Brother Reviews 206

This company make rubbish prints that get papers jams all the time

DO NOT BUY FROM THIS COMPANY

I do like the printer just to be clear, it works well, but getting cashback for my purchase has been a pain with brother. I'm emailing in monthly after the initial call months ago and getting no response back. Poor customer service and marketing by brother, they shouldnt have launched a campaign that they couldnt handle.

I run a small business and signed up to Brother’s EcoPro subscription in good faith. When I cancelled my subscription, Brother remotely disabled ALL of my toner cartridges — four in my printer and three unopened boxes, all paid for and physically full. Overnight, my printer became useless.

This left me unable to print legally required product labels, forcing me to refund customer orders and cancel attendance at a market. The direct financial loss and stress caused has been enormous.

EcoPro is advertised as something you can “cancel anytime”, which gives the impression it works like a gym membership or Amazon Prime. In reality, cancellation means your cartridges are bricked, even if they are brand new. If you re-subscribe, Brother sends out new cartridges instead of letting you continue using the ones you already have.

To make matters worse, Brother’s Customer Service and Support were absolutely useless. I received no practical help, no resolution, and no empathy — only a brick wall.

There is nothing “eco” about rendering seven perfectly good toner cartridges useless and forcing me to buy more. This practice is anti-consumer, environmentally damaging, and deeply unfair.

Brother — you have lost my trust, and I strongly advise other small businesses and consumers to avoid EcoPro and stick to standard toner purchases.

Awful printer, awful people. End of. If I could give them zero stars I would. I had a problem with the paper producing tramlines. It was sent off and returned - and the quality of my paper was blamed. I tested the printer on the rear of the paper they used to make a test print - and it still produced tram lines, although after a couple of days they disappeared, but that's not the point. They should not be there at all. I contacted them again to say the same thing was happening and I used different paper. They blame the customer for the paper they use and said mine is thin - it's not at all thin, and is quite thick - Navigator 80 gsm. I would not want to use any thicker paper because of the weight involved when sending off documents. I shall report them to Trading Standards, but as Brother are an American company, I doubt there is much that can be done. So warning - don't buy Brother products because it's a one way rip-off street

Yikes!
I must say, this is one of the worst purchases that we have made as a family. We have the DCP-L3520CDWE printer. The printer quality is really bad. It smudges constantly and doesn't seem to "stick" to the pages...like it wipes off.
Secondly, I think the ecopro subscription is pretty much a scam. I cancelled my subscription as I had signed up to one that was way beyond our actual needs. It rendered the entire printer useless. All of the cartridges (that are almost full) have to be disposed of and replaced.
I just...would not recommend it to anyone. It's expensive and the printer quality is horrendous.

My printer was still within warranty therefore there was no problem for Brother to arrange for it to be collected to be tested by an engineer and returned to me. The reason I returned my HL-1210W is because it leaves tramlines on the paper. The engineer tested it on their extremely high quality paper and returned the machine to me stating it was the quality of my paper that caused the tramlines. So, I reversed the paper and tested it on their posh paper - and hey ho, the tramlines are still there. Did they photocopy their results, use the copies and pass them off that there is nothing wrong with the printer I bought from them? I don't know, but somewhere along the line, there is a genuine problem, the printer is not fit for purpose, and it's not to do with the paper I use, which is Navigator 80 gsm, it is to do with the printer. I don't have to put up with this nonsense. A printer should be fit for service from the getgo, not have a problem which they happily turn a blind eye to. This problem must be resolved asap because I cannot send out presentation work printed from a rubbish printer that does not do what it's meant to. If I wanted below par presentation work, I would have gone to Currys and bought one of theirs for £40 not spend £149.99

Horrible cashback experience. I thought the printer prices were fine, and with cashback it would be a good deal for both printers. However, the web form is broken. When you email them, the message is not properly passed to the correct department. I then had to call and send additional emails just to confirm the status of my cashback.

My suggestion: skip the generic help address and email Michela.Roylance@
directly with all the required information from the form — only then will they process the cashback.

If this is how their support works for printers as well, I’ll go with HP next time for sure.

Bought a Brother printer; hardware OK but the EcoPrint subscription option that they try to force you to accept is appalling.

They (incorrectly and without warning) removed money from my account and have (as other reviewers have stated) now "bricked" my printer. So I have an expensive, ugly and environmentally disastrous piece of useless plastic sitting in my study.

They won't help you and will obstruct any attempt to contact an individual. Attempts to contact "support" resulted in them yelling at me and slamming the phone down after I asked for the name of the person that I am speaking to. I have attempted to contact their legal department but they haven't even afforded me the courtesy of an acknowledgement. I am left with little option but to commence a claim in the County Court.

EcoPrint is a legalised protection racket. If you cancel your EcoPrint subscription (not easy to do, hidden in the depths of their website) Brother immediately remotely disable your printer. It will remain unusable until you purchase and install new non-EcoPrint cartridges, even though your current (EcoPrint) cartridges may be full and have many pages of printing left in them. It is a wicked, deceitful, and immoral practice by a wicked, deceitful, and immoral company. Awarded an undeserved one-star rating, the lowest allowed; in truth they deserve prosecution for unfair trading. Avoid them at all cost.

I had issues with my new printer and contacted Brother customer support.
I found them evasive and unhelpful.
One of my issues with Brother was the inability to sign up for the Eco print option so that I could buy ink at a reasonable price. Without the Eco print option, one ink cartridge costs £48. Four are required, one black, three separate colours.
My product was registered, and after supplying my address and card details, the app for Eco print would take me no further.
Customer support admitted that this was an issue which they had not managed to resolve, despite a number of customers complaining that they had this problem.
I could not sign up for the eco print option on my phone or my laptop, even though my printer was online and could be operated by both with regard to scanning and printing.
The magenta ink cartridge would not work even after several print head cleanings, and they would not offer to replace it.
Really poor experience all round. This was my first and now my last Brother printer.
A very poor company.

This comment is regarding printer toner which should have been delivered from Brother, by DPD today.

I'm at my French house at the moment so I cannot put my finger on my usual phone or laptop, and thus have no details at hand regarding the order made last week.

DPD, the company which should have delivered the toner this afternoon, just tootled off back from whence they came, saying (through the app) that they couldn't find the address, after they had first notified me through the app that "they were on their way and my address was next".

Someone was in the house waiting for DPD so I am firstly very unhappy with DPD, and secondly, I am very unhappy with Brother, and in particular, an employee named Alex who I have just spoken to in their Customer Service, who put down the phone on me as I did not have the original order number.

As I told him, I am in my French house and have no details at hand. He said that he was not "prepared to deal with me unless I had an order number".

I'm really fed up with this afternoon's dealings with both DPD and Brother's customer service, that I am now just going to send back the order to John Lewis, the company from where I ordered the printer.

For the last 10 years, I have relied on Canon and HP printers without any issues but this time I chose the Brother DCP-T426W and unfortunately, I regret my decision.

The printer does not support AirPrint. Although it is Wi-Fi enabled, it requires the iPrint&Scan app which only supports printing PDFs or images. This is highly restrictive, as most users also need to print documents in formats such as DOC, PPTX, PPT, workflow charts, and others.

The printer stopped functioning after just 18 days of use showing a Scan AF Error.

Machine Serial Number: E82258M3H958504

To add to the concern, even support engineers acknowledged that these printers rely on outdated buffering technology which has been obsolete for nearly a decade.

This experience has been extremely disappointing, and I feel that Brother printers are neither reliable nor efficient compared to competitors. I sincerely regret purchasing this printer and expect a resolution or replacement at the earliest.

If I could give 0 stars I would
App connect rubbish
Customer service shocking
Do not sign up for ecoprint they will brick your printer and render it useless when u eventually find after circle back and circle back with the brother connected app how to cancel what a waste of time decent hardware but software and values behind the scenes omg

I don't mind the idea of subscribing to toner, I don't love it either, but - whatever. The main thing is, it has to work, and it just doesn't. This is not really the fault of the idea, but Brother's implementation. Their website and app is confusing to use - you should just be able to check your subscriptions for devices, its all pretty simple really, but they make it a total unintuiative pain. They clearly got inexperienced or cheap people to make their website. Secondly, which compounds this issue and makes it much worse, is their website doesn't work very well, it's slow and right now, it can't even load the page I want for the last two days. So, no matter how good their printers are, no matter how good any aspect of them is - its all ruined by something as simple as their website user interface and performance, something that even I could go to their company and fix within a week. Pathetic is an understatement. My advice - don't give this company your money, it doesn't deserve it.

One of the worst company’s I have dealt with.
I phoned their helpline yesterday.
I cannot access my account.
The operative was helpful until he asked me to screenshot the whirring circle you get on a computer when nothing is happening.
I said I cannot access my computer.
He said the problem is he couldn’t escalate tge issue without a screenshot as IT would only de escalate it.
I could not quite believe it.

EcoPro is a scam. DO NOT SUBSCRIBE TO IT! Ive been paying for my subscription for well over a year. Im not a heavy printer, some months its light, and other months it can be a lot more. This month it stopped printing even tho there was toner in the cartridge, Brother said i ran out of toner, this wasn't helpful because i needed to print documents that HAD to be court the next day. So i had to go out and buy another printer, just a black and white brother laser printer, but because new printers dont come with a full toner, that one ran out of toner as well. Leaving me having to pay the courts to print our documents.

