My fourth C86, replaced over a year of frustration, has now failed just
like all the others.

Although being fed only genuine Epson cartridges, none of these
printers was able to perform light-duty printing (maybe 10 pages/week)
without continuous clogging, which eventually could not be rectified by
head cleaning at all. Printer kept in a clean,dry, 20 degree centigrade
office and fed with good quality 80gsm A4 paper.

Now, I don't usually get angry about hardware failures. Things die. But
I feel deeply ripped off by Epson. It grieves me how much money I spent
on printer cartridges, most of which went into endless attempts to keep
the heads unclogged.

Firstly, you cannot clean just one ink colour, so every head clean
depletes all your ink cartridges - and it's a serious issue, because a
couple of cleans and maybe a quarter of the ink in the cartridge set -
all of them - has been wasted. At something like fifty bucks for a set
this is simply not funny. Other manufacturers - e.g Canon, support
cleaning individual heads.

Secondly, the cartridges report empty even when there's obviously ink
still in there. Now, Epson will simply claim that this is necessary to
prevent air bubbles getting into the printhead, but how come my old
Canon printer would literally run until the cartridge ran dry, then
simply replace it and, presto, no problem.

I'm going back to Canon (or maybe HP). I am upset at Canon also,
because my previous Canon printer had a printhead failure and the
printhead is a user-replaceable component (just unclips) that,
interestingly, costs as much as a new printer to replace, even though
Canon initially suggested otherwise in its marketing material, but hey,
that's life.

If you think about the amount of polluting materials created in
manufacturing a printer, its simply not good enough to rip consumers
off like this. We have only the one planet. Now I will be discarding
something that contaminated thousands of gallons of water during
manufacture, and crapped up someone's living environment somewhere in
China. This is simply NOT acceptable, Epson (and Canon). It is NOT.

I note that my Samsung laser printer, purchased over a year ago for
about the same cost as a pack of Epson cartridges, has soldiered on
magnificently. It has printed thousand of pages without a glitch.
Recently it ran out of toner. I paid about 10 bucks for a bottle of
toner from an internet outfit and refilled the cartridge. It is now
good for another thousand pages or more. The drum seems to be just
fine. This is how it should be.

I can't understand how we, as consumers, have allowed ourselves to be
so royally screwed by inkjet printer manufacturers. I know,
unfortunately, that Japanese companies can sometimes have a rather odd
attitude to product lifetimes - some companies (Teac were one) - are
great, some just don't want to know about anything over a year old.

When we had matrix printers and other technology (e.g the older
daisy-wheel printers etc) then after-market consumables were reasonably
priced and these machines were economical to run. Now we have Epson
suing everyone in sight to stop them selling third party cartridges,
for instance. This has to stop.

Can anyone suggest a reliable inkjet model with individual ink
cartridges - NOT a photo printer, just standard CMYK. At present the
Canon Pixma looks promising, although whether the printhead failure I
had before is now resolved, who knows?. Admittedly the old Canon did
print quite a lot of stuff before it failed. Compared to this wretched
bunch of Epsons which between all four of them probably managed a ream
of paper in total.

I will say that Epson's model of dealers who replace under warranty is
very good. But then, if they are having this kind of failure rate,
maybe that's the only option. Note that each replacement begins with a
progressively shorter warranty though, so eventually, like me, you're
screwed

I am going to box up this printer, and send it, with a polite letter,
by registered mail, to the UK general manager of Epson. Sure, it'll
cost me. But I will have the satisfaction of knowing someone else will
at least be mildly hassled. Of course, if we all started boycotting the
worst offenders, that would be even better. But I know other Epson
users have had more luck then me and that other printer manufacturers
have had their share of criticism. But for a mature product, I think we
expect better than this as consumers, all told.

ajmayo (AT) my-deja (DOT) com wrote:
This is very true. The printer employs a pump that sucks the ink out
of the cartridges.

The best I can do on my ip3000 is cleaning of the color, or cleaning of
the black manualy though I think if I pop in a cyan it will clean just
cyan. There are automatic cleaning cycles as well, just not to the
large volume that Epson does.

Clogs on canons are less catostrophic than on Epson. For one thing
Epson heads have a longer nozzle, and also epson heads cost hundrads of
dollars. But still a canon would burn out eventually where epson would
just kind of vibrate. Still on modern canons you can print beyond
empty if you stick.

They are much cheaper in Japan, but elsewhere they are typicaly 1/2 to
2/3 the value of the printer. The printer more often than not is on
sale, and the ink costs 1/2 to 2/3 the value of the printer as well.
The reality is assuming 10 cartridge changes we are talking about
something that adds about a dollar per cartridge. The price isn't bad,
just getting a new printer is often a better deal.

But at the very least they are designed to be serviced by the end user
to some degree. And they do take the time to referbish many models.

Oddly enough Epson employs piezo heads which last longer than Canon
heads, they just clog like the dickens.


Near as i'm aware, Canon, Brother, and Epson make such a beast that
have a pigmented black and are geard tward text and some graphics.
Brother and Epson also employ piezos rather than thermal jets.

Low end epsons are enjoyed by those who print daily, and are best
enjoyed by those who buy external ink tanks, and an external waste
tank.

Oh no not another one...!
I know the feeling too... my C62 clogged on the 2nd day was litterally
clodded into a waste bin ..... by the Epson service agent and handed
me a replacement, minus inks.... that clogged on the 4th day and
went the same way inspite of using Epson inks.

Never again... so I went and got a Canon and can honestly say I have
never ever done a manual head clean yet since last June/July, you
will find Canons are less problamatic and a darn more economical to
run.

I doubt if you will get any joy especially with Epson UK, the Customer
care had me doing this and doing that wasting brand new inks then
along came the so called Technical department..... trying this and
trying that until the tanks was virtually empty.

