True, they are getting very ****ty, and they are making their cartridges more and more difficult to refill. They simply can't seem to accept that not everyone wants to run their freaking inks. If they at least offered sublimation ink cartridges, but they don't, and make it more and more difficult to work with them as a company.
As an alternative, you could just go with a large format Roland or Mimaki Dye-Sub printer. These allow you to use non ArTainium inks, so you could give Epson and Sawgrass both the finger at the same time. Only issue is the high cost of those printers.
I would just register your people under a new company name, and get a business license and keep it live for a year. Just set it up as a DBA and run with it until they get smart to it, then start over again.