Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 11-15 of 187
 3rd time a charm? November 2, 2005
J. Pouncey (Orlando, Fl.)
15 out of 22 found this review helpful
I bought this machine from Staples around the middle of July. By the first week of August the machine said it was out of toner. I went and bought a new "brother" replacment cartridge and put it in the machine. I kept getting a toner out message, please replace cartridge. I called Brother and after about 15 to 20 minutes wait time, I finally got to talk to someone who put me through about 35 to 40 minutes worth of trouble shooting, only to tell me that the new cartridge was bad. They said they would overnight me a new one free of charge. Lucky me, I'm going to get a "free" toner cartridge to replace the brand new non working one for "free" Hmmmmm, doesn't quite sound right does it. Anyways, I went out and bought another brand new cartridge that day, because when you run a buisness, you can't afford down time. Guess what? That one didn't work either. Lucky for me I bought the 2yr extended warranty from Staples. I packed it up, took it back, wala new machine in about an hour. It's worked great now for about the last 3 months, more than twice the amount of time the first one had worked. Come to think of it, It's still running off the free toner cartridge that came with the machine, which leads me to believe the first machine I had bought still had toner left in it. Anyways, here we are at the beggining of November and I keep getting a paper jam error, "paper jam, open front cover, remove drum, remove jammed paper" Did that, no paper jam, opened the back cover, no paper jam, looked in the paper eject no paper, opened the tray, removed the paper, fanned it reinserted it, same error, took the paper out and put in fresh paper, same error. Removed the tray, and manually fed into the machine and it worked fine. Called Brother and after about 20 minutes got through and spent the next hour on the phone doing everything I had allready done. O.K sir we'll replace your machine, all we need is a credit card and your new machine will be there in 3 to 5 days. HA HA HA, thanks but that's not good enough, I need one now. Sorry sir, yada yada yada...
Thank god I bought that 2yr extended warranty, anything goes wrong just bring it back. Hmmm, how do I put this, it seems my warranty changed after the first exchange, I have to go through Brother first and any expenses they don't cover my warranty will. Hmmm, that's not what your store manager told me when he sold it to me. So, now I am the proud owner of a non functional MFC7820N. Brother is going to send me a new unit, it should be here by next wednesday, I assume. In the mean time I'm left with no other choice than to go out and buy a real all in one machine made by a real company, unfortunatley I bleieve I have to rule out HP because I think they own Brother. So in short, I will not purchase another Brother product or will I shop at Staples ever again. Caveat Emptor .By the way, anyone want to buy a refurb MFC new in the box?
 So Much Better Than HP June 7, 2005
James J. (Fort Worth, Texas United States)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful
Thank goodness my HP all in one finally stayed down for the count and gave me the opportunity to buy this machine! Like other reviewers, I have struggled with HP multifunction machines and have been constantly frustrated by poor design and unreliable performance. In contrast, the Brother machine does everything the HP does, and does it better and faster. I was especially impressed with the fax function. I write a lot of reports and have to wait for them to finish faxing before I can file them and start on something new. With the HP, you are a slave to however slow the receiver's fax is, with a tendency to draw multiple pages in at once. With the Brother, the machine scans and stores the material in memory before attempting to send it. What a great machine and what an improvement over the HP "industry standard". I highly recommend it.
Stopped working 17 days after purchase - Poor Brother support October 18, 2005
BookWorm
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
We purchased this unit from Office Depot on 9/10/2005 for our start-up home-based business. Initially we were pleased, although navigating the menus to configure the unit was difficult and it was almost impossible to get paper into the manual feed unit straight. After 17 days, the unit stopped functioning. It has been very lightly used only 90 pages were printed. It suddenly began power cycling, and wouldn't print. The display showed a paper jam, but when we opened the unit to clear the jam, there was no paper stuck. The display wouldn't clear the paper jam message. Unfortunately, Brother service was closed by this time, and Office Depot only accepts returns on electronics for 14 days. We turned the printer off and left it off.
It was several days until we could call Brother because of our work schedule. Right before contacting Brother, we turned the printer back on and it was working fine. A couple of days went by and the printer started to malfunction again. This time we could call Brother immediately and went through troubleshooting with them. When Brother couldn't resolve the problem, we were told that a refurbished unit would be sent out and that we would receive it in four business days.
I called on the expected arrival date to get a tracking number for the shipment and was told that no replacement unit was being sent. The customer service rep stated that Brother had tried to contact us for additional troubleshooting earlier in the week. However, we had not received either a phone call or an e-mail from Brother. The customer service rep did not beleive me, simply stating over and over again that they record showed they had tried to contact us. I asked to speak to a supervisor. He asked for the details of the trouble shooting, and stated that he would upgrade shipping to overnight and that we would receive the replacement in three business days. The replacement didn't arrive. I again called Brother. This customer service rep stated that the printer would not have shipped yet since there was a 48 hour waiting period. She assured me that the replacement would arrive tomorrow, probably. Yes, she waffled.
Each call required that I was on hold for about 20 minutes. My business has been without a fax machine/printer/copier/scanner for this time. Given that we are starting up while still working at our regular jobs part-time the lack of a fax has been awkward since we are trying to establish ourselves as a legitimate concern. When I've explained my issue to the customer service reps, they've been sorry, but have not been able to do anything to get us a working machine quickly. I wouldn't buy another Brother product after this experience.
 A power hog! December 2, 2006
archtone (United States)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful
After doing a lot of research, I purchased the Brother MFC-7820N. As soon as I plugged it in, my lights started flickering and continued to do so every time I printed. A surge protector did not help, nor did plugging it into its own outlet. I called Brother's customer service and they told me to take the machine to a service center and also told me that they thought it was probably caused by a problem in my electrical wiring. It is definitely not a problem with my electrical wiring; the fact is that this machine uses so much electrical power that it needs its own dedicated circuit, which will cost at least $150 for an electrician to install. The machine makes a lot of noise when it powers up and when it functions. It also does not have automatic duplex printing. I ended up returning the machine and getting the Canon MF4150, which has duplex printing, is less of a power hog (although it still uses 680W at peak---Brother uses 1032W!), and costs about the same as the Brother.
I think that the Canon MR 4150 or the HP 3055 are better options (the HP does not have duplex printing and costs a lot more though).
 Almost perfect except for two detractions October 20, 2005
S. Yang (Forest Hills, NY USA)
13 out of 13 found this review helpful
From my experiences so far (owned it 3 months) all the positive reviews here are true.
Just two caveats.
1. If you scan legal sized documents like contracts and such, the native Brother software is buggy. Although it has an 11x14 scan setting, it does not work: the scans come in at 11x8.5! The only way around this is to use a separate program (i.e., Adobe Acrobat) to scan in documents. It's a bit of a hassle.
2. The automatic scan feeder tray isn't calibrated well. More than 50% of the time, it pulls in sheets at a slight angle which can cut off portions of the document. Thinking this was a part defect, I contacted Brother and had them send me another feeder hood which I installed, however the problem continued which leads me to believe that it is a design problem. The workaround for this (if you really need straight scans) is to scan using the flatbed, but if your document has many pages, then this becomes a great hassle.
Despite these problems, the printer is still such a superb machine that, in the end, I am still recommending it.
I have it wired to my wireless network router which makes printing and scanning wirelessly from my laptop a breeze.
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