Epson Stylus CX4200 Inkjet Printer

Great!

Below is the message which my boyfriend sent to their customer support. I am certain you can figure out the problem. I am incredibly offended by your ink policy regarding the Epson Stylus CX4200. In particular, I want to print a black and white text document, but am unable to do so without replacing my color cartridges. Not only that, but when I try to print, your Epson Status Monitor 3 pops up and reminds me that I dont have color ink, and wouldnt I like to buy some? When I visit your FAQ, and try to figure out how to explain to my printer that it doesnt need color ink in order to print my black and white document, the FAQ tells me that yes, I do. And wouldnt I like to buy some ink? No. I do not want to buy more color ink. I want to print my document. You do _not_ need color ink for this purpose. I find it overwhelmingly insulting to imagine a meeting where this policy was arrived at. Clearly someone must have suggested letting the printer print black and white documents without color cartridges, and the response must have been instead, we could really rip our customers off! Why any company would be willing to anger their customers so much is beyond me. I cannot imagine myself buying Epson products in the future. I am certainly _not_ going to buy color ink cartridges just so I can print my black and white documents. Im simply going to sit here and reflect at how incredibly stupid and insulting your current policy is.

Owned it about 1 year and made about 50-100 prints in that time. Then it stopped printing, saying cyan ink was out. Bought a new cartridge, same problem. Called tech support; thats where you repeat the online troubleshooting page you just finished doing, but in case youre really dumb, they read it to you. Bottom line, its a hardware problem, so they give you the phone number to the closest repair facility...of course, they give the FAX number. Then they bring you to their loyalty page. Loyalty is a TWO way affair...it requires Epson to make a good product so Ill buy another product. Im sure Ill be lining up to make another Epson product purchase...NOT!

I dont know what to say - but Ive bought Epson printers in the past and have good fortune with them. This one however - as other reviewers stated needs all 4 colors to be filled for it to work at all. You can only buy the cartridges from Epson now since they sued all the after marketers. A typcial price for all four colors cost over $50 now. I would not even by this printer dirt cheap - I plan to throw mine away and get another brand.

Last year I purchased an Epson Stylus CX5000 printer and Ive been disappointed with it since day one. About two sets of ink cartridges in, I vowed to never use it again. Recently, I guess I had forgotten about my vow and I thought Id give it another try. This meant purchasing new ink cartridges. This printer wont let you print even if only one cartridge is detected to be low. I installed the new cartridges and by the time I went through all the diagnostics and so-called alignment, nozzle cleaning, etc., the printer software popped up a message saying I was low on ink again. Low on ink with the very colors I had just replaced. Needless to say, Im fuming. If ink cartridges cost what they are worth, which is probably around fifty cents, I might not be so mad. After all, it would only mean stocking up on the stupid things. But when I purchased these, the cost was outrageous. Also, why doesnt epson provide the customer with a recycling packet that can be mailed back to them for used print cartridges (free of charge). On the packet it says to dispose of them properly. What does that mean? At the rate these things get used up, whats this doing to our landfills? What kind of toxic chemicals are inside these things? My recycling company doesnt take ink cartridges. Im tempted to package all the used ones and mail them back to the epson and let them deal with it. Theyll probaby just throw them in the trash and Ill be out the shipping cost. The more I work with computer-related products, the more I believe the world was just fine without all this garbage and life was also less expensive. Sorry for getting philosophical on you. And no, I not buying another brand. This one will go to the recycling center and Ill get by without a printer. Im sure they all find a way to gouge you. Good luck! By the way, the one-star rating I gave this was only because I couldnt give it no stars. There should be a negative scale to rate this product. One star implies the product has some value.

I like this printer most of the time, but Ive become upset with one very poor design flaw: black-and-white printing is disabled unless the color ink cartridges have ink in them. As their website says, Q: Can the printer still print if an ink cartridge is expended or not installed? A: No. The printer will not operate if any cartridge is expended or removed. Its best to always have extra cartridges on hand. With this bizarre design, not only is it best to have extra cartridges on hand, but necessary. If you run out of any color ink, you can no longer print in black and white--very inconvenient.

Recently my low ink light went on in the middle of a project. I was not too disappointed - in fact I felt a bit smug because I had just purchased a half dozen black ink cartridges at a good price over the internet! So I changed cartridges and went on to continue my project. But the ink light was still on! I took out the cartridge, shook it, reinserted it over and over. I went to the Epson website to get a new driver. The new driver allowed me to see my ink status. The black cartridge was full, but the color was empty! In fact all 3 of the colored cartridges had suddenly become empty! How could this be? Im WAY too cheap to ever use color! I inserted my new black cartridges into the colored slots. No luck. Total loss. Trash can time. I will NEVER buy from Epson again.

I use it for genearl use. Printing and scanning and it has served me well for 6 years and going.

Ive had this printer for just over 2 years. With light use, the cartridges last for a while. The problem is that the print head does not clean itself properly and now anything I print has a smudge at on the side of the paper where the print head changed direction (going back and forth). No amount of head cleaning fixes this problem.

I have purchased a number of Epson printers over the years, but this one will be the last one I buy. I bought this printer because it had different carts for the inks rather then having a single color cart and a B/W cart like my prior printers. I figured this would make it more economical to print, but it actually made it more expensive! The cost of operating this printer has been very high, the ink carts (original Epson) have failed if I dont replace ALL of them at the same time! To add insult to the injury, the printer will refuse to print in B/W if there is no color ink. You cant even make a B/W photocopy even though there is a dedicated B/W copy button. This printer is nothing but a piece of junk and I imagine that all recent printers from Epson are the same.