I have a small, cheap printer at home. It’s an Epson WF-2540. I only print two or three times per month, so I don’t need a heavy duty printer. This printer seemed to fit my needs very nicely.
Last night before bed, I tried to print the message I wrote for church today. The printer refused to print because I was out of magenta ink. I thought maybe the printer was confused because my settings said ‘Print in color’. I changed the settings to ‘Print in black and white’ and tried again. Nothing. I tried re-starting the printer. Nothing. I tried re-sending the print job. Nothing.
I turned to the internet for help. Here is what I found out: The Epson WF-2540 does not print in black unless you have ink in all your color cartridges. I had a full cartridge of black ink in the printer, and two other unopened cartridges of black ink, but I couldn’t use any of them because I didn’t have magenta ink. Never mind that I had no magenta whatsoever in the document I was sending to the printer.
So last night after my bed time, I went out to Walmart and spent 39 minutes of sleeping time and $26.47 to get a magenta ink cartridge so I could print my black and white document.
I could not make the printer ignore it.
And that is why I will not be using Epson products any more: they forced me to buy color ink in order to print in black… a dishonest practice by a company that I will no longer support with my money.
I’m so tired of these ink problems. I think it’s time for a laser printer – from anybody but Epson.
Solidarity. That is entirely, entirely uncool. Stupid Epson.
Gotta admire your principles there – just hate that the only solution was to run out and get that colored ink. (Not confident to just read from a tablet or iPad without a hard copy? I doubt I would have been either.)
Good luck finding a company that makes a printer without sneaky devices that go undiscovered until you have owned it already for a few months – or that doesn’t send some of its profits to support causes you would never support yourself – you get the idea. But yea, good luck…
I have an HP printer that is also picky about the colored ink/b&w printing. They’re in this together, I tell ya.