Complaint Review: Epson - Nationwide

I own an Epson XP-300 All-In-One printer. I purchased this printer a couple years ago, and while not overly impressed with the image quality it produced, I was satisfied it was fair for the price. I mainly needed it for document printing and scanning, anyway. It handled both of these functions as expected. Until the first time it ran out of black ink.

In the past, I have owned color printers which offered a feature that allowed you to continue printing black and white documents in a sort of brown shade created by combining the color ink when the black ink ran out. The Epson XP-300 does not offer this option. When the black ink runs dry, you can’t print. I found this to be an annoyance, and certainly a disappointment, but I didn’t feel the need to replace the printer because of it. I found a workaround, printed in blue.

I replaced the black ink cartridge maybe a week later. I bought a two–pack of new Epson 200XL cartridges in black. The first new cartridge did not work. I did all the troubleshooting, nothing. The printer was functioning, but no black ink was flowing. So I tried the second new cartridge. Also a dud. At this point I was certain I had to be doing something wrong, because what were the chances of two cartridges being dry? I called support, did all the troubleshooting again. Nope. So, I went back to the store, bought a third 200XL cartridge, returned home, inserted it, and EUREKA! I had black ink again! However, somehow in all the troubleshooting I screwed up something on the printer, and my printer was suddenly producing a fuzzy “line” every few lines of print. I have to this day been unable to correct it, and it has ruined my ability to print photos. Oh well, I could print documents again, and that was the important thing. Although, I had certainly spent a lot of money to have the option to print photos.

Today, July 30^th, 2015 I needed to print a job application which must be signed by hand. So, I attempted to print the black and white document. I knew that I had been running low on both the magenta and cyan ink levels for a while, but today I simply wanted to print in black, which I still have plenty of. I downloaded the document, I selected to print it, hit print… And I received a notification that I needed to replace an ink cartridge. Magenta finally ran out. A helpful little “Would you like to reorder now?” option popped up from Epson, and I asked it to remind me later. I then proceeded to search for an option to print in black only. I selected black and grayscale from the printer options menu, hit print again, and was again notified that I needed to replace the empty MAGENTA ink cartridge. So I searched again for a workaround, as every printer I have ever used in the history of color printing has allowed the option to print only in black if a color cartridge ran dry, but there was no workaround. Nothing. I mentioned before that I was once able to print in blue when the black ran out, but that work around no longer worked, either. I am guessing Epson discovered this little cheat, and one of the numerous updates Epson has pushed took care of it.

I am not currently in a financial position to replace ink cartridges, I do not even have the gas to spare to drive into town to print at the library. So, I called Epson technical support. My call, even though it was dialed to a U.S. number (562-276-4382) was routed to the Philippines. I spoke with a technician who insisted on repeating that Epson printers will not print if any of the four cartridges run dry until I asked to be transferred to a supervisor. The supervisor also insisted on repeating this useless bit of information until I asked to speak with someone capable of listening to and understanding what I was saying – which was, in a nutshell, this: I understand that this printer is not going to print until I replace the cartridge, however nowhere in any of the reading material that came with the printer was it described that this would be an issue. If it had been, I would not have purchased this printer as I expect that a printer should be able to complete its most basic function – print a black and white document – so long as black ink is available, and I would have instead went with a product that would meet that expectation. So now I have a printer that will not do what I had every reason to expect it would do, and I do not want it anymore. I spent my money that I earned on this product and I have a right to satisfaction. How will Epson make this right?

The supervisor transferred me to a customer support specialist, who happened to actually be located in the states, and he reiterated the product’s shortcomings, and apologized that I was dissatisfied. He claims he has filed a report detailing my complaints, and offered me a discount should I choose to order the ink cartridges from Epson. I explained, again, that I have NO MEANS OF PURCHASING REPLACMENT CARTRIDGES, I explained again that the printer’s inability to actually print makes it useless to me and that I would not have purchased it had I known that it would not print in black when a color cartridge ran out. I also explained the issues that resulted from my first experience replacing ink cartridges, and his response was this – Epson’s website has an FAQ section that explains this bizarre printer feature. Not the product description, the FAQ section. As in Frequently Asked Questions. As in, customers who bought this product had to ask, frequently, why the printer would not print, because they expected that it should and there was no explanation of this feature in the product manual.

I will not be able to recoup my financial loss purchasing this useless item. I can, however, make sure that anyone who takes a moment to research Epson products before making a purchase is made aware of this “feature.” I will not purchase Epson again.