Lenovo Repair= A Scam

As I'm short on time I'll keep this brief. I sent my bricked x100e to get fixed and the repair was timely and support was good. What is not so great is the fact that they put a lower end CPU in my laptop.

Specs on the box:



and what I got back:



Did they really think that they could get away with that? I know that if parts aren't around they will contact you and ask you if you're willing to wait or just go ahead and put the lower end part in. They didn't call me or anything.

They most likely thought "They'll never even notice the fact that we put a $100 cheaper part in here." I've heard of long repair times and bad shipping, but this is on a whole new level.

I don't care what anyone here says, this was done on purpose. They had all the information about my laptop and knew what they were doing. They tried to rip me off and I'm sure they have done it to others.

At least "home dog" on the phone was entertaining.

 

People make mistakes, you don't know that it was on purpose.

 

I'd be outraged. Did you buy this from Lenovo or eBay?

Also what was the problem with the laptop. CPU failure is the component with the highest reliability in a PC.

 

If that is a mistake, that's some flat out incompetency. I too would be outraged. That seems like quite the oversight though, too much so for it to be a mistake.

Lenovo seems to work best when you make an order, recieve it, and never contact them again. God help you if you need to change or cancel your order or engage some idiot in depot service.

Depot repair though isn't standardized and varies widely depending where you live. Sometimes they're good, lots of times they're not.

What did you send it in for? Why did they even touch your CPU?

 

This happens when the technician don't follow the motherboard spec, but rather they follow the inventory no. Or put in the part that the other department orders (obviously they forgot to double check).

P.S. Repair is contracted out to third party depot, so Lenovo is not directly involved in it.

All x series have a BGA CPU.

 

The motherboard failed on it so they replaced it, along with new CPU.(The CPU may be soldered to the motherboard)

I bought the laptop from Lenovo.com.

The reason why I said it was on purpose was because they have all of the information about the laptop. They know every single piece on it. I don't believe that a person who works on laptops all day long would have messed that up.

It shows incompetence and lack of professionalism.

 

It's funny how it is never that people get BETTER components after the "repair" though.

 

Sorry to hear about your bad experiences with Lenovo's repair work, I would phone them up and get a like for like replacement. What's worrying is people who don't know much about computers may just accept a working computer without realising they're getting short changed, I hope this is a one-off scenario.

I admit Dell's are pretty good in this, if a particular part is unavailable for repair they just usually upgrade the laptop to a newer spec to save hassle. My friend had his Latitude XT tablet replaced with the newer model (XT2) because they couldn't source a part for the original XT tablet, so he had a complimentary upgrade which normally should've costed him an extra £400. That's pretty good service under my books.

 

I must answer this. Lenovo repair is not a scam and how dare you make such an implication. I have had nothing but the finest of luck with them and my
t61p.

I'm sorry you had unfortunate results with them. I have the best processor they made. I'd be upset to IF they had downgraded my processor but they haven't done anything except repair and they have fixed thing I did not ask for.

Renee

 

Honestly brother, people make mistakes every day, even when they're intent on doing the right thing. I know I do. It's called being human. I hope the next time you make one as I'm sure you will, there's not someone there calling you incompetent or unprofessional. Instead of coming on here and having a hissy fit, why don't you call Lenovo and get it fixed. Does it suck? Sure, but that's your best path to getting what you want.

 

^^I already called them up and they are having problems finding my machine number and some other number. Basically they said they can no longer find my specs for my machine even though I'm looking at the box and telling them the part numbers.(Since being "fixed")

Mistakes happen, yes. This is far more than mistake. These people had all my information and do this for a living. It's not like someone mistyped a number or the person forgot to call me.


There is even a person who signed it saying it passed "Quality inspection." It takes all but a couple of minutes to see that this was wrong.

 

I got upgraded when they couldn't find the same part (some people got a new laptop when they ran out of many important parts, and they couldn't find a relacement part after 3 months). But not lot of people will bother posting about positive experiences.

Most technicians are pushed to rush through their repair, as they are allowed only minimal time to fix the system (so the repair centre could minimize repair cost). The technicians don't double check their parts they assume everything in their parts box for each system is right.

 

That wouldn't surprise me at all. A mistake was made. Call and get it fixed. Coming here to and moan about it, since no one here can help you, serves no purpose.

 

I'm just warning people about the shoddy service that can happen.

 

One case doesn't make a trend.

 

1) It was a mistake. It happens everywhere.
2) Calling repair a scam and saying they are trying to defraud you is nothing like 'warning people about shoddy service'.

 

What the hell are you guys talking about? With your logic, you should come and post on the forum only positive experiences.

Yeah a trend is not a single case, but if you get a lot of single cases you get a trend...

If this was Apple instead of Lenovo you'd be all over this, quite sad ihmo.

Finally dont downplay this to a simple mistake. Anyone who's opened a PC before should have known better. I really want to see Lenovo's action on this one. I hope they dont blame it on him, and pretend they know nothing.

GL

 

I beg to differ. There's a wide gap between Lenovo ripped me off, is incompetent and unprofessional, and hey, I got the wrong parts when my repair was done and I'm peeved about it, what can I do to fix it.

No one here has the ability to quantify when a lot of little cases becomes a trend. This is really one of the problems with forums like this. The average user sees one of these threads and thinks it's a trend, when it is not. I'm not against the airy of dirty laundry as long as it's done in a constructive manner. Coming here to complain about it doesn't get it fixed nor does it help anyone done the road with a similar problem.

Lastly to the OP if you're not making any headway with support, you might wan to post over on the Lenovo Forums where you'll get access to some Lenovo staff, who are probably in a better position to help you.

 

Whoa whoa lets all calm down here, there is no point getting all worked up on this.

1) People rarely starts any new posts about their positive experiences about customer services, since they take it as normal part of after sale support. You can look through all the posts on this forum to get an idea of this.

2) Also, the purpose of post here is to inform people about bad services and hopefully those organisation responsible for it will learn from it.

But it is unfair to make blanket statement and especially when we haven't heard all the stories. Let's be rationale about this and take a middle ground on this case, so we don't get into a heated argument over nothing and ruin the positive community spirit that we have created in the Lenovo sub forum.

3) @mythos1453, what made you assume that the Lenovo forum members would start go and deriding Apple products in the Apple sub-forum? That is a big assumption. Conversely speaking when i see people decrying the quality of Lenovo products and the like on Lenovo.com forum, they would always mention Apple as pallbearer for quality, design and excellent services.

Although, i doubt that Lenovo service will say

I haven't seen many people mentioning Lenovo products in Apple forum, when they are talking about Apple in a negative light.

4) It is one thing to open a laptop and fix it at your own leisure, and something quite different when you are pushed to finish repair and do everything in 30 or 60 minutes every working hr of your job.

 

You can't tell me you wouldn't be ticked off if that happened to you though. I know I sure would be. But yeah, I'd be on the phone with Lenovo first thing instead of posting about it.

 

The sad part about this whole thing is that I was going to post on how well the first phone call was and how fast the service was. If anyone is going to take anything away from this post is when you get your laptop back, look it over. Make sure they did the job and did it correctly. (Reminds me of the whole measure twice cut once.)

They are sending me another box and hopefully putting the parts that I paid extra money for back in it. I don't know how they have managed to "lose" my laptops ID number and specs, but as long as I get what I deserve then thats fine.

 

i got ticked off by something like this last year, and i posted about it (took a total of 6 repairs and 3 months to fix my T60 and T61). To date Bytecraft is still making minor mistakes, like forgetting to update the bios serial and model no. of my X61 to forgetting to change the LCD on my X200. But i am told these people are working to a set timeline for repair like workers in a Toyota plant when they are assembling the cars.

These complaints are all handled by IBM service, and usually the manager at the warranty support service would meet up the depot repair manager every one or two months, so they could go over different things that the depot should improve on and also things that they did well.

 

Would I be happy about it? Of course not, but I wouldn't post on board trashing the brand before I had made a concerted effort to remedy it. I don't know that a few hours is enough time to resolve the situation. I'd be on the phone trying to get it fixed. In a matter of a few hours, it's went from being terrible to Lenovo is now sending a box to fix the problem. Isn't it about getting what you want? People post before they've gotten serious about fixing it. Now if the OP had made a real attempt to fix it and has gotten no where, then perhaps time turn up the volume. What I'm saying is don't sweat the small stuff. At the end of the day, it's just a PC with no real consequence.

 

I do agree with you ZaZ. Some times I crack up at the "lenovo SUCKS" kind of threads because of one bad experience. All I was saying was I'd be pretty upset, but I'd be on the phone to Lenovo before posting about it.

 

This exactly.

