The most wretched customer treatment

Some time ago I mentioned some horrible treament of a customer. It is from a well known USA financial institution.

Now that this institution has apparently reformed themselves and the issue is taken care of, we will name the company:

Fidelity Investments!

Now you might wonder why my wrath is set against Fidelity... You see for years I sought to get Fidelity to do something that every CS person agreed was reasonable: Send me a statement of my 401K account! Yes they would and did send on demand but never ever would they set it up to be sent automatically because you see Fidelity only "record keeps" for Multinational Hi-Tech where I work. MHT you see set statements up to be "delivered electronically." It never was delivered though. The victim was/is supposed to go and get it, download it, and print it using victim's own resources. Fidelity had the perfect excuse: MHT terms "do not permit" automatic mailing of a statement. Not monthly, not quarterly, not annually, not at all!!! Fighting MHT is worse than fighting City Hall: Whoever might be responsible cannot be found and will not answer. Said party was probably outsourced a couple of years ago. Thus the regular and expensive dialogue continued so this victim could track what might be in the account.

On one occasion I accused Fidelity of acting like Enron. "How could that be?" asked the CS? Simple! You withhold financial data. The only possible reason is you are trying to hide something! This practice is a violation of the SIA Investor's Bill of Rights -- http://www.sia.com/best_practices/html/investor_rights.html -- one of which is that "As an investor, you have the right: ... To accurate and timely regular statements of your account, including detailed transactional information." Month after month, one or more Fidelity reps would courteously empathize with me and then refuse to set the computer to send a regular statement.

Now we will tell about what happened in 2006. A little thing called the Pension Protection Act! http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2006/08/20060817.html

There we find "Ensures that workers have more information about the performance of their accounts." We understand that the underlying law requires quarterly statements.

Now, thanks to this Act of Congress, the victim can elect to Reject Electronic Delivery and Fidelity will send a quarterly statement.

Wow is this not something! Finally I get my statement 4 times a year. It only took an Act of Congress to make it happen.

Does the blame lie with Fidelity or MHT? Probably both, but since Fidelity handles the money and the accounting, you would think they would never get put in a spot of refusing regular statements. As I reminded them on several occasions, "You are the bank. You have the money, all of it. I own the account, all of it. That makes you the vendor and me the customer! How dare you refuse to send a regular statement like you do for any customer walking in the door with a little money to invest?"

Since they did behave in this manner, my decision is settled: The minute I am no longer forced to use Fidelity is the minute I take every dime to an institution where I will be treated like a customer!

Before you waste your money on a Brother product, read this!

Not too long ago I went down to Fry's and bought a nice refurb Brother HL-5150D laser printer. A whiz-bang laser with two paper trays and duplexing. Does PCL, postscript (BR-script) and other languages too.

Not too shabby. Did not take much effort to get running in Linux. After all it is a postscript printer. So what is wrong with this you say?

The stupid printer printed fewer than 200 pages. What happened then is the rest of the What-a-story...

You see now instead of printed output, we get light gray on both sides of paper. Go looking for info and find that solid black means drum needs to be cleaned but nothing about light gray. Bear in mind we have that background but no foreground. No usable output at all.

Go on off to Brother web site and put in a request:
No alarms. Prints a page.
--> Page is gray, not too dark, both sides. No meaningful data <--
Printer reports 190 pages printed.
Drum life 98.6%, Coverage 2.03%
Please help!

Answer:
How to clear gray background?
Description of Solution 500000018593

HL5150D PS 2404 Please follow these cleaning steps for your printer. ...

Hmmph. Clean the drum. Fine so we move the tab back and forth and we do the other things. No improvement.

Now we call them up as suggested:

Thank you Gentlemen and thanks to [CSR] for diagnosis help on the phone.

The diagnosis is: Drum needs to be replaced. Only warranted 90 days.

While I am not sure when I bought this (It may have been under 90 days), I am very sure that there is zero chance that I will pay USD185 for a drum unit that only prints 190 pages. This is the most wretched printer purchase I have ever made. I suggest you consider working with me on this part. For a drum to only last that long is preposterous.

