off.  I'm willing to spend $100 extra for the HP, but $200?  My inner Scotsman can only go so far, so I ended up getting the Brother machine after all.

I have used this machine a lot over the past few years, and it has been about 90% reliable.  There have been a few times I have had to reset something on it or reconnect it etc, but for the most part it has been plugging away, solid as a rock. 

Until last week.

I changed ISP's last week and, despite running the network setup wizard numerous times, my computer just would not connect to the printer, which was really frustrating because the printer insisted it was connected to the network.  I ran a number of utilities from Brother to try and get it sorted out, but in the end I just couldn't get anywhere with it myself.  I decided to try the Live Chat from Brother, and Brian quickly diagnosed and solved my problem- it seemed the printer was still trying to connect on the old IP.

Anyways, in short, it was a simple fix, Brian talked me through it with clear, excellent instructions and I appreciated the help, despite it being a problem on my end and an old machine.  You just don't get service like that in the tech industry most of the time these days- it's usually "The problem is on your end and isn't our responsibility, try contacting _________" or "I'm sorry, that product is out of it's warranty period, I guess you'll have to go buy a new one."

I even had one big brand name store (I won't mention who, but it was supposedly the BEST place to BUY tech) tell me my two month old mouse was out of the store's return period but they'd be happy to send it to the manufacturer for me, and would I like to buy another mouse to use in the meantime?  I explained to them that if I bought another mouse then A) it wasn't going to be from them and B) I wasn't going to need the first one back.  Luckily someone in the service department had more sense than the kid at the customer service desk and replaced the mouse over the counter.

But, I digress- I got great customer service from Brother, and I really think they deserve some recognition for it.  Way to go Brother!  I have expanded my list of acceptable printers from HP to HP and Brother.   

Def

[gregozedobe]

The old adage of "When the going gets tough, the tough get going" particularly applies to after-sales support.  This can make a huge difference to word-of-mouth reputation, and in the long term can have a big impact on the success (or otherwise) of even big companies.

About a year ago I replaced my older Canon inkjet with a Brother MFC-9330CDW laser (I got sick of the usual inkjet problems of printer head drying out/blocking if not used, tanks/cartridges too small and needing frequent refilling, leaking etc ).

I've been very happy with the performance my Brother  (and I don't miss regular bouts of messing around with inkjet ink), but obviously I have some Scotch blood in my lineage as well, because I balked at the price being asked for genuine Brother toner cartridges so I bought some generic ones and also some toner refill kits.

[Chako]

I just bought a Brother myself...to replace an HP..and I can say I will never buy another HP inkjet printer ever again.

I bought a Brother DCP-L2540DW all in one laser printer.to replace an HP Office Jet 8600 Premium. My issue with the HP revolve around the expensive cartridges, and furthermore, they expire all too quickly, and waste a ton of ink. I was very unhappy with the ink magic act. Not to mention if I ran out of a colour, I couldn't print black and white until I replaced that colour cartridge. Yes, the HP was a huge ink waster both physically and software wise as well. I personally found HP's software ink management to be rather draconian in nature.

[WhichDawg]

This is helpful! we've been looking for an All-In-One machine and were seriously thinking of getting an HP but now....

Good customer service is a big plus for us, and nice deal!

[Smashie]

I've got two Brother printers an AIO (MFC-J5720DW) and a old small mono laser. I've never had any issues with them and the software is not intrusive and annoying as smurf as HP's is

I really like the AIO as it will duplex print and scan and will print A3 paper in a machine with an A4 footprint.

My old Brother AIO finally died after 7 years hard use (I work from home so they do get used a lot), it was a no brainer to replace it with another Brother.

[Chako]

I did a lot of research and bought the Brother mentioned above because it was on sale. I was also going to buy a Canon imageCLASS all in one printer, but those just got off of a sale while I was doing my research.

I have had Brother laser printers in the past and all were very good printers. The reason why I was looking for the Canon monochrome laser was due to the consumables. Brother offers 2 sizes of toner cartridges...a 630 which yields up to 1200 pages, and a larger capacity 660 cartridge which yields 2600 pages. The Canon offers the 137 toner cartridge that yields 2400 pages. The big difference here is that the brother has a separate image drum which may need replacing after 6 to 8 toner replacements. The Canon has the image drum built into the toner cartridge, thus you get a fresh new image drum with each toner cartridge. I sort of liked that concept because I have had some image drums go foul on me in the past. When the cost of consumables are calculated, the Brother and the Canon roughly come out even.

[pfrsantos]

Misleading titles, once again!
 


