News Brother accused of locking down third-party printer ink cartridges via firmware updates, removing older firmware versions from support portals

[saunupe1911]

Damn I just bought Brother printer. That doesn't require much online awareness smh

 

[dweb p]

I'm willing to pay a reasonable price to any hacking group that develops custom firmware for Brother printers/MFCs. I'd rather support independent hackers than questionable back-stabbing extortionist corporations.

There are really no printer companies left. Literally everyone has moved to the Gillette business model.

I knew I had to steer clear of Epson and Canon from the get-go. But now I have more than a dozen worthless MFCs by HP, Samsung, Lexmark, Xerox, Pantum, Kyocera stacked up, bricked after using aftermarket toner. Now is that good for the environment?

Here's an idea: Forbid BY LAW printer manufacturing companies AND their subsidiaries from manufacturing printing consumables and related parts.

 

[M0rtis]

Years ago I bought one the New Epson Ecotank printers. It was over $500 but looked like a great deal. Just squirt cheap ink into a tank. After several months I noticed I had to go through repeated cleaning cycles to get a decent picture. Then I found out the way Epson was making their money on the ecotanks. You have to pay an "Authorized Dealer" to change out the head cleaners. (An absorbent wiper that cleans the head). It has a lockout chip and at the time it cost about $200 to get it changed. I stopped printing with it and use it only as a document scanner. (It does fine for that). I went back to using my color laser and a few years later bought a more modern laser printer. (I could no longer get toner for my Konica Minolta 5430DL).

I was going to reply to an earlier post suggesting ink tank printers with this but you beat me to it. I dont have any first hand experience and Im not sure if it affects both, HP and Epson but I heard that there is a sponge bed or some such in these where the ink gets purged and either these get saturated or "get saturated" after running the printer X times and you then need to get a technician around to replace them for a lot of money.

 

[Moonstick2]

Years ago I bought one the New Epson Ecotank printers. It was over $500 but looked like a great deal. Just squirt cheap ink into a tank. After several months I noticed I had to go through repeated cleaning cycles to get a decent picture. Then I found out the way Epson was making their money on the ecotanks. You have to pay an "Authorized Dealer" to change out the head cleaners...it cost about $200 to get it changed.

I've had an Ecotank for 9 years, and it's yet to miss a beat. I do use the official Epson inks, since despite doing a lot of printing I need to purchase £10 ink bottles so rarely that it's hardly worth trying to save a few quid getting something cheaper.

I think they make their money by charging a full price for the printer, instead of the usual cartridge-subsidy version where it can be cheaper to buy a new printer instead of a full set of ink cartridges. In your case maybe it was the cheap ink, or maybe you were unlucky and got a duff printer.

 

[Dr3ams]

I bought a Brother MFC-L2960DW multifunctions printer about a week ago. Before I bought it I looked around at various printers and their features, but mostly at toner costs. I'm not interested in third party toners, so it was important to me to get an original toner at a reasonable price. My first choice was Kyocera, but the toner cost around 60 Euros. The most expensive toners were those from HP, at around 85 Euros. I finally made the choice for Brother because it had the features I was looking for and the original toner costs around 40 Euros for aprox. 1500 pages. Since I only print around 50 pages a week, that toner would last me about a year.

Edit: I forgot to mention my wife's compulsion to copy everything, so that toner would probably only last me about 2 to 3 months.

If Brother is nerfing third party toners, I could care less. I've used third party toners before on a Samsung printer I had with various results. Half the time the print quality wasn't very good, which provoked me to buy the original toners from Samsung/HP.

 

[anoldnewb]

I bought a Brother MFC-L2960DW multifunctions printer about a week ago. Before I bought it I looked around at various printers and their features, but mostly at toner costs. I'm not interested in third party toners, so it was important to me to get an original toner at a reasonable price. My first choice was Kyocera, but the toner cost around 60 Euros. The most expensive toners were those from HP, at around 85 Euros. I finally made the choice for Brother because it had the features I was looking for and the original toner costs around 40 Euros for aprox. 1500 pages. Since I only print around 50 pages a week, that toner would last me about a year.

If Brother is nerfing third party toners, I could care less. I've used third party toners before on a Samsung printer I had with various results. Half the time the print quality wasn't very good, which provoked me to buy the original toners from Samsung/HP.

They’re probably going to raise toner cartridge prices now that they eliminated competition.

 

[Dr3ams]

They’re probably going to raise toner cartridge prices now that they eliminated competition.

Could be, but hopefully not. I think one of the main reasons why people buy Brother is because of the low cost toners.

 

[SyCoREAPER]

I hate this title because my squishy muscle in my head keeps reading this as a literal brother before going, ahh printer brand.

Shame they've fallen to this but every good guy goes bad eventually. The DRM I don't agree with but understand why they are doing it.
Removing old firmware however, that is underhanded and has further ramifications other than just removing the ability to use 3rd party ink, it means if they botch or you have a legitimate reason to be on a certain firmware, they just kicked you in the jellies.

 

[King_V]

Welp, I'm hoping this is true, because it seems that this will put Brother back on the "not an evil printer company" side

Brother denies using firmware updates to brick printers with third-party ink

 

[warlocktx]

Why is Tom's treating this like a "he said, she said" story? Buying a printer and validating the accusations against Brother would be exactly what I would expect them to do. Not just repeating the responses they are getting from a corporate spokesperson

 

[Peppermint Barnstorm]

We bought a Brother HL-L2350DW 4 years ago and it has rejected three different brands of 3rd Party Toner. It is absolutely locked to own brand cartridges and not recently - we tried the first replacement about a year after purchase. I would MUCH rather pay more for the printer and buy the ink wherever I like. As soon as Brother decide my printer is "old" by their standards all they need do is stop making the toner and I am forced to buy a new one. I should have sent my old Cannon off for repair as that was so old it was not locked and I can still get the cartridges. I have considered swapping the contact board with the chip from an old cartridge to a replacement one but I'm not sure what that might do.

 

[rgd1101]

When you said reject are you getting some message? or they remove some feature like the article said