Presto! A new printer

One day my Epson Stylus CX4600 printer decided not to print colors as they appear in real life. Then it decided not to print at all. I cleaned the heads, checked the nozzle, aligned the print head, but still no words. Several attempts and loads of ink later, same result.  

I logged onto Epson.com and clicked through the troubleshooting guide. The nice thing about it is, it's quick, and at the end an 800-number pops up to call between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. PT. So many tech product web sites make it close to impossible to find a customer service telephone number to call.

I dialed and settled in for what I thought would be a long chat as the customer service rep and I ran through everything I had done, and all the things I hadn't. Ending with directions on where to ship it for repairs.

The call lasted all of five minutes, and that includes three minutes on hold. I told the customer service rep what I had done, and how many times I had tried. He asked if I used genuine Epson ink cartridges. I said, "Yes." He said: "Looks like you've done everything you can do. We'll send you a new printer." He did say it would be the Epson Stylus CX4800 model since Epson was no longer making the CX4600. He had access to my warranty info because I entered it automatically online when I installed the printer. A new printer arrived in three days.

I told a friend in my writers' group to do the same when she said her Epson printer was no longer printing black, only colors. She called Epson and messaged me that a new printer was on its way.

Not sure why I thought Epson would want to repair a $120 printer. As Joe Nocera wrote in Saturday's New York Times about Apple's iPods (his family has bought six iPods since 2001, three to replace broken ones), customer support is expensive for electronics makers.  They train their reps to get off the phone as soon as possible. And if that means sending out a new printer, so be it. It's cheaper than paying the labor bills to diagnose a problem and then repair it.

We consumers have to accept the fact that we're spending hundreds of dollars on disposable items. I realized that the same day I read Nocera's article, when I found my self waiting on the only line at the county recycling center to drop off a cream-colored boxy monitor, a TV, old phones and reams of wiring I don't even remember using. Our long-neglected electronic components had lots of look-alike company waiting to be shrink-wrapped and carted away.