One Dead Printer

This morning started well. I was pleased when the post arrived because it contained some ink cartridges from a new supplier.

I ordered them after the last black ink cartridges I’d bought several months ago, from a supplier that will only accept returns for seven days, simply didn’t fit. Of course, I tried two of the four I had bought, because it’s cheaper to buy them in bulk, before refitting the old one that was almost empty. At which point the printer told me it WAS empty and wouldn’t print.

Anyway, that was about 72 hours ago and the new ink cartridges arrived today. I put one in and it fitted fine. I did a print test and it sounded fine but the paper came out blank. I cleaned the heads about eight times, did several nozzle checks. Nothing.

I googled “troubleshooting Epson CX5400” and found someone with exactly the same problem who fixed it by dismantling the whole unit and gluing a something tube into its socket because it had become unfixed. I looked at the instructions, then got my husband to look as well. No way I could follow them but he might.

Trouble is I can’t print the instructions so he will have to do it next to the computer and read it off the screen. That means I can’t get on with anything else for the time it takes. And that could be hours or days, as he’s likely to get a phone call at any time that will take him back out to work and would have to just leave it. For the moment we’ve abandoned the idea.

I found a company that will come out and do repairs, but I didn’t bother to ring them. The cost of an engineer would surely equal the cost of a new printer. I’ve been looking at them on ebay and Amazon etc, but haven’t yet decided to buy. Hubby says he’ll take a look at it tonight now. But he’ll be downstairs with his workmate on a dustsheet and some plastic sheeting to protect the carpet from ink. While I’ll be upstairs in my office calling down instructions in between EC dropping or some such.

After all this, I finally got through to the Egyptian Consulate in London this morning. And I discovered that I can send in our applications for our holiday visas if I download and PRINT them from their website.