When is a warranty not a warranty? My experience with Lenovo.

Forums › Laptops and mobile computers › When is a warranty not a warranty? My experience with Lenovo.

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20141 posts

Uber Geek

#845632 26-Jun-2013 15:25

Never been a fan of them myself, as the notebooks look old and outdated. They still look like the same designs when they were sold under the IBM brand. Guess they are more aimed towards business where they don't care too much about design. They worry more about service, reliability and being able to get it fixed quickly to avoid downtime.

jvbnz

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#845769 26-Jun-2013 21:12

Thanks everybody for your posts here. They have helped me understand that my situation ¡s far from unique and that Lenovo has no strategy for efficiently honouring or attempting to honour its warranty obligations.

I will take up the matter under the FTA when time permits.

I have waited another full week before making this post, to see if there was any response whatsoever from Lenovo. But there has been nothing at all. Not an email, not a call, not a text message. It is now 14 days beyond the day first promised under a next-day on-site warranty.

How can a company hope to be successful if it can’t manage to supply a part for recent model, still
under warranty? Or if it has no procedure whatever to notify its customers of progress or reasons for delay, or to negotiate a mutually satisfactory compromise?

Maybe Lenovo can afford to lose customers. And, with all the stories here, its going to lose quite a few. Each of
us who have written will likely be recommending that others give Lenovo a wide berth.

Anyway, on Thursday it was apparent that I needed to purchase another laptop in order to be able to do my
job. I have done that and, to be honest, T am much more happy with the build quality of this replacement. It was the first Lenovo I have ever bought and it would take lot to convince me to buy another one.

Jim Brook

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#845786 26-Jun-2013 21:42

That's piss poor, we use Dell laptops in the office and with next business day support on office equipment we've always had hardware issues resolves within SLA. Unisys services Dell laptops.

Don't get me started on the dell 4 hour mission critical support... 4 hours parts delivery AFTER fault diagnosis, not part failure so be prepared to wait a few more hours on less common parts or due to Auckland traffic.

Jim, while you wait, head over to your art/design department at school and ask Anna M about how long she waited for her Mac to be fixed, it can actually get worse!

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#845806 26-Jun-2013 22:45

Do they actually have a NZ office, or do they sell through a registered NZ company? If not, are they are just mail order from overseas, then there may be no recourse. Maybe the problem is their contract with local support people. I pressume that all the support people you have spoken to are based in an offshore call centre? Sorry to hear about the problems, but it is possibly an example of next time buying from a local company that can provide local ongoing support when needed.

jvbnz

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#853560 10-Jul-2013 20:23

This is the 4th week anniversary of my promised next-day on-site warranty for my Lenovo laptop. Since I haven't heard a word from Lenovo since I last posted, I decided to post a brief summary of facts on the Lenovo Australia and New Zealand Facebook page. Hey, it only took them 15 minutes to delete it!

CYaBro

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#853598 10-Jul-2013 21:32

Well it's been two weeks since they said they were going to send us a replacement unit but no sign of it yet.
They are also now not answering any of our emails and calling the support line is a waste of time.

We've since given our customer a brand new laptop so we are out of pocket now Lenovo!

Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#853602 10-Jul-2013 21:37

Do they have a NZ office in NZ? Fair Go? Although they probably don't deal with businesses.

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loceff13

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Uber Geek

#853630 10-Jul-2013 23:09

I would advise posting about the issue on whirlpool forums, there's also a user lead_org who while they are not an actual rep they act as a "Brand Evangelist" and generally can pass you onto someone helpful.

jvbnz

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#858364 17-Jul-2013 22:11

The final chapter (probably) of this story occurred yesterday. A tech from a NZ company installed a replacement m/board and the computer is now functioning. That was 5 weeks less one day later than the first promised date of repair under my on-site next-day warranty. In that time Lenovo produced no unsolicited information or ETA, and responded to my requests with endlessly confusing and contradictory statements.

It has been pointed out that even the best of companies cannot honour warranties if the parts are not in stock. Yes, but this is a model which is still on sale and has been for a year. Wouldn't a responsible company make sure there were parts available, or take some other honourable step to help a customer?

Of interest is the fact that the replacement part was not new but refurbished. I can hardly object about this but I noted that the date on the package was 28th February this year, 3 months before I needed it. This would indicate that it has been sitting around on a shelf somewhere all the time I needed it. Somehow the procurement system operated by the biggest computer company in the world could not get it to me. (I took a photo of the package seal.... )

From what I have heard and read Lenovo's service is becoming legendary for all the wrong reasons and, unless it improves I cannot see how it hope to build or maintain its market share.

In some ways I am better off than before. I have a new laptop so the Lenovo becomes a backup - which I now realise is almost obligatory for somebody who needs it as much as I do. And I have learned a lot about which brands do endeavour to provide excellent support of their warranties - specifically HP and Dell.

