- Report: #345852
Complaint Review: Brother - Bartlett Tennessee
-
Author Confirmed
Why?
Brother
7777 North Brother Blvd Bartlett, 38133 Tennessee, U.S.A.
Phone:
877-2768437
Web:
N/A
Categories:
Business Rating:
(0)
Tell us has your experience with this business or person been good?
Brother Brother Warranty Viability? More to get repaired under warranty than to throw away Bartlett Tennessee
Brother Products. Specifically the MFC 240C multi function printer/fax machine. Used primarily as a fax machine. It does a good job of sending faxes and is great for scanning multi-page documents. Bought machine May 22 2008. Appeared to work fine. After a week received faxes with intermittent problems, partial pages, compressed lines of text. Copied made from the machine were just fine. Brother said was other fax machine or line problem. Had six other offices send faxes and all had same problem. Put different fax machine on my line and all worked perfectly. Called Brother and they said it was other machines fault and after three times of saying what I had done to check out the problem they finally said that the machine had a problem but it is not mechanical so have to use an authorized service center, but if the service center couldn't find the problem I would be billed, I guess trying to scare one off of using the warranty. Nearest service center is a 20 mile round trip and they had a recording they were closed until at least July 11, today is June 30, meaning machine wouldn't even be looked at for at least a week. Called Brother, they said still have to bring to a different service center which is a one way of 25 miles from me, meaning two round trips for 100 miles at 20 miles per gallon plus 2.5 hours in road time. Called Brother again and they had me do many different things to the machine, none of which worked. They said if it was a mechanical error they would ship another but they couldn't tell for sure. The last Brother representative was in the Philippines, really means nothing, and like all their rep's they keep saying we apologize, which actually means nothing, so it may be good to stop saying it all the time. I now have to go to a "normal" phone line to see if the machine works, as the rep said there may be an issue with using Vonage, which is a digital line. Told him my other two fax machines have no problem with Vonage. Appears it is the "always the other companies fault syndrome." Brother produces a fax machine with possible phone service incompatibilities and it is the phone companies fault for not making the phone line for Brother. I put the fax machine onto a regular Verizon line and the problem is the same. Bottom line is not so much whether Brother makes a good product or not, their warranty service is very substandard. I have had several Epson machines and they always exchanged the machines out when there was a warranty problem as has Canon. I spent a total of 15 minutes on initial call hold and 1 hour 42 minutes with the representatives and no help at all other than they apologize. I did the math and is cheaper to throw the one month old machine away than go through getting it repaired "under warranty." Sticking to Epson, learned my lesson.
Dan
springfield, Massachusetts
U.S.A.
Dan
springfield, Massachusetts
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Dan
springfield,Massachusetts,
U.S.A.
Ripp Off Continues
#2Author of original report
Tue, July 01, 2008
Called by Brother representative. Was told their machines are not compatible with digital phone lines and perhaps I could call my phone company and see if they could optimize my phone line to work with the fax machine. I mentioned they should disclose that their fax machines do not work with certain phone lines, in this case digital, and that one would have to have a "normal" phone company phone line such as Verizon offers. She said I could bring it into the service center but if the problem was the digital phone line issue then I wasn't covered by warranty and would have to pay for the service center looking at it and telling me that there is nothing they can do. I told her I brought it to a "normal" Verizon phone line at a relatives, closest normal line I had which is 25 miles one way away from me and had faxes sent to me and the problem was the same. Evidently the Brother representative did not believe me as she wanted me to take the fax machine and hook it back to the Verizon line. I reexplained the distance logistics involved and that made no difference. She said that if she couldn't trouble shoot the fax machine over the Verizon line then there is nothing Brother can do about the problem. She said that if she sent a replacement machine that I would probably have the same issue as I am on a digital line. The fact that the machine also didn't work on a "normal" line did not matter. I am therefore stuck with a month old fax machine that is useless unless I want to change phone company's. At no point did the Brother representative offer to buy the machine back or credit me toward a machine that would work. Only thing she said was it is not covered by warranty as it is a digital phone line problem. I have a Masters Degree in Marketing and I would find working at Brother quite a challenge to keep people buying my product never mind the amount of marketing dollars expended to get and keep buyers. Must be a frustrating job for them. Oh well. Lesson learned is: make sure the fax machine you are buying works on your phone line and buy from a company that firmly stands behind their product and warranty. Brother is in a gray area about the warranty but definitely does not stand behind their products. I fell into that old "assume syndrome" expecting a machine designed to work with phone lines work with the majority of phone lines out there, being analog (Verizon) and digital such as Comcast and Vonage.
