I fault I would save some money and buy compatible cartridges, I have bought compatible cartridges before for my other Epson printer and know that they work well with Epson printers. I replaced all four of my cartridge and did what the on screen instructions told me two do. I printed a colour picture and the colour did not match what was on screen, and it had vertical lines running all the way along the picture I have tried using the nozzle check and all the utilities, but I am still having problems. It prints in black ok with only a few brakes in the words. Before I used these cartridges it was printing fine. I did leave the empty cartridges in the printer for quite some time before I replaced them, could that be the problem? Thanking you, Matt

You said "I did leave the empty cartridges in the printer for quite some time before I replaced them, could that be the problem?" Yes, that's the problem. What you replaced are only ink tanks. Some of the ink jets and/or the passages to the ink jets have dried ink in them. This happens the fastest and is hardest to recover from if you remove the ink tanks and leave the inside of the cartridge exposed to the air. This will also happen faster if the cartridge was not allowed to park itself in the proper position before it was turned off and then sits for some time (never connect the printer to a power source that you turn off before you turn the printer off, or it automatically is turned off) In addition, if you try to use the cartridge (the printhead) after any of the ink has run out (say, one color), you can COOK the ink remaining in the ink jets, making the situation very diffucult or impossible to recover from. You could try dabbing the bottom of the print head with a tissue moistened with clean water - keep dabbing until your see some ink coming from the nozzles (not from accumulated dried ink elsewhere), preferably all the colors. One you get the ink to show, dab with a dry tissue - you should still see ink coming from the nozzles. Then try printing. If you get nothing after a couple sheets of printout, try dabbing again. You could try the same with isopropyl (rubbing) alcohol. You could try sitting the printhead in a shallow (1/8")layer of isopropyl alcohol, upright, in a container, for up to a day. You could look online for more suggestions along these lines. If you can't get it to work right, you have to buy a new cartridge. This is exactly what the printer manufacturers rely on. Despite all their warnings about what not to do when using cartridges, there are plenty of people do not get it, and who have to buy new cartridges (the print head part) prematurely.

"I would save some money and buy compatible cartridges, I have bought compatible cartridges before" If it isn't dried ink on the heads, there may be another reason. I had an Epson C80 printer, and all the carts on that printer are chipped, as, I think, are all the C series of Epson printers. Epson calls it their "smartchip", and the bottom line is that you will be only able to use genuine Epson carts in that machine. Each cart has a tiny computer chip on the front, and when the ink monitor on your screen shows empty the cart shuts down. Even refilling it will not make it work. Various companies have tried resetting the chip on the cart and refilling, but I never could find one that worked and ended up sending all their carts back. They all did exactly what yours is doing, even though the ink monitor registered as "full". This is Epson's way of preventing you from buying just-as-good generic carts at 1/4 the money as I have always done with all my other printers. Sad thing is, the black cart will give you only 44 sheets of print. 44. Figure a standard pack of 500 sheets of typing paper, that comes to OVER $300 TO PRINT ONE (1) PACK OF TYPING PAPER. Better than a license to steal. If you add color, it's a lot more. I dumped my perfectly good Epson printer for a Canon i690. Just a great output, photo quality, just as fast, more quiet, and 1/4 the ink cost of an Epson. If anyone wants my perfectly good Epson C80 printer, it's yours free-you just pay the shipping to your house. I'm serious.

I am not sure if you are talking about refills. But I brought 4 new compatible cartridges not refills. Does this Epson smart chip still apply. Thanks, Matt