As it happens i have another brother printer that was given to me by my dad that he bought the same month i bought mine based on my recommendation but got rid of it after just 5 months. My dad was being charged while in a trial period so cancelled it and his toner wouldn't work cos he cancelled his sub, so Brother shipped him more toner, he resubscribed, still got charged and the toner still wouldn't work, he cancelled his sub permanently and, yup, he couldn't use his printer either unless he bought new toner, despite paying 5 months for EcoPro, so he dumped the printer on me. I thought id persevere a bit with mine to see how i get on and its been ok at best, but now have cancelled my EcoPro subscription,

Ive now received my brand new toners but i cannot use them because i cancelled the sub, so now i have 2 full sets of new toner from my dads printer that cant be used due to them being subscription toner, and i have around 1 x full set and 2 full ish sets for my printer that i cannot use and after paying all that money for over a year and now i have to go out and buy a full set of toner. Im not sure where the Eco is? Its not been economic on my pocket, and its not very Economic on the environment they dont offer a easy route to send dead toner back.

Support are terrible, the app is terrible, and the website is terrible, which sends you in different places to manage your EcoPro subscription leaving you confused!

My advise is to stay clear of Brother, we have 3 laser printers that we have paid for the toner, but have no toner. If you need to buy more non sub toner to have just in case you run out, you may as well just do that and not use EcoPro, toner doesnt go out of date!

Lazy and uncaring customer service and I don’t like the printer very much either.

The Amazon Business Page had the wrong printer ink to printer compatibility.

I phoned and emailed about this, Brother put all the blame on Amazon (I’m pretty sure Amazon don’t write the information lol)
They also said I need to go back to the seller on Amazon. But it was sold by the Brother Store on Amazon?
Just so felt lazy and uncaring and fobbed off.

Terrible company and terrible ethics, I cancelled my ecopro subscription as it is a rip off, over twice what it costs to buy the cartridges and now I have 4 cartridges that have been disabled by brother. What kind of a company does that what a waste!!!

Before you buy any printer - think exactly what you are going to be using it for and how often you will use it. And it's worth looking at the price of replacement ink - and make sure you can understand what is being sold to you in the advertising.
I chose the Brother HL-1112 because I'm beginning to think that Brother are the only printer manufacturers who understand what many users are after in a world where electronic non printed mail is king because they provide a simple, straightforward, easy set-up, easy use compact little device that does not constantly demand new difficult-to-fit expensive cartridges. I also get puzzled by the intrigue of it all when you look on-line or go into a store to find that some deals offer you things like '3 years of free ink'. How does that all work? I am a light user just after a printer that will do a few letters and lists and the odd graphic now and again, so I get the impression I would be paying for something I would never make use of. But enough of the rest - let's talk about the Brother printer itself.
Size wise it fits neatly on a shelf (roughly 39cm across, 25cm bottom to top and 29cm back to front) and as the paper feed and out tray are both at the front so there is no wasted space. Unboxing is fairly easy. You get the instruction booklet and all the usual paperwork, a CD with the setup software, the toner cartridge and the machine itself which comes pre-plugged. The only down side is you need to find your own print cable - USB Printer Cable 2.0 Leads A Plug to B - but they are cheap enough and if you are replacing your old printer you'll find that the cable that worked on your old one probably works on this. Although you are provided with a CD to install the driver software on your laptop / desktop, you can actually go to the Brother website and download what you need from there. (Downloads | HL-1112 | United Kingdom | Brother). I suggest you do this before you start setting up the actual device. The setup instruction leaflet is basic but easy to understand. Lift the white coloured printer top up to snap the toner cartridge (Which is much bigger than a standard print cartridge) into position. Instructions are shown inside of the printer which then have to be pulled out and discarded. I'm a bit of a klutz when it comes to fitting things together but I was able to manage this inside a couple of minutes. Close the top then pull out the drawer at the front and load the paper. Plug it in and turn it on. Attach the cable to the back and the USB end to your laptop / desktop. (If you are buying a new cable you can buy them in 2, 3 and 5 metre lengths.) Select what you want to print and watch it do its stuff. Printing is quick and quiet and quality is good.
To summarise
+ Easy to set up
+ Compact
+ Good quality print
+ Quiet
+ Replacement Toner Cartridge is much cheaper than standard printer cartridges - and you only need one.
+ Reliable - based on the fact my last Brother printer lasted for about six years
- No cable supplied
- Mono only so no colour printing - but I see that also as a plus as it simplifies reordering toner
- No Wi Fi although I read somewhere that you can make it a Wi-Fi printer with a Raspberry Pi zero - but I am not sure I even know what that means

An absolutely terrible company to deal with. I have a product to return.They have made it impossible to do. Nobody contacts you with a return label. You chase and chase and get told to await an email. There is no human contact. Just been told that the hold up is due to holidays. You took my money pretty quick - no holiday there.