1y ago

The staggeringly-idiotic company Brother (printers) won't let you update your email (which is your account name), but also won't let you register the same printer on a new account (with the new email)

Your account is defined by your email address
Your email address is unchangeable
You can create a new account with a new email address, but you can't re-register the same printer, because it was already registered to your old email address

This means you can be locked out of registering your printer. Why are all printer companies the stupidest companies ever?

27 comments

I’m confused, it’s a piece of hardware that you communicate with over the LAN. Why does it need your email?
- in this case, i think it's purely a data mining operation.
- Because.

why would you register a brother printer?
- I don't remember why, but I'm pretty sure I needed to to use some kind of service.
  
  But why are you trying to re-register it now?
  The whole point of Brothers is they just work.
  Buy a cheap laser and throw it in your closet and only pull it out the few times you need to print, and it will always just work no matter what you plug it into.
  There's zero reason to register, and even less to try and update that later.
- We have an older Brother printer, and they now insist, even though there's a USB port, that you register with them to print over wifi. There is no driver for USB that I could find. There is an app that will let you print over USB, but it's buggy and very limited in function.

Sure it's stupid, but I don't see how it's really an issue. If you want that printer registered to a new account so badly, it seems you have to contact them.
- This. Mail to customer support and make them fix it.
  If they won't, find their GDPR contact and make them fix it.
  
  find their GDPR contact and make them fix it.
  As someone not in the EU...I wish.

This is why i havent bought my own printer. That shit is a scam industry. 15 years ago printers already had plenty of issues and now it's only gotten worse with this type of shenanigans
- Brothers is one of the few good brands left...
  The only reason to register is a warranty, but I've never heard of anyone needing to use one for one of these.
  OP is complaining that it's slightly difficult to do something with no benefits no one is making them do...
- I don't see any shenanigans here, what do you mean? He just needs to contact customer service if he want the printer registered so badly.
  Why he wants that though, I have no idea?

Printers are like a magnet for shitty exploitative consumer practices. This is, no doubt, probably intended to make the it difficult or impossible to resell the printer.
They’ve probably got someone high up in the company that’s convinced themselves that every sale on the secondary market is money coming out of their pockets. Complete bullshit if you think about it for more than a few moments, but that’s the kind of innovative adversarial stupidity that business brained types are best at.
- That's a funny claim, since printer companies generally sell their printers at a loss, to make money on refills later.
  I think if you don't need your printer anymore, the printer company would be very happy if someone else continues to buy refills for it.
  Although Brother is more balanced than most in this regard, I bet they still want their printers to be used.
  With HP however, it's all about the refill, they'd probably pay you money if you can get someone to use their printers. Most other companies are probably somewhere in between.
  
  You know, I considered pointing out that they already try to exploit their customers with the ink price scam but I assumed it was such common knowledge that it wasn’t worth the effort.
  Just because they exploit their customers in a different way doesn’t mean they aren’t coming up with and implementing new ways to do it. I’d say having already been gouging customers for years makes you more likely to look for new ways to go about it, not less.

27 comments