I purchased an Epson WorkForce 500 Printer, copier, (all in one type unit). (Purchased from a Target Store in Wisconsin.)
I set it up with using Just the black ink. I don't ever use the color cartridges. It comes with seperate colors (yellow, red and blue), and the black cartridge. Even though the printer is rather slow, it seemed to work okay. Then one day it would not print. A message appeared that one of the color cartridges was empty. In other words, if one of the color cartridges is empty, the whole system shuts down and it is not usable. The cartridges were either very near empty from the store, or the system is set up to say the cartridge is empty after a pre-determined length of time. I did not use the color cartridges, yet all indicate they are empty or very near empty within a few weeks of purchase. The blue cartridge said empty and the red and yellow showed a caution sign, indicating that they are very near empty.
So Epson in my opinion, may not be doing something illegal (?) but at very best is falsely advertising that you can replace each individual cartridge as needed. This is totally false advertising in my opinion. You must have ink in all cartridges to have any one cartridge work so the printer can be used. To make matters even worse, the new cartridges that came with the printer had to be very near empty to start with, or their printer is programmed to say they cartridges are empty after a certain period of time. Let me reitterate, "I did not use the color cartridges". When I sent the system up, I set it up to only use the black ink. So they can't use that as an excuse. Either they have deceptive advertising, or are selling cartridges with their new printers that are near empty. To add insult to injury, they have set up their printer so it will not work at all if any one cartridge does not have enough ink in it.
The ink (blue that was totally empty) I had to replace to make the printer work for black copies. The the printer has lines in some of the printed pages. They give instructions on how to clear the copies to be crisp and clear. That does not work. It say I don't have enough ink to clean the cartrides.

I am very disappointed with this deceptively advertised product, and would never suggest anyone to purchase from such a (in my opinion) shady company.

Epson poor service. printer gives problem within 1 month of purchase

I can't put into words how bad this one is, nor what a bunch of idiots their support people are. It never worked from the get go. says paper jam when there isn't, drinks ink like water, won''t print half the time. Their support group are from Mars!

Epson just plain doesn't care.

I bought a box of Premium Bright White Paper online at Epson thinking it would be good for proofing. Previously I had used Epson's regular weight inkjet paper for my proofing, and it saved me a lot of money. I couldn't find this at Staples anymore though, so I went to Epson directly for it. The box says "Smooth, bright white, non-glare finish for crisp text and colorful images, plus brilliant two-sided printing". This was the closest I could find for the other paper, and being that is was designed for inkjets, I bought it.

When I took it out of the box, it appeared to be plain copy paper, like you get for a few bucks at any office superstore or Walmart. It was neither smooth nor bright white. When I printed my images, they were neither brilliant nor crisp. And because of the high absorption and bleed through, I can't image using this for two-sided printing. So there was no true statement in their claim, other than "white".

No problem, I thought; there's a money back guarantee which states "If you are not fully satisfied with the output, Epson will refund the purchase price." Since I wasn't fully satisfied, nor even partially satisfied, I picked up the phone to get the refund.

The outsourced customer service rep on the phone refused, saying the paper was not defective, and that it was only supposed to be used for correspondence. I protested, and he gave me the number of the online store at Epson. I called them, and got the same runaround. That person wanted me to call the first number again. Then when she found out I had purchased using a coupon code from the class action suit over the ink cartridges, she said no refund or credit was due at all. I told her that the coupon was like money, and if I didn't buy this paper, I would have bought something else. What BS and poor customer service, not to mention false advertising and false guarantees.

DO NOT BUY this paper! You can get a ream for less than half the cost at any office superstore. There is NOTHING SPECIAL about it. It is simply cheap copy paper they are passing off as some kind of premium bright white.

When I tried to find an email address for customer support, I discovered that not only do they not have any emails listed on their website, but they don't even have a contact category for customer support.