Evil Broken Printer of Doom

I am really growing to dislike my printer.



It is a Kodak 5250, and we bought it because it was supposed to save money on ink. The ink IS cheap, I'll give them that. It doesn't really help though, if the printer doesn't run. Our first printer worked for a couple weeks then said that it was out of ink. This made sense, because we had been printing a ton of recipes to put in a binder. We replaced the black and the color cartridges.

The printer still said it was out of black ink.

We shrugged, and wrote it off to a defective cartridge and got another black ink cartridge.

The printer still said it was out of black ink. Then it changed its mind and said it was out of color ink. Remember, this is with two brand new cartridges installed, and after we had already replaced the brand new black cartridge, just in case.

I spoke with "Winner" (no joke), the tech support guy who had me run through a whole series of troubleshooting tests. I honestly don't think updating the firmware is going to help the printer with what seems to be a hardware issue, but okay. Winner sent us a replacement printer, "refurbished" of course, which arrived today.

I admit it, I was totally excited. No more running to the store to print stuff from the computers! We followed the instructions to the letter, moving the ink cartridges and printhead from the old printer to the "new" one.

Guess what?

I'm getting the same error as before. The internet tells me that the problem is probably the printhead, but the tech support I spoke with this time told me it wasn't. He says the problem is a defective ink cartridge. So they are sending me a new color cartridge.

Most likely scenario: The new color ink cartridge does not solve the problem, and tech support sends me a new printhead which may or may not solve the problem. From my research, if it is the printhead, it is an issue that will recur again and again. I suppose buying a new printer would be the best idea, but I really hate buying a new one when I have one... even if it doesn't work. =P

Why didn't I just look this up before buying it? Sites like this are not uncommon:
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/cameras/kodak.html