Why I’m Never Buying an Epson Printer Again!
Talk about your uber scam! I bought a cheap Epson printer. I just needed it to print black and white pages for school. I have NEVER printed a colour page. Today, however, I find that I’m out of ink. I grabbed one of my extra black cartridges and threw it in. The printer still complained that I was out of ink… cyan ink! It won’t let me print a black an white page without all of the colour cartridges!
A little Google searching and I came across this blog post. A few things to pick up from the post and the comments:
- The printer spits out a little ink each time you turn it on so you can run out of ink without ever printing a page
- It defaults to printing in colour mode (I made sure I always switched it to b/w though)
- It won’t let you print w/0 colour cartridges
- There is a chip that prevents refilling
This is when greed starts hurting your business. Sure I could go through all the hoops of buying a refill kit and a chip reset kit but I don’t want to. I just want to print black and white pages and this fracking printer won’t let me!
I’m not sure why businesses feel compelled to give their customers what they don’t want. I’m moving back to HP the first chance I get. They overcharged for their cartridges but at least I could print with just black ink if I wanted to.
p.s. It’s exam time and I can’t print.
Update 11:55AM: Slashdot just posted this related article. 
Before I even finished reading this I was thinking to myself… buy HP. And then you said you would.
HP is the best. I’m on my second HP printer — the first one (one of the cheaper models) lasted me six years through VERY regular usage. Ink cartridges seem to be comparably short-lived in the newer versions, but still pretty decent.
If we were in the same town I would lend you my HP…
Cheap laser printers go for a hundred bucks these days; superior print quality, and toner lasts forever. It’s been four years and I’ve yet to replace my toner cartridge (I found an abandoned LaserJet 1100 outside my building once upon a time, and it’s been going strong ever since I got it). Once you go laser, you’ll never think of going back.