End of service life for the ink pad or your printer belongs to us

Firstly some history. About 9 years ago I bought an Epson XP-810 printer. It cost me around $120 if memory serves me right. It is quite a versatile multifunctional device. Especially I like that it can scan documents on both sides 2 sides which I found quite rare these days because some time ago I was looking for a printer for my relative and it was quite hard to find a consumer-grade printer that does this while costing reasonable money.

But the most important feature is that I can buy 2 full sets of aftermarket printer ink of XL size for $12-$15. Right now the same set of original Epson ink cost $99. And from my memory 9 years ago a full set of non-XL ink had a price of around $100.

As I wrote before if I’m able to use 1 full set of aftermarket ink, and then the printer dies, I can buy another printer and be even. But my printer didn’t die and I used it for 9 years that that time I used around 10 packs of paper with around 700 pages each and I saved tons of money.

I checked my Amazon orders and I bought around 18 full sets of ink. Some of them were full sets, and some were mixed. Sometimes I bought only black ink. So in total, I spent around $270 on aftermarket ink. If I used Epson's original ink, I would spend at least $1782. As you can see for around 9 years I saved more than $1500. And I have a feeling that Amazon didn’t show me orders for the year 2014, so the difference could be even bigger. Moreover, I am pretty sure that Epson dropped prices for ink costs for old models because otherwise, they will have to write it off as a loss.

Did I see any difference in quality? No. I even did a few prints on a photo paper and it looks great. Did it reduce the lifespan of my printer? Well, 9 years passed and it still works just fine, so I think it is fair to say that aftermarket ink does not reduce lifespan. Or I’m just super lucky.

But not only original ink is more expensive. It turns out quite a bit of that ink would be wasted. The printer will clean heads if I change any ink cartridge. The printer will clean heads when I power cycle it. And you need to run clean printer heads manually every few months. And that process requires ink. I don’t mind wasting 10-30% of ink from the cartridge that cost $3. But doing that when the cartridge costs $30 is much more painful.

And it is what I realized very quickly with original Epson ink. My blank ink ran out. I ordered a new one. After I replaced the black ink, I realized that other cartridges dropped from around 70% to around 50%. And I must state that all of them dropped. So assuming that the full set cost $99, I immediately lost around $20.

And that leads to my current problem. Yesterday the printer displayed an error message that the ink pad reached the end of service life and the printer stopped working. The application on my computer redirected me to this page via Internet Explorer. Yes, that Internet Explorer that nobody uses for many years.

That page stated that I can order a new ink pad and I also can temporarily unlock the printer. But the unlock application works only in Windows and if you are using Mac or Linux then you are in big trouble. And I see this as a huge problem. Let me explain why.

This is my printer! I bought it with my own money. I didn’t lease it and it 100% belongs to me. Continuing to use my printer will not lead to safety concerns of any kind. In the worst case, the ink will leak from the printer. The printer should warn me about these consequences and it should allow me to continue to use the printer without locking it up. Perhaps the printer should remind me about this situation periodically but the printer must allow me to continue to use it if I want to.

Just imagine, that printer is used somewhere without internet access. And the printer locked itself. It could be a disaster for a business because internet access is required to download a utility to temporarily unlock it. Then owner will have to wait until part is delivered.

Yes, the printer warned me once or twice about the ink pad reaching the end of service life, but the printer didn’t state that it will lock itself in a few weeks. As a result, it is hard to prepare for what happened after that.

Anyway, I went to the “contact us” page and left a request but 24 hours passed and I didn’t hear from Epson. It is possible to download the application from that page that will unlock the printer and allow it to work a little bit more and only once but it is not a solution.

I did some research and a few people stated that all I need is to reset the waste ink counter. Moreover, it looks like I don’t need to replace the ink pad itself and it could last 2 -3 more resets. But I cannot reset that counter using any Epson tools or the printer itself.

Eventually, I found this tool that can reset that counter. There are more tools like that, but you need to pay around $10 for the privilege to unlock your own printer. I don’t blame people who make these tools for charging money. After all, they spent their own time developing that utility. I blame Epson that I have to use these tools to continue to use my printer.

Anyway, I found a good solution that works for me and it is free. Download this tool. I prefer to run strange tools like this from Windows Sandbox. It is effectively a lightweight virtual environment that is disposed as soon as you close it.

So I did the following. Started Windows Sandbox. Copy/Paste this tool on the desktop of the sandbox and run it. It will install that tool on Windows Sandbox. Start that tool at the end of the installation. Click on “Close assistant forever”. Go to File->Settings. Press “Insert” on the “Network” group and enter the IP address of your printer. Press “Ok” and click on “Refresh detected printers list”. Your printer should display on the left side.

Select that printer and click on the “Read waste counter(s)” button to ensure that the application can communicate with the printer. If everything is ok, it should display info from your printer. Then click on the “Reset waste counter(s)”. It will ask you for a key and you can enter “trial” or “TRIAL” and it will reset the counter to 80%. Or if you want to support people who developed this utility you can buy a key to reset it to 0%.

In my case, I used a trial key because 80% is about 1.5 years of the life of my printer and I’m not sure if it can last that long. And next time my printer will lock up I will think about what to do. It could die or as an alternative perhaps I will get an answer from Epson and maybe they can sort it out.

I think that Epson handled it very poorly. Not only they are charging extreme amounts of money for their ink, but they also lock printers without any easy way to unlock it. Obviously, they are expecting that at that time people will not do any research and just assume that their printer is dead and order a new one.

I hope it helps someone.