Faulty Epson printers highlight industry’s maintainability issue

Epson printers have had a nasty little problem for years now. Some models suddenly stop working even though they seem to be working normally, because the ink pads are supposedly too saturated. Epson has received some negative publicity over the past few weeks as users, websites, and right-to-repair activists denounced the company for its printers eventually stopping working, highlighting how much of a problem printers remain in the right-to-repair fight. repair. repair.

According to the Fight to Repair newsletter, Epson printers including the L360, L130, L220, L310, L365 and possibly others may suddenly display a message that they have reached the end of their life and then stop printing. Epson told The Verge this week that this is because ink-soaked pads can leak through devices.

Until this week, Epson’s support page stated this message:

At some point, the product will reach a state where it is either unable to maintain satisfactory print quality or the components have expired. Epson is committed to ensuring that all of its products operate properly to minimize the risk of property damage or personal injury during the life of the product. The printers are designed to stop operating when continued use without replacing ink pads could create a risk of property damage due to ink spills or safety issues associated with excess ink coming into contact with electrical components.

The problem has been around for years and there are several videos instructing people on how to fix ink pads themselves. However, the issue hit Twitter in late July, as spotted by Gizmodo this week, drawing attention to a broken Epson printer and leading to accusations of planned obsolescence.

Epson isn’t the only company to break their seemingly serviceable printers due to ink problems. Another recent example is HP, which phased out ink cartridges in 2020 that are not part of its Instant Ink subscription program. The company still continues the practice. HP also has a history of trying to use DRM to prevent users from using third party ink cartridges in their printers.

Canon doesn’t want people to use generic ink so much that it inadvertently made its own inks unusable earlier this year.

Printing companies are so inclined to control the use of their products that the case has gone all the way to the Supreme Court. In 2017, Lexmark fought to stop Impression Products from bypassing DRM to refill and resell their ink cartridges, but lost.

Indeed, when it comes to this sort of thing, the reputation of printers is mixed and things don’t seem to be getting better. Just look at how Epson dealt with their recent bad publicity stunt.

This week, as noted by The Verge, the company has changed the End of Service support page by placing a one-time service reset utility that allows you to temporarily continue using the printer closer to the top of the page. Until this week, the support page was quick to state that “Most out-of-warranty consumers choose to replace a cheaper printer when they receive an end-of-life message.”

But the page now points to Epson’s ink pad replacement service and more prominently showcases the company’s recycling program. Finally, the page removed a previously cited statement that tries to convince people that it’s perfectly okay to get rid of their alleged working printer and give Epson more money after seeing a service end message.

But these are small steps. Epson still does not offer repair manuals, tools, or parts. And it still says that only Epson or one of its partners can fix ink pad problems, implying that you or your favorite local repair shop can’t. This ignores video tutorials showing people figured out how to fix ink pad problems on their own.

Without any further push, printer companies will continue to use invasive methods to control the use of their products. Some believe the push may come from the government.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if I saw resistance a few years ago over the Federal Trade Commission’s intervention in the Revolv brick incident,” says Aaron Perzhanovsky, professor at the University of Michigan Law School and author of The Right to Repair: that we own,” according to the Fight for Repair newsletter.

In 2016, the FTC wrote a letter (PDF) to Google Nest detailing concerns that the company’s blocking of Revolv Smart Home Hub devices would result in “undue, substantial injury to consumers that consumers themselves could not reasonably avoid.”The agency decided not to recommend enforcement action, in part because Nest returned the money.