Well, well, well... looks like Brother has taken a page from the "How to Annoy Your Customers 101" handbook. In a move the printer manufacturer has allegedly decided that if you dare to use third-party toner, your print quality will suffer.

And not by accident - oh no, this is all part of the plan.

We have seen this before

Printer companies have been playing this shady game for years, finding new and exciting ways to make sure you buy their ridiculously overpriced ink and toner. Remember HP’s infamous 2016 firmware update? The one that sneakily flipped a switch months later and blocked non-HP cartridges with an error message? Classic. HP even had to apologize for that one.

Now, it seems Brother has upped the ante. Reports suggest that the company is using firmware updates to subtly sabotage third-party toner users, because, you know, nothing says "customer loyalty" like making your own product worse on purpose.

Of course: Brother recommends its own toner as a solution

Users of the Brother’s MFC-3750 model noticed that after a firmware update, their printer’s automatic color adjustment just... stopped working with third-party toner. Brother support's advice? "Oh, just buy our toner, and everything will be fine." Convenient, huh?

Tech-savvy folks on GitHub took a closer look and found that Brother's updates appear to be systematically blocking more and more third-party cartridges. This sneaky strategy looks an awful lot like HP's notorious "Dynamic Security" feature (a.k.a. "Oops, your non-HP ink doesn't work anymore").

Brother still vehemently denies the accusations. But when you only find out about these "special" firmware update side effects after complaining to support, it doesn't exactly scream transparency, does it? And reversing these updates? Good luck, because Brother removes older firmware versions from its servers, making it nearly impossible to roll back.

At the end of the day, Brother's "solution" is simple: Just buy their toner! What a genius business model - if you can't beat third-party competitors, just sabotage them.