A member of my family owns an Epson XP-960. It is used most every day to print photos. It's been in the family about 18 months. Suddenly a couple of weeks ago it stopped working. When one turned on the printer it displayed a message indicating that "service was required". The scanner was still operable (I controlled it from the computer) but the printer would not print.
This article is not an explanation of how to correct the problem but merely to point out that you can "save" this printer--you don't have to take it to an Epson Service Center or buy another because of this error. And to provide a recommendation for the site I needed to get it all to work.
The Epson XP-960 has a "waste information counter" or WIC. Every time you print, this counter is incremented, until one day you've reached 100% of your number, in which case, with little warning, it causes the printer to stop. It is designed to prevent overfilling the waste ink pads inside the printer.
You can easily access these waste pads--they're in a plastic container held in by two screws, located on the bottom of the printer--just flip it over and it is obvious where the container is located. The main problem is that a user has no ability to reset the WIC. I also do NOT recommend trying to empty the saturated ink pads--it just doesn't work.
So to get the printer working, one needs a program that can reset the WIC, and around the same time, find a way to replace those waste ink pads.
Every place I looked online in the U.S., the ink pads were out of stock. This is not a small issue, I surmised. I found a site in the U.K. octoink.co.uk. I took a chance and bought a WIC reset ID (about $11), and ordered a set of ink waste pads to replace the current ones.
The WIC program (and the unique ID) came immediately after ordering. I did get it working without incident (Windows 8.1 PC) within the next hour or so. Then it was a matter of waiting for the waste ink pads to arrive. They sent two sets--it included the plastic container box (you do need to keep the screws from the old one). It took six days for my order, I selected "economy air" or something similar. That part was around $33. In retrospect, I think you can easily get by taking the cheapest shipping option.
In the end it was well worth it. I get to use the same printer, same drivers, and a product I am comfortable with.
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| The old print container and waste ink pads |
