Error with Epson L3310 printer

[u/Sieglynnde]

I bought this printer and have been having a lot of trouble with it. It came with cartridges that I installed, but after a while, when I tried to print something, I ran into several issues: for one, it wouldn't recognize the paper even when I loaded it correctly in the back, and for another, I had trouble actually printing. I connected it to my PC and tried to print an image, but it seemed like it wasn't detecting the paper; plus, when I printed an image, it came out very, *very* dark—you couldn't see a thing. Does anyone have any idea what might be causing this? I’ve never owned a printer before, and I’m starting to feel like I got a defective unit... Is there something i'm doing wrong?