Bet more than one were fooled, expecting to find something else...

Show content

[Gerhard Gerber]

I'm surprised to see so many of you are still printing........

I have repaired, stripped and serviced just about every printer on the market 10+ years ago, and if you have to fix them HP will be a favourite.

Things have however changed, for HP and all printing companies, where every desk used to have a printer, there's now a big one down the hall..........and they work......and they're cheap.

I know it's impossible to compare corporate and SOHO printing, but I had to do a cast comparison between our leased printers and a B&W HP laserjet and the HP was 16x the price per page.

[WhichDawg]

Misleading titles, once again!

don't you know the boss gets off on that?!
why... some say he wiggles when he giggles! (at least before the weight loss)

[Grant Lamontagne]

I did a lot of research and bought the Brother mentioned above because it was on sale. I was also going to buy a Canon imageCLASS all in one printer, but those just got off of a sale while I was doing my research.

I have had Brother laser printers in the past and all were very good printers. The reason why I was looking for the Canon monochrome laser was due to the consumables. Brother offers 2 sizes of toner cartridges...a 630 which yields up to 1200 pages, and a larger capacity 660 cartridge which yields 2600 pages. The Canon offers the 137 toner cartridge that yields 2400 pages. The big difference here is that the brother has a separate image drum which may need replacing after 6 to 8 toner replacements. The Canon has the image drum built into the toner cartridge, thus you get a fresh new image drum with each toner cartridge. I sort of liked that concept because I have had some image drums go foul on me in the past. When the cost of consumables are calculated, the Brother and the Canon roughly come out even.

I'll never buy another inkjet of any brand.  I have two printers now- a monochrome HP Laserjet and the big multifunction Brother.

When I got the monochrome printer I also bought a toner cartridge at the same time, which cost more than the printer did.  It's been going strong for many years now, and it went 3-4 years before I swapped the toner cartridge out on it.

The big machine has had the black cartridge replaced, and I got it at superink.ca for a fraction of the price.  If I bought it at Staples (who had it in stock) it would have cost $135.  If I ordered it at Best Buy it would have cost $88.  Buying it from SuperInk it cost me like $30 and it was delivered within a day or two, so that's what I plan to do from now on.  The toner cartridge has been going strong for a while, but it is about time to replace all of them (black for the second time) and I am planning to buy them online again, as the whole set is only like $123.

No printer discussion would be complete without Harlan Williams....



Def

[NeitherExtreme]

Ha, I just bought a Brother Laser printer to replace my old HP Injket. Had no idea I was part of a movement.

[Whoey]

When my inlaws upgraded to replace the old hp laserjet in their office they got a B&W AIO Brother that replaced the printer, flatbed scanner, copier and fax. Pretty sure it far outperformed all the devices it replaced.

Meanwhile my other inlaws have a HP AIO that sporadically seems to lose connection with random PCs on their network requiring me to remove and reinstall the drivers from the CD, the internet downloaded update will not work without the cd version first 

[Top-Gear-24]

I bought a Brother MFC-J4610DW inktjet about two years ago, and it works great until ... it stops working ... 

From time to time and without any notice the printer is suddenly no longer detected by my laptop, I reconnect it to my wifi network, and still my laptop is unable to find it.  Last time I ended up getting help from the store where I bought it, and the store owner said it had something to do with the fact that my router changed the IP address, and he had to give a dedicated IP address (or something) to the printer and it was fixed, but just last week, out of nowhere, the same problem occurred ...

And since I have no idea how to fix it, or what the store owner did last time, I'm unable to fix it myself and will end up at the store again  .

Probaby an easy fix for some people, but for me it's like nuclear fysics  .

[Grant Lamontagne]

Go to settings, then all settings, then Network and then Reset Network. You'll have to reconnect it to your network, but it will pick up the new IP address.

If it's trying to find the old IP address that doesn't exist, that should clear it.  At least, that is what fixed mine.

Def

[Top-Gear-24]

Go to settings, then all settings, then Network and then Reset Network. You'll have to reconnect it to your network, but it will pick up the new IP address.

If it's trying to find the old IP address that doesn't exist, that should clear it.  At least, that is what fixed mine.

Def

I did the "reset network" thing, and then tried the WPS/AOSS thingy to reconnect the printer to my Wifi network, and it didn't work, then I ended up selecting my Wifi network manually, entered my Wifi password manually and ...



Thanks for the help boss  .

[Grant Lamontagne]

No worries- glad I could help, even though it seems like you did it well enough without me! 

Def