A public copy of my comments in reaction to this long thread:

http://www.fixyourownprinter.com/forums/inkjet/22817

Well, I didn't read all of this very long discussion, but quite enough to
conclude I've been pretty thoroughly had. I'm going to make a low-effort
attempt to contact Brother just to give them a chance to see what they have
to say in their defense, but I've already spent way too much time fighting
with this poorly designed and troublesome device.

I did have the machine for quite a while, but I never did print that much
with it. Fortunately, my primary goal was scanning, and I did do quite a bit
of scanning on it. Nevertheless, I don't really feel like I got my money's
worth out of it. Adding insult to injury, I only recently purchased more
ink. Brother's insulting profit added to my injurious loss.

One of my first printers about 25 years ago was a Brother daisy wheel
printer. It was satisfactory, but considering my experiences with this
expensive Brother MFC 5100C, I really can't imagine ever buying another
Brother product. To satisfy me now, Brother would have to have a time
machine to go back and avert all of my previous problems with this machine.
I'm certainly not going to throw any more good money after the bad.