Hi amy, what is the model of your printer? If your printer is Canon or HP, I can conclude that the problem was your printer's chip detector or something related to that part of the printer that reads your cartridges.
But if your printer was Epson, the ink cartridge is not the problem, the problem is with your printer head. Printer head of Epson differs from canon and HP which are attached to their own cartridges. If your printer head got clogged, then it would never print, it needs to be clean.
Epson has a built in printer head inside your printer, that means if you will change the cartridge with a new one, it doesn't help at all unless you will get your printer in a
cleaning mode. If the cleaning doesn't help you can bring your printer to the nearest printer technician.