Purchasing Epson Cartridges Internationally (DRM Concerns)

[jreades]

I hope that this is a silly question -- I just purchased an Epson R800

in the UK, but given the price difference (and the fact that I am

frequently in New York) I was thinking of buying my ink cartridges in

the US.

 

However, the name 'Lexmark' may ring a bell to some people -- they

implemented a hardware-based 'authentication' scheme on their printers

so that ink bought in one part of the world (or from a third-party)

wouldn't work in another part of the world. It only just occurred to

me that Epson might do something similar to prevent price arbitrage.

 

So if I pick up some ink at B&H and then take it to the UK will I be

left with expensive, but useless, cartridges? I realise that this is a

bit of an obscure corner of printer use, but I'm hoping that someone

has experience (or has done what I'm proposing to do).

 

Thanks,

 

jon

[geoffrey_williams]

It is far from a slly question, although I am not sure I can address your specific issue.

 

I have an Epson 2200, bought in the USA, but now sitting in Japan - after I moved from the USA 2 years ago. Not too sure about the arbitrage angle - I wanted to buy local Japanese supplies, for convenience, but the apparently equivalent Epson inks cartridges in Japan were not recognized by my machine. When I asked Epson USA to ship me some ink they said they only ship to domestic US locations, and when I asked how they could help me they said that it was very unfortunate but they could offer no solution for my circumstances. Of course I was able to find solutions, but it is a pity that their policies in this regard are so unhelpful.

 

I suggest you get a buddy in the US to mail you a cartridge to test in advance.

 

Geoff

[rupert_witherow]

I'd take the chance. In the worst case you can keep the original UK carts for their chips, buy a chip resetter (costs about 10 quid on the net - name like F-16 or such from inksupply.com) and replace the native US chips with the reset UK chips each time you replace a cart. It's tedious, but potentially worthwhile if you want to go that way. If you blow a chip, then you'll have to buy another UK cart to replace it. Failing everything I've got a few empty UK originals lying about if you needed a spare epson UK chip. Good luck!

[erickpro]

Could you sell your printer in ebay america and buy an asian printer?

[robert_k1]

Here's a related question. I have an Epson black cartridge labeled T007 for the 1270/1290 printers. Will it work on an US 1280? Is the cartridge the same as the US T007201?