Thanks to all for your comments and sympathy here.

Jim Brook
Massey High School.

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#858376 17-Jul-2013 22:42

Did you tweet them at https://twitter.com/Lenovo_ANZ , as that sort of thing should be escalated to their management, and looks like they are active on it. The thing about twitter is that everyone can see your posts to them.

jvbnz

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#858380 17-Jul-2013 22:54

Done. Thank you.j

freitasm

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#858381 17-Jul-2013 22:58

Everytime someone suggests posting on Twitter, Facebook or any other site (yes), I think "Why? Why have to draw their attention to this when things should just work?"

Every time someone posts a request on Twitter it just shows to me the most expensive channel (help desk) is broken and that company has problems that need to be sorted out.

Obviously those companies see it differently, almost like being hipster to try to put out a fire that shouldn't even be there in first place.

mattwnz

20141 posts

Uber Geek

#858389 17-Jul-2013 23:07

freitasm: Everytime someone suggests posting on Twitter, Facebook or any other site (yes), I think "Why? Why have to draw their attention to this when things should just work?"

Every time someone posts a request on Twitter it just shows to me the most expensive channel (help desk) is broken and that company has problems that need to be sorted out.

Obviously those companies see it differently, almost like being hipster to try to put out a fire that shouldn't even be there in first place.

The other thing is that it gives the more tech savy people an advantage over those people who don't know about such things. Many of these large offshore owned companies contract out to call centres that don't work well at all, and I think many people now take that as a given. There was a story on fair go tonight about an oven where the door exploded, and the complainant found dealing with the offshore call centre hopeless. Instead they went to fair go, but their possibly could have used twitter and got it resolved too, without using fair go.

I wouldn't suggest posting on facebook, because companies can easily just delete/ remove/ hide complaints, so that is a waste of time. But twitter seems to work, as it is all out in the open.

clamble

1 post

Wannabe Geek

#966933 14-Jan-2014 16:07

In March 2013 I purchased a Lenovo ThinkPad online in what turned out to be an unfortunate vindication of the adage that buying locally is best. In November, the fingerprint recognition technology failed and after a satisfactory experience with the Lenovo Helpdesk they determined the problem was in the hardware which I was told would be replaced if I sent the machine to their local repair agent Visual Group Technologies. I was apprehensive about sending the machine away without any indication about when the repair components would be available so on the 18th of November I sent Lenovo an email,

"Dear Sir, In connection with the above warranty claim for a replacement fingerprint recognition unit, I am writing now to ask what how long I can expect this repair to take and therefore how long I will be without my computer. I contacted your repair agents who were unable to give me any indication. I suggested to them that they give me a date when the necessary replacement parts were available in Auckland. I could retain the computer until that date and bring it in for repair at that point, thus shortening the time I would be without the machine. Would you please let me know how long you envisage this repair taking and therefore when I could expect to take delivery of my repaired machine. Yours sincerely"

which was never acknowledged. Despite my misgivings I took the machine in to the repair agent on the 6th of December and was told it would be repaired when the part became available. Subsequently Visual Group Technologies informed me that they had been notified the part would be available on the 27th of December, although when I inquired on the 28th this proved not to be the case.

Since then I have been treated to a string of unreliable comments from the Lenovo HelpDesk; their most common delaying tactic being to promise to ring me back, daily or, at its most extreme, "in two hours" whether or not they had any updates and (with one exception) they have failed to do so.

Yesterday I wrote requesting my money back on this purchase, in response to their email of Friday the 10th of January (the first I have received)

"The parts required to complete the support of your device are not currently available. Our team is continuing to work to make these parts available and complete your request for service."

Today, I am told by the repair agent that the part has arrived.

This whole sorry saga has consumed two months of my warranty period, for six weeks of this period I have been unable to use my machine. My experience leads me to believe Lenovo are an unreliable brand whose after sales service is lamentable.

Clamble

mckenndk

911 posts

Ultimate Geek

#967038 14-Jan-2014 18:51

I have had 2 similar problems with Lenovo support.

The first time the Laptop had been away for a faulty backlight on a screen and a month later my manager had had enough of their saying we are waiting on parts and finally got them to take a screen off another laptop and it was sent back to us.

The second laptop that had a broken screen (been mishandled by staff member) got sent away in August, by the time I finished at the job in October it was still not back with the usual response we are waiting on parts then this changed to I will follow it up for you as we don't know where the laptop is it must be in our old job system (they changed job systems and it seems call center locations as accents changed half way during the affair) and they needed to send the request off to someone else to track it down.
I got it escalated every few days in October and they were not getting back to me when they said they will call back in an hour.

I dropped by the work place last week and I talked to the staff member who the laptop was issued to and he said it had not come back yet so I am hoping it is not lost in a black hold somewhere.

Dion

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