Epson Epson printers are zoned by country/region so that if you move you cannot buy ink, making the printer obsolete England

I have an Epson WF-4630, but have recently relocated from USA to UK. The cartridges in the US are 786XL. When I purchased WF-4630 compatible cartridges in the UK (79XL) the printer says they are not recognized. What am I to do? Epson will not ship 786XL cartridges to the UK, yet in the UK the printer says 79 cartridges are not compatible

The response from Epson was as follows:

The unit has been manufactured in a different zone so the cartridges from the Euro zone will not work in a North American manufactured unit and are not compatible.

You will need to purchase a unit manufactured in the Euro Zone or obtain ink manufactured in the North American Zone.

If you are staying in the UK for a prelonged period of time, would you like a recommendation on a replacement unit?

Firstly I doubt very much that the printer was actually manufactured in the US, but maybe customized *for* the US. So I followed up and this was their justification:

I understand your frustration. Not allowing intercontinental compatibility is however the only way to stop ¨gray trading¨ (bulk buying of devices in a continent with low prices to sell elsewhere for full retail prices) and is standard practice among many manufacturers of electronics.

I would advice you to buy your cartridges from Amazon or another website that sells American products internationally.

So my complaint is as follows:

Epson have a deliberate policy of charging different prices by region for their ink cartridges despite being identical components. Epson then enforce this disparity by:

• Encoding their printers to prevent the use of ink cartridges purchased in different regions even for legitimate purposes such as mine.
• They appear to enforce their 'regionlaization' on their vendors as *no* vendor on Amazon will shpo ourtside of their region.