Epson are unpridictable printers... and they just seem not to care a
hoot as long as it their ink your're wasting.

Davy

Yeah, I gave up on Epson too for the same reason. Can't remember the model.
Currently running a cheap lexmark laser, an HP psc 1205 all in one, and a
little Selphy 510 for photos.

I easily empathize with your predicament. The Dura-brite pigment ink used in
them was a design catastrophe and has ruined most likely thousands upon
thousands of their C- series printers that Epson prescribes use it. The ink
dries too fast and then even within the printhead itself, causing the clogs,
as it did yours. In most cases the clogs are irrevocable. I think I've
discovered the workaround, which is to use a good quality dye base ink and
spongeless cartridges from MIS. In the two months I've been using it on
three of the remaining C-84 machines, new out of the box, they seem to be
running fine and give good color printing results. If anyone is considering
switching I would be thoughtful to how the pigment ink and the dye base ink
might mix. It might be a good move to run cleaning cartridges through the
heads first to purge the Durabrite stuff and then start with the dye base
ink.
Several years ago our school bought sixteen C-84 Epsons. I put six of
them into service over two years and with the exception of one, which is
used daily by the teacher, the other five have clogged partially or totally.
Writing to Epson about the situation recently the rep had no good answer
except to use them daily and then recommended that for the remaining eleven
printers that I hadn't put into service Epson would send me sixteen sets of
color and black ink, because the ink that came with the original printers
would have expired by now. I could only gulp at the idea of using the crap,
but I accepted it. Someone else at our school is going to sell it for us on
Ebay.
Epson makes printers that do great color printing. They unfortunately
don't make them for the greatest ink efficiency or consider the waste of the
printer when it comes to pairing up the right ink with them.
--
Jan Alter
bearpuf (AT) verizon (DOT) net
or
jalter (AT) phila (DOT) k12.pa.us
"Newshound" <newshound (AT) fairadsl (DOT) co.uk> wrote

Jan Alter wrote:

website and onver the phone as well as in all forms of correspondence
you never know what you are buying. the best thing to do is to junk the
C series Epson printers and buy one of the following:
Epson R300 series
Canon IP42/5200

on sale they will cost about the same as a set of carts.

just like all the others.
I enjoyed my C80 and its just-barely-still-under-warranty replacement
from Epson, a C84, when the C80 died. I admit, it is frustrating
accepting that a printer is a "disposible" item, but when
the replacement failed after a year, I also admit I bought another in
the C-series, the Stylus C88. I expected it to be an improvement over
the others, which I basically liked.

Big surprise - it didn't print nearly as well as its predecessors! It
coughed up way too much ink, especially cyan, and I ruined a lot of
specialty paper believing I could adjust it - cheered on by
non-toll-free tech support, of course. Happy ending: I took it back
to the office supply store for a full refund. Maybe it was a lemon.
...
Are you going to apply for the special compensation under the class
action settlement I've been reading about in various photo site
posts? If you owned an Epson printer (see below for link to web site
with a very long list of models) between April 8, 1999 and May 8,
2006 you may be affected by a settlement of a class action lawsuit
concerning Epson ink cartridges.
Get more information here: http://www.epsonsettlement.com/index.htm

Don't know where you live...The “Settlement Class” certified by the
Court for settlement purposes is defined as all persons, sole
proprietorships, partnerships, corporations or any other entities
located within the 50 United States and the District of
Columbia...and it might not suit you: Epson's offer is $45 credit in
their store!

Unfortunatly measekite you don't know the English market, which is
where the parent poster was posting from. "colour" is a clue.

Is there any reason you'd reccomend a r300 series over the r200 series?
Usually you rant and rave over the fact that printers with screens are
no good. Also, assuming US prices, the r200 as a referb is less than
the ink. The r300 tends to be more than the ink. If talking the
english market, I believe 60 quid is what one would expect to spend on
OEM ink for either the r200 or r300 series.

The Canon ip4200 is at least close in terms of cost per ink vs cost
printer. But while I have seen the ip4200 onsale for close to the cost
of the ink... I've never actually seen it onsale for the same price as
the ink. The ip5200 I got at a good price, $121.86 shipped. The ink
would cost in US terms $71.05. In my case the printer cost 72% more
than the ink. That is as onsale as I've ever seen the ip5200.

What's really sad is you took a reasonable statement, but quoted the
wrong printers. The ip4200 "onsale" is $90ish... shipped (buy.com $92)
or 30% more than the ink. UK 70 quid is a good deal (dabs) That is at
the very least "somewhat" close, within $20 bucks. Same with the r200
series, you can get the r200/r220 for between 60 and 70 quid. The r300
series tends to be 100 quid.

+5 points some a semi decent idea, but -10 points for quoting printers
which are beyond 25% higher than the cost of the ink.

It seems a majority of problems happens just after the warranty runs
out, round about the 12 month period, if not before.

Something that Epson ignored, could it be that they assume there will
be no problems in say 6, 12 months time or whatever.... "well,
they work ok now sod what happens after 12 months", seems to be
their attitude.

May be they expect these people to go out and buy another Epson
clogger.

Davy

You have posted a very eloquent commentary about your experience with a
series of Epson printers and the environmental consequences and you are
correct in noting the business model which allows continual assaults on
our planetary resources, without consideration to not only the cost of
manufacturer, but the cost of dismantling. We have become very willing
to make anything over about 1 year old into trash.

I agree with your approach toward Epson UK, creating your own "take
back" system to show your dissatisfaction.

I have been cautioning people who need a printer to consider the ink ...
Durabrite is fast drying, and also a bit more likely to clog the heads,
as a resolve,

Art



ajmayo (AT) my-deja (DOT) com wrote: