One of the biggest costs associated with possessing an Epson printer is when it comes to buy new printer cartridges. The Epson printer manufacturer follows the trend of printer industry to sell the devices at an exceptional lower price, and then cover up the loss by making huge profit from the sale of new ink cartridges. To raise voice against the practice of consumers refilling cartridges or using remanufactured cartridges, Epson has introduced a large number of their inkjet cartridges with smart chips. These chips inform the printer when the cartridge reaches its end of life. The chip will also show an error message that the printer cartridge is empty when it has been refilled. This has forced the consumer to learn how to reset an Epson printer cartridge to use refilled cartridge.

Third-party companies that remanufacture inkjet and toner cartridges are dissatisfied with the addition of smart chips to the Epson cartridges since the chips make it hard to refill and reuse empty cartridges. Remanufactured inkjet cartridges are capable of working with all Epson printers, although the Epson printer manufacturer says that users will fail to get the advantage of advanced features like ink level indicator without this chip.

Customers generally like the lower price tag cartridges offered by third-party ink cartridges. To save a few bucks on printing cost, they would likely want to buy the no-name cartridges without perturbing by the fact that using them will damage their printers.