Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsUnclear/missing Instructions
Reviewed in the United States on October 31, 2021
I cannot complain about the product itself, nor can I praise it. As you'll see, my issue is most likely a printer malfunction, so trying to unclog things was apparently never going to succeed. Thus a 3-star, middle of the road rating, however based on the next paragraph, I'd have given 4 stars at most if it had solved the problem.
It seems some of the instructions are missing - Step 1 says to print a nozzle check pattern. Steps 2-4 have you insert blotting paper and position the carrier over the paper. And Step 5 is where it gets weird... it says "according to Step 1, insert the silicone tube into the ink inklet, of the color which needs to be cleaned...". But Step 1 says to do a nozzle check! Missing between Steps 4 and 5 are a) attach the tube to the syringe, b) fill the syringe, c) assemble the other pieces (L-connector(s), yellow and/or white fitting) as appropriate for your printer. I was able to figure out the missing steps with a little trial and effort (the video helped a little), but nothing in the instructions said what to do with all those pieces included in the kit.
The remainder is about the experience I had, not the product, some of which may be useful to others...
After all that, I ran the cleaning process twice. Both times, the blotting paper was saturated, so it seems liquid was getting through the print head. When finished I ran the printer's own head cleaning process, after which I got an error about the Cyan cartridge (genuine Epson!) being unrecognized. I tried removing and reinserting it several times, to no avail. Eventually I replaced it with a new Epson cartridge and all was well. Well, almost... when running the nozzle check pattern I still got a completely blank page, which is what started me down this road in the first place. I reran the printer's cleaning process a couple of times, and still get nothing but blank pages. Conclusion... the printer itself (perhaps the print head?) is faulty. So, one cleaning kit, several hours, and one ink cartridge later, I am right where I started. It seems to be time for a new printer.
As a final piece of advice, something that I've not seen in any cleaning kit's instructions or discussions, if you care about the floor finish in the area where you're working, cover it with something before starting this process. The saturated blotting paper lost a drop of dark ink on my beige carpet. The cleaning solution only smeared it. So now I have something to always remind me of this experience. :-(
Update 6/13/22: Not related to the product being reviewed, but recently a biodegradable cleaning product called Oil Eater was recommended to me. I tried it on the seven month old ink stain on my carpet and voila! The stain is gone and the carpet is still there! :-)
