I’m not looking forward to this call. Last fall I bought a Brother portable color printer to use with my laptop. To make a long story short, the documentation (manual and Help files) is a convoluted work of fiction. When I can figure out what they’re trying to tell me, the printer doesn’t do what the instructions say it’s supposed to. I have printed maybe five pages correctly and replaced the cartridges once. It seems that the solution for every quality problem is to replace the cartridges – and if I call on Monday and the tech tells me to replace the cartridges again, I’ll scream bloody murder. Two and a half pages per set of cartridges is not an acceptable rate of output. Also, I had to stop using the automatic jam feeder, I mean paper feeder.
Clearly, either I am doing something wrong, or this printer is a piece of donkey dung. I’m leaning toward the latter, as I’m not a moron. Normally I do all my own computer troubleshooting, and very seldom do I have to call for help. I’ve read the manual from front to back, and it’s a mess. (I’m a copyeditor by profession; I know poor instructions when I see them.) The online help is skeletal. And when I mentioned my trouble to my computer guru, he sighed and said he’d had nothing but trouble dealing with Brother printers. Great.
So I’m going to call on Monday and tell Brother that I’m about to put their product through the window, and why, and that they’d better (1) get this thing working for me, reliably, (2) replace it, or (3) take back their piece of crap and return my $300. (It’s still under the warranty period.)
I’m not looking for tech help here, but rather an idea of whether they’re likely to give me trouble. I’m loaded for bear, if they are. Anyone got any horror (or success) stories to share?
I haven’t called Brother specifically, but having worked in Tech Support, I can tell you how to most likely get some help (It won’t help if you end up with an idiot, but assuming that the tech knows what s/he is doing)
#1) Be with your printer. Have it turned on and have your computer on as well.
#2) When the tech asks “What’s going on with your printer?”, be as precise and detailed ("I’m getting about 5 pages of out of a cartridge and I’ve bought <however many> brand new cartridges>. All of them have done exactly the same thing. In addition, my paper-feeder is constantly jamming. Leave out the rant (justified rant, but it’s not something the tech can change)
#3) If, after this, the tech stll wants you to replace the cartidges again, repeat that you’ve done that several times with no effect. If s/he persists, ask for a supervisor. THEN demand a refund or replacement.
By the way, have you checked Brother’s web page? They used to have pretty good documentation and troubleshooting info.
Thanks for your reply, Fenris. Yup, I’m an old hand at calling tech support (and providing it to my friends now and then) and dealing with customer service, and a fan of [url=“http://www.techtales.com”}TechTales. I have a list of specific problems, what I’ve done to try to fix them, etc. I haven’t found the Brother web site very helpful. But I’ll be fair and let the tech run through the diagnostics and whatnot – and I’ll also make it very clear that I will expect results. I’ll be polite, but assertive and emphatic.
I can see it going either way. I’m prepared for them to be dicks/morons about it, but it’s also a chance for them to fix the problem and make me a fan. Just wondering if anyone has any opinions/experiences one way or the other.