Out of Print

For some strange reason, my printer decided to just up and die on me. Well, technically it didn't die. It still has some functionality, mostly as a large paperweight. This last week, the black ink ran out, and this thing won't work unless all the ink cartridges have at least SOME ink in them. It won't even let me mix the other colors to make black if the black is empty or missing. Anyways, we bought a new cartridge of black. Did that solve our problems? Noooooooo... Anything that we printed out came out either mulitcolored, or missing lines. I conducted a head cleaning and routine maintenance and tried again. Still, the same problems persisted. So we figures we might have gotten a faulty cartridge. (Hey, it happens!) We bought another cartridge to replace the one we had gotten only a few days prior. Did that solve our problems? Nooooooooo... (The Culprit: Epson Stylus CX6400)

So I decided to give Epson a call. It was going to be $30 for an over the phone consult, but the tech guy told me that if I did it via e-mail, then that would be free. So I took the e-mail route, told them my problems, told them what I had done already to try and solve them, and then anxiously awaited their reply. A few minutes later they answered my e-mail with suggestions of things that I could try to remedy the problem. (All of which I had already done, by the way, and had told them in my e-mail that I had already done them!) There was a number I could call in case their suggestions didn't work and I required further assistance. And seeing how I had done the e-mail thing, the over-the-phone consult fee would be waived. (YAY!)The second time around, the phone guy told me that I could either take it to a printer technician in the area, or pay big bucks to have Epson take a look at in and try to repair it. Seeing how I didn't feel like shipping off my printer, I decided to take it to a local tech. I called the tech's office to see what the price for a consult was. $45!! But I swallowed my pride, and tried to convince myself that if that was all I had to pay to get it fixed, then it would be alright. (As long as the price didn't exceed the value of the printer).That was Friday afternoon. The lady at the repair shop told me to expect a call on either Monday or Tuesday. Today, Friday, she calls to tell me that the cleaning and the flushing of the ink heads yielded no results. (DUM DUM DUM!!) "So, what does that mean?", I ask her. She says she'll call be back with a quote. 15 minutes later, she drops the bomb. Two Hundered and twenty five f#%!ing dollars!! That's about twice what I paid for the printer when I first bought it. I told her thanks, but no thanks, I would be picking up my large electronic paperweight and be on our way. So the search begins for a replacement printer for the Peña household, and my brother's and I are gonna partake of a little printer bashing! (In the strictly non-sexual sense!)