The high-end Epson 9900 printer, which retails for around £3,000 ($5,000), reports that ink cartridges are empty even when they are still about 15-20 percent full. This behaviour is particularly egregious as a set of 700ml ink cartridges for the Epson 9900 printer comes in at around £2,500—so, users are being forced to replace the cartridges when there's still about £500 of ink available.

This finding comes from Bellevue Fine Art, a printing company in Seattle. When their Epson 9900 printer reported that an ink cartridge was down below 1 percent capacity, it refused to print any more pages until the cartridge had been replaced. Bellevue Fine Art, in a fit of curiosity, decided to cut open some of the allegedly empty cartridges to see how much ink was actually left.

You will probably be unsurprised to hear that there was actually a lot of ink still available: in a 700ml cartridge, there was generally between 100 and 150 millilitres of ink still in the bag, about 14-21 percent. In smaller, 350ml cartridges, between 60 and 80ml of ink remained or about 17-22 percent.

A professional printing company could go through a set of 700ml ink cartridges every few weeks, so a wastage fee or tax of £500 per set is pretty hefty.

Of course, we shouldn't just assume that Epson is intentionally fleecing its customers. There could be a technical reason for the misreporting. Perhaps, once a cartridge falls below 15-20 percent, there is some issue that degrades print quality, or perhaps it puts the print heads at risk of drying out. If something like this was the case, though, you would think that Epson would put extra ink into the cartridges so that customers actually get 700ml of usable ink. Sadly, that doesn't seem to be the case. Bellevue Fine Art poured out an entire 700ml cartridge and found there was indeed just 700 millilitres of ink.

Bellevue Fine Art has contacted Epson about this issue "many times," even sending cartridges to the company for examination. So far, though, they have "always been ignored, or told that we were just wrong." The company is hoping that the video demonstrating the issue (embedded above), which has gathered some 500,000 views in the last few days, will finally get Epson to respond.