What is obvious to technicians is NOT the same thing as what is obvious to us.
If this motherboard required a different heatsink that didn't come with it for example, I guarantee you 99.9% of the technicians would have noticed and you would not have had this issue.

Its not as if the 2 motherboards look different, and I doubt the technician even knew the specs or CPU series of either. It was probably a mistake (or decision) of someone a little higher up in some kind of management position.

 

Fitty: Thanks for the heads up. I vote that you sell all of your Lenovo computers after you get this settled. Then, go to Best Buy, purchase a HP computer from them and learn what really bad service is all about. After that, we'll see you posting back here about how great your Lenovo service was in hindsight.

Come on, you needed to man up and deal with Lenovo right away when you discovered this happened. The fact they got things rolling in the right direction by the end of today shows you posted based on emotions without thinking things out or giving Lenovo a chance to fix the problem in a timely manner. Life doesn't work that way as you're learning. The good people on this forum are here to help and support, but only if you did the right thing in the first place and reached a dead end. That Lenovo tech did a big fail but your fail is just as big with how you handled the situation. Live and learn as they say. Good luck with your situation and I hope things work out for you in the end.

 

File a complaint with the better business bureau.

The thing that ticks people off about Lenovo is not the fact that errors are made (it's just a fact of life, we're all human -- though Lenovo seems to make far more than it's fair share of them). What is infuriating about Lenovo is how difficult they make the process of getting anything done about those mistakes.

As anyone that has had to deal with Lenovo knows, you're probably going to have to make multiple calls and end up spending hours on the phone to get the simplest problem fixed. Even then, it seems you'll mostly get false assurances as the people you're dealing with are sympathetic but don't have the ability to do anything about it as they're working in a call depot in the middle of nowhere on horribly inadequate order management software.

This is completely unacceptable for any company. A few people might be willing to put up with it--maybe their time isn't valuable, or they just get off on being jerked around --but most people will rightly be very upset.

 

"What is infuriating about Lenovo is how difficult they make the process of getting anything done about those mistakes."

Exactly....

Renee

 

I'll admit that I over overreacted, but it just seems so careless to me. The laptop wasn't even there for a whole 24 hours before being fixed. I would gladly wait a day or two more for them to get it right the first time. That laptop is what I use for my college work and really hate dragging my y460 everywhere.(I know, better than not having laptop at all.)

Hopefully they find my "missing" machine number and it gets fixed correctly.

I'm not going to file any complaints if this is the only problem I have with them. I like Lenovo and they make great computers, but this was just a slap in face.

 

I don't think this was anything either singular to you or to Lenovo...yet. Of course, if Lenovo is unable to fix your problem, then there is something to worry about. But from my personal experience (as a few threads on NBR will show), I had a more of a "cosmetic" problem with my machine when I bought it. I refused to accept the machine in that condition and while it did take some time to resolve the issue to my satisfaction, the important point is that it was done. What is even more interesting in my case is that the Managing Director of Lenovo in the country that I am currently in, their VP based out of Beijing, and a host of other lesser but equally important Lenovo personages got involved.

So, were there hiccups in my experience? Yes. Was the issue solved to my satisfaction? Yes. Was I mad when pursuing the problem? Yes. Was I pleased with the final outcome? Yes. Would I buy another ThinkPad? Absolutely!

Take heart! Things will work out.

 

There is a good reason for fast turnaround, faster they repair the computer more money they get. Slow repair times equal low performance and less money. That makes people hurry and if you could see the web-interface where parts are ordered... it's not user-friendly, too easy to make human error and select wrong part.

Those two combined makes mistakes like this what just happened. Doubleclick and no time to doublecheck.

 

You can file a complaint with IBM service, so that they can track the no. of mistakes are made and what things the depot should do in the future to prevent the same mistakes.

They repair the laptop in a short time as this is something lot of people wanted, as Thinkpads are mostly business laptops and minimal downtime allows the owners to have maximum usage of laptop for business critical purposes.

 

This happened to me with my T61. It took almost 3 months to get it back after 2 send-backs (not my fault) and they ended up giving me one of the older-gen Core 2 Duos rather than the T9300 I bought. Pretty disgraceful, and it's almost like they expect you to be happy to finally get it back that you won't complain again.

 

Arrrggghhh!

 

Why would you accept that? You definitely have legal recourse in that kind of situation. If anything all you would need to do is file a BBB complaint or post on thinkpad boards and someone will help you.