Epson gained some scrutiny on Twitter in recent weeks after the company disabled an otherwise well-functioning printer, leading to accusations of planned obsolescence. Epson knows that its printers will fail without simple maintenance at some foreseeable point in the future, and it knows that it will not be cost-effective for many owners to send their home printers in for service. So why not build them to be useful to the user in the first place?
@marktavern’s inciting post mentions that his wife was unable to use his “very expensive Epson printer” after a service termination error message appeared.
My wife’s very expensive @EpsonAmerica printer just gave a message that it had reached the end of its useful life and proceeded to brick. Apparently you can pay to have it serviced or buy a new one even though it was working fine. Outrageous!
— Mark Tavern (@marktavern) July 22, 2022
This is nothing new for Epson printers, unfortunately. Reports dating back several years mention an infamous error message that says “parts inside the printer have reached the end of their useful life.” Epson confirmed to The Verge that the error is related to the printer’s ink pads, which had likely become saturated from prolonged use and were now at risk of spilling into the rest of the printing mechanism. the printer
“Most print users will never receive this message in their intended use scenarios.”
In a recently updated support document, Epson offers several solutions to resolve the issue. These include sending the printer to Epson to have the ink cartridges replaced or having it done by a local certified technician. Previously (via the Wayback Machine), just before the problem gained notoriety, Epson admitted that “repair may not be a good investment for low-cost printers because the other components of the printer may also be near the end of their life. useful life”. He then added that “most out-of-warranty consumers choose to replace a lower-cost printer when they receive an end-of-life service message.” Epson now suggests the feel-good option of sending the bricked drive for recycling.
Epson is offering customers in North America a free, unique maintenance reset utility that allows you to temporarily ignore the error message for a “limited time” to “fill existing printing needs.” But this is restricted to Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7, Windows Vista and Windows XP users, with no official offer for Windows 11 or Mac. You can purchase additional reset keys from less reputable third-party websites that will typically charge you $9.99 for the service, not that Epson will be happy with you.
Exasperated users found other ways to keep a printer operational after experiencing this error, such as manually replacing or cleaning the ink cartridges. The company’s ink pads seem to vary slightly by model, but there are plenty of video tutorials available documenting the process. Frankly, all of these tasks seem pretty simple to accomplish, but none of them are officially endorsed by Epson.
For its part, Epson says that the ink pad problem is rarely encountered by most customers and only affects printers that are heavily used, printers used for several years, or consumer printers used in commercial environments. “Most print users will never receive this message in their intended use scenarios,” said Merritt Woodward, a representative for the printer company. “It directly depends on the printer model, the frequency, the conditions of use and the type of printing over time.”
The company also claims that there is a security issue to be aware of. “Printers are designed to fail at the point where further use without replacing the ink cartridges could create property damage risks from ink spillage or safety issues related to excess ink coming into contact with a electrical component,” says Epson’s support page. This seems reasonable as Epson does not want to be held responsible for property damage. But it’s also an admission that the hardware has a known expiration date that can be avoided with maintenance.
Epson has nothing to lose and everything to gain by maintaining the status quo
This ink pad scenario is a good example of why so many consumers are fighting for the right to repair their own hardware. Epson’s endorsed solutions require you to pay for the printer to be serviced or to replace it entirely, taking money out of your pocket and placing it on your own despite the existence of effective DIY solutions. Instead, Epson should design the ink cartridges to be user-serviceable and sell kits to consumers to clean or replace them. But Epson has nothing to lose and everything to gain by maintaining the status quo, and that’s a bad deal for its customers and the environment. (Even recycling systems are rarely 100% efficient.)
Epson isn’t the only printer maker under scrutiny for anti-consumer practices, with HP making headlines in April 2022 for remotely disabling printers for customers who canceled your Instant Ink subscription. Canon also fell victim to its own business tactics earlier this year when chip shortages caused Canon printers to fail to recognize their own official brand ink cartridges. It just goes to show that manufacturers can always find new ways to make us hate the need to use an inkjet printer.