Net result of phone call is tech diagnoses the drum unit, notes that it is warranted for 90 days and suggests I buy a new one. We have new symptoms too as a result of some pretty decent troubleshooting: User can take out the drum assembly, clean copious toner from green roller and put back. Run one page thru and it is coated with toner. This of course should not be. But if it worked for 90 days, that is all the manufacturer expects and warrants.

As mentioned, I did not buy a laser printer with the expectation of 175 pages. The regular consumables go for several thousand pages, and my drum assembly reports it has 98.6% lifetime remaining.

They are not done though...
Dear Brother Customer,

Gray pages are normally caused by the toner cartridge, not the drum unit. Step 6 of the cleaning instructions that were emailed to you recommends to install a new toner cartridge if the cleaning does not help.

3,500 page toner cartridge: TN540
6,700 page toner cartridge: TN570

OK so now they say it is toner and we respond:

Would you kindly elevate my case to L2? A printer that has printed under 200 pages on a 3500 page toner cart does not need toner! That was proven to your support guy's satisfaction when I called. A printer that says it has 98.6% drum life remaining should not require a drum. That drum gets coated instantly after being cleaned. It is broken.

Just for comparison, I had an HP 4L printer for about 5 years and put only toner when it ran low. I really like your hardware, but for
it to die so fast is completely unacceptable. I will not repeat this mistake if the issue is not resolved. The issues are a) reliability of the product and b) quality of support for said product.

If we can get some resolution in L2, I would rather keep it than scrap it.

Not addressing the issue, they say,
Dear Brother Customer,

The toner cartridge and drum unit have a 90 day warranty. Do you have the receipt of purchase for the printer?

Fine so let us talk about warranty...
I just read the warranty info provided with this printer. One year warranty. The whole unit was provided with a fairly reasonable warranty, not 90 days. Specifically does not cover consumables "expired in accordance with a rated life." Very well. > > > Drum life 98.6%, Coverage 2.03% along with page count of 190 tells us all that we definitely have not consumed its expected life.

Your product is defective. I can clean that drum and run one page thru and it is well coated. Unless we need to troubleshoot some more, I trust your tech's assessment that the drum unit is broken. This is an infant mortality; a defective part.

I can understand that these things happen. No problem with that. But for a manufacturer to refuse to take care of this situation is an outrage. A laser printer that has a lifetime of under 200 copies on its drum is, well, worse than imaginable. I call on you to rectify the situation. I will be happy to ship you back the defective part for your analysis if desired.

Have you escalated my case? Please advise.

One last shot and they blew it by asserting only 90 days...

Dear Brother Customer,

The warranty states the printer is covered for 1 year and the consumable items (including toner cartridges) are covered for 90 days.

Now we read the fine print and see why they think this is acceptable behaviour:

"Accompanying Consumable and Accessory items: 90 days from the original purchase date or the rated life of the consumable, which ever comes first."

To Brother Industries, if your printer printed 10 pages over 91 days and dropped, it is tough.
----

Friends, if you buy tires for your car and one blows out with 200 miles on it, do you not get a new tire, installed for free, to replace the defective one? Of course you do!

But if your Brother drum ceases to work with 98.6% of its life remaining, you are expected to pay for another. If you want a laser printer that will be reliable and/or has manufacturer support, this is the brand to avoid. Not only has the product demonstrated horrible performance, the support for it is non-existent. To the end, we still have two different diagnoses, one for toner and one for drum. I don't trust or believe either one at this point!

I can tell you right now what day it will be that I will consider buying another Brother product. Just take my date of birth and add 150 years. If I make it to 150, I will consider Brother again. This one is on its way to the landfill! Next printer will be one that will print pages for less than a dollar per page!

RIP Brother printer. Printed 190 pages over its very short life time of 7 months.

Update after checking with local depot level vendor:
Yes gray pages means you need toner and possibly drum.

Sorry Charlie! Not doing that. Going to try to give it to Goodwill.
If Goodwill won't take this pile of dung, I will smash it to bits and post pictures of its remains!

Why on earth should I pay more to supposedly make it worth than I would pay for a brand new HP LJ 1018?
At least I know from experience that an HP Laser can last. My 4L certainly did.