Total Nightmare

This fax worked fine for the first six months or so. The next 12 were a nightmare. I often had to stand over it and feed it one page at a time to get it to fax. It constantly jams. It makes me want to pick it up and throw it through a plate glass window. As a real estate agent, I need a reliable fax machine. The last time I tried to send a 10-page fax, it jammed so much it took me 20 tries to make it work. I don't have that kind of time; nobody has that kind of time!

It got to the point I could not refax a page that had been faxed without putting it upside down on the feeder, so the bottom of the page fed first. It's total frustration.

Finally, in desperation, I bought a new drum. That made the machine happy for a couple days, but then it started barking at me about putting in a new toner cartridge. It always says it needs a new toner cartridge when it's got plenty of life in the existing toner.

Today was my final straw. I put in a new toner cartridge, and the cartridge jammed. I couldn't get it to turn nor get it out of the machine. I took it outside, used a hammer and a screw driver, and finally forced the cartridge out of the machine. I put the old cartridge back, after spewing ink everywhere in my back yard.

Then the cover wouldn't close. There was no obstruction; it just refused to close. I slammed it shut. Everything appeared to be operational, and I tried a "test" copy. It wouldn't even grab the page and it refused to copy.

I hate this machine. Have I told you how much I detest this fax? It's not reliable, it's a pain to change out the stubborn cartridges that won't turn, it's a piece of crap. I wish that I could turn back the clock and bought something else. Support is worthless, too.

I'd like to sit on the sidewalk outside of Panasonic headquarters and throw bits of this fax at the corporate execs entering the building. Perhaps I could take my hammer and smash it up into tiny pieces and mail it to Panasonic. That's how much I hate this fax.

So even though I just bought a new drum two days ago, I'm going to cut my losses at this point and go buy a Brother Intelli-Fax 4100, hoping to hell that that machine works better than this piece of plastic. This machine is an insult to plastic products everywhere.

Elizabeth Weintraub, Sacramento