A lot of it depends on the frequency of "maintenance" being run on the printer (auto and manual). Otherwise, they usually last ~5-6 years these days with the internal pads (used to be 10-15+ before the 2010 black cart printers happened) unless you really run them hard and run the page counter up to 20k+ pages in 1-2 years. If you run the maintenance on the printers a lot it still hurts you a bit but at the same time, regular maintenance will not do much harm as the tolerance is built into the printer.
However, power flushes nuke your waste box service life drastically so much so it's a NUCLEAR OPTION to AVOID!!! Never, EVER utilize power flush!!! FULL-COLOR PAGES TARGETING THE ISOLATED COLOR DO LESS HARM! It was originally sold in Walmart and Target, so that should give you an idea of who is usually buying them.
Epson cost is simple: as much as a new printer, or you're SOL. Usually SOL; Epson often denies HW service when you ask them to fix it due to the parts being EOL, or "too expensive". They would rather give you a one-shot reset to get more out of the pad but once that's done you can't reset it again. However, since the ET-2400 is derived from the "chipped" box printers which were designed to be replaced, it's accessed on the same service panel as the serviced ones and only needs a Phillips driver. However, you need to reset the counter which isn't always possible, or it takes years to open up the reset to 3rd party tools like WIC reset utility (some may never be resettable outside of Epson). Epson used to have somewhat regular tool leaks where if you can find the appropriate adjustment program+keygen, it was possible; like Canon, I suspect Epson has moved this to the cloud logins to prevent leaks and encrypts these tools so we can't hack/decrypt them.
I use laser printers for a reason, despite color and B/W models that aren't junk being $400+, or if I get a deal on a used high-end model like a split drum/developer Lexmark CS with a low page count for a reason: This isn't a problem. However, they're more expensive to maintain than a $250 ink tank like this Epson and need more consumables (drums, toner, developer. Some even consider the transfer belt/fuser "maintenance items" at 100-150k pages). Yes, these may require a truck or 2 people who can lift a heavy printer with how big they can be in some cases (others need a box truck like the copiers with print support or printers the same size as copiers). The best ones in this "lots of consumables, cheap to run" are the Lexmark CS/CX series where they split the drum, toner, and developer (they mention the fuser and transfer belt in the supplies page, but I think the split CS series is the "quality is unsatisfactory" outlier) or even the WorkCentres from Xerox. However, all of the major manufacturers sell these but you need to seek them out.
Here's how big some of the "compact" ones are. They're workhorses, but fail the "consumer convenience" test since they're not like an Epson EcoTank where you take it home and setup the unit, you need a table that can handle it or a printer cart: