Brandon’s Epson color inkjet printer/scanner/fax machine is holding his document hostage. Its sole demand: a fresh light cyan ink cartridge. It didn’t matter that he was trying to print the document in grayscale and that there was a perfectly good black cartridge already loaded. If he doesn’t add a new light cyan cartridge, he’ll never get his receipt.

Inkjet printers are useful for relatively inexpensive home color and photo printing, but their main use is as cartridge sales devices. Manufacturers are even on to consumers’ nefarious cartridge-refilling, off-brand-buying schemes. Brandon is trying to get away with putting off a new cartridge purchase, and Epson has seen through his terrible scheme.

I have an Artisan 835 (printer/scanner/fax) that I really like. Prints great, wireless, easy to set up. I needed to print a receipt for an online payment I made for my first-grade son’s school pictures. I knew I was running low on some of the various color ink cartridges so I chose the “black and white/grayscale” option in the Epson software.

The printer would not print the document, because my Light Cyan cartridge was empty. My Black cartridge was 75% full. There is no reason to stop ANY document from printing because one of the colors is empty, especially if it’s a black and white print job. At this point my printer is completely useless until I spend the money to replace the ink that I don’t need for this print job. My documents (and all of the other ink cartridges that are still usable) are essentially being held ransom by Epson.

I posed the question on their Facebook page and it was answered with some nonsense about the printer drawing small amounts of each color to ensure the nozzles don’t clog. I’ll risk the clogging if you’ll print my document, thanks.

Please expose this for the ridiculous money-grabbing practice it is!!

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