Issues with u330 upgraded warranty

I upgraded the warranty on my wife's u330 to 1 yr onsite w/ accident protection (I love her, but she has accidents from time to time!). The laptop arrived about a month ago.

Anyhow, one of her keys fell off last week. It's F8, and she doesn't think she ever touched it, so not quite sure why it happened. She called Lenovo support, and they wanted her to send her laptop in for repair. She asked about the on-site coverage, and got "what on-site converage?" as a response. There was no record in the support system that we had purchased an upgraded warranty. Support has no ability to look in the order entry system to see that, so my wife had to fax in a copy of my order confirmation email.

That was almost a week ago. Earlier today support still couldn't validate that we have an upgraded warranty. My wife had to call back between 10a-6p today so that a supervisor, someone with access to the right system, could validate things. Also earlier today I called the order support line (since I placed the order). I got the same run-around til I was able to convince the agent that the basic warranty wasn't what we had purchased. The agent put in a request to have the system updated in 24-48 hours. I tried to get the agent to tell me what it happened, but she wouldn't go beyond "it was an oversight". She also said that it wouldnt' show the updated status online for 2-3 weeks!

So after a week we now we have Lenovo convinced that we did in fact buy an upgraded warranty (one that was purchased from Lenovo.com). The next hurdle is that next business day means the next business day after the part comes in. It will take 2 days to get to us, and then the tech will call to schedule. We live in Chicago, not the middle of no where, so I'm surprised that the local tech depot doesn't stock standard spare parts, of which I'd think all things keyboard would be part of.

I guess the moral of the story is beware buying an upgraded warranty. If you do buy one, be sure to validate that the appropriate warranty is visible online before you find yourself in a position where you really need to make use of it. Fortunately this F8 key was minor, but what if it had been a laptop that wouldn't boot? Also beware that NBD only counts if they have the part in stock. I'm not sure what parts they stock locally, but keyboards aren't one of them.

 

Same thing happened to me when I upgraded my thinkpad warranty earlier this year. Took about 1 month to show that I had onsite warranty. Was a real pain because I needed service ASAP.

 

wow, good to hear.

bad, bad lenovo

 

Surprisingly Lenovo called this morning, and just left after replacing my wife's keyboard. It did turn out to be NBD once they finally acknowledged my purchase, despite what CS told us yesterday about the part not being in town til Thursday.