Warning for anyone buying or consulting about printers

This might be helpful to anyone on the list who is thinking about buying new equipment: Please spread this to other lists, as well, in the hopes that it will help others.

I purchased an Epson C62 printer last year, which was a good printer. I had no complaints other than the fact that they build a chip into their ink cartridges so you can't refill them. For most people, this is not a problem, but I do a LOT of printing, and refilling is the only way to go. $3 for new ink is much better than $50. The cartridge chip is something they don't tell you about when you buy the printer, nor is there anything about it in the manual, or on their web site. You only learn about it the hard way - after you've already bought the machine.

Yesterday, an error message popped up and told me that "some parts of the printer are at the end of their life cycle", and that I should take the printer to be repaired. There is absolutely nothing in the manual about this, so I searched the internet and found out that there is also a chip inside the printer which counts the number of times you clean the ink nozzles, and then it figures that the waste ink pad is dirty, so it blocks you from using your printer at all any more until you get a new pad. This is several hundred cleanings, so for most people, it isn't an issue, but for people like me, who use their printer a lot, it just became a very big issue.

The average user will take the machine to the repair shop and be faced with a bill of at least $80 to have an ink pad changed and have the chip reset. HOWEVER, guess what else I learned the hard way... the Epson C62's chip can't be reset. My only resort is to buy a new machine. It is the same for several other models, but there is no way for you to find out ahead of time whether the model you are buying is one of them. For these models, you evidently have to have the whole motherboard changed, at a cost of another $100 or so, or buy another machine.... which is what this whole situation was designed for making you do.

I found out that all Epson printers are designed to let you clean your print nozzles just so many times, and then you can't use the machine any more. This is not in their manuals, advertising, help files, etc. No one will tell you this before you buy the machine. Instead of a simple warning and a pull-out drawer where you can change the pad yourself, you are left with a machine which is mechanically fine, but which Epson has intentionally designed to be totally unusable unless you go out and pay a huge repair bill or simply buy a new one.

And I thought that the cartridge chip was an underhanded thing to do to their customers!!!

Bottom line - if you are looking for a printer that you will use a lot - under no circumstances should you buy an Epson. Epson does not have your best interests at heart, and they have designed their machines to make you pay all kinds of hidden costs. I'm sure that there are other tricky traps that I haven't uncovered, and won't - because when I go out today to buy a new printer - it won't be an Epson.

That being their company's policy, I would not buy any of their other products, either.

I hope that this saves someone some money and equipment headaches. Please send this out to as many lists as you can, in the hopes that it will help others, as well.