Lenovo ordering problems (aka Lenovo just lost my order)

Ugh, Lenovo just lost my latest notebook purchase because they can't process creditcard information.

Back story is my sister needs a replacement for her broken T61. Ordered a new T400 2 weeks ago, expected ship date of July 31st. She leaves the country for a year middle in the middle of August, leaving just enough time for me to setup a machine and ship it to her in WI before she is gone. Checking the status of the order today, saw it was delayed until August 11th. IF it shipped on that date, it would arrive after she flew out to Europe.

Lenovo didn't call me to say there was any problem. According to them my alternate shipping address (NBR office) wasn't on file with my credit card company (CitiBank). If anyone knows how much online stuff I buy, I probably get 1-2 boxes a week from stuff I order online. Its been like this for 2 years now. Called Citibank, current address is all correct, they have no clue what is wrong with Lenovo's system.

Tried calling their support to change the credit card to my spare Discover card. Get a call back an hour later saying that was declined. This resulted in probably the best (stupidest) reason I have ever heard. They declined the card because it WAS USED ON A PREVIOUS PURCHASE ON ANOTHER ACCOUNT. AKA an ancient account from three years ago that is no longer valid from when I bought my T60. When you use one card with them, it can no longer be used to make any new purchase on a "new account".

Had to call them about 10 minutes ago to just cancel the order. I have no information for the old account, even if I did reordering the notebook would put the ship date way past when my sister leaves. Now I need to find another alternative that is somewhat close to the budget I had set for the notebook, which will be hard to find anything local in that range.

Curious if anyone else has had these problems. I have had nothing but problems in the past 4-5 years trying to order from Lenovo. If any of you guys remember my Z60m, that thing took probably 6-7 months to ship.

Such good products mashed up with outdated and slow responding customer support.

 

Gah... sounds like you fell between the cracks. It may be that lenovo has some weird policy of only shipping to primary CC addresses or something. I've never had a problem, but then I've only every had products shipped to my primary (billing) address.

Anything in the Lenovo outlet worth considering? You might be able to have them expedite shipping.

 

But how do I even pay them? Wire transfer money or something? Fedex a big wad of cash?

 

http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/.../US/Shopping_FAQ/payment-and-shipping#options

Apparently you can mail them a check or money order.

 

This is 2009, I should not have to pay for it like a mail order item.

I am 99% sure my next purchase won't be a Lenovo notebook though. Dell seems to be more than willing to accept my funds recently. (you can even pay them using multiple sources on the same order!)

 

Might be worth trying to find out if there's a reason why lenovo wouldn't accept your first CC payment or if it was just a snafu. That's assuming you're in the mood to spend another hour on the phone!

 

I spoke with two reps this morning, both told me there was nothing they could do and to call my credit card company. Credit card company had my work address on file, and verified it for me. Called Lenovo back (each time getting longer and longer waits) and gave up after I received an email from the billing department saying the address could not be verified and to call them again. Road and round I went with no progress made.

 

I feel your pain. I love Lenovo but at times they seem ridiculous and hopeless. I had a big hassle when I ordered my T61, and recently I was going to upgrade to an Intel X25M G2 SSD but just found that they neutered the T61s so that SSD performance is severely hampered. I think my next laptop won't be a Lenovo... It's a sad decision...

 

if you still wana stick with lenovo & in a hurry, you can prob order through CDW or tigerdirect or something and get ripped off slightly

i think technically it should be the bank rejecting the card, although i think the company has a lot to do with it also. ive had issues where CS will call me cause an address wasnt EXACTLY as the bank record (at least they called!) and other occasions where that same 'pseudo-sloppy' address is accepted in different companies.

dell is the king of internet based custom to order for sure. although i hear apple is very fast also, but their idea of custom is a different HDD which probably hardly counts, then again dell and lenovo only offer a bit more customization anyway. but i find it irreparable if you really had to wait 6-7 months for a delivery, in contrast to what we can expect in this day and age from competitors. plus technology improves so fast nowadays its just silly. i think if lenovo wants to play this game they should step it up.

 

In that case, my money's on the CC company not telling you the whole story (which would not be the first time for a CC company).

Were you able to have your CC company do a lookup of all recent charge attempts? I've had mine do that before -- they saw a company had tried to bill and been rebuffed then set a 2-hour window (with my authorization) during which that company could make a charge. I never found out why the company was rebuffed in the first place, but it solved the problem.

So if the CC company saw a charge attempt by Lenovo then it's something at their end. If they see no charge attempt by lenovo, then it's something at Lenovo's end.

 

oh sorry, I re-read. and to address the post by pipspeak:

it appears it is a lenovo account issue. not the CC company? so the OP had a new lenovo account but using an old CC that was once used in an OLD lenovo account? in that case its purely not the CC company's fault then?

 

Both cards are fully functional (and used almost daily). About a month ago I bought a Dell notebook on the same card, shipped to the same work address, and used my home billing address. This is entirely on Lenovo's end. It is made even worse with the suckerpunch to the face with the declining of my Discover card because it was linked with another Lenovo account used years ago to purchase my T60.

 

Kevin,

Sorry about this. As you probably are aware, we have been hit with a lot of fraud this year and are really scrutinizing some transactions if there are anomalies. I regret your order got snared in this.

Can you send me a PM with the order number if it's still a live order? If you have already canceled, I understand. If you want to rebook let me know and we'll do our best to help out.

Best regards,

Mark

 

Replied to your PM. At this point since the order was canceled in the system this afternoon, I am not sure what might be able to ship in time. Big thing was finding a T400 with LED-backlit for power savings reasons, and the 6 or 9-cell battery.

Did you guys offer any same day ship models anymore? I remember that sort of option on the site a while ago, but never found anything in stock.

Hopefully we can work something out, otherwise I fear it will be some sort of netbook or whatever BestBuy has on the shelves that has strong screen hinges that will be in my sister's hands when she leaves.

 

Both my T61 and my T400 were shipped to my work address, rather than my billing address, and it was just fine. I did (long ago) call my bank and have them put my work address on file with my credit card as a valid shipping address.

 

hey Kevin, may I know how did you confirm that your order was successfully cancelled? I just cancelled my order too, but not sure how it is being confirmed. I don't want them to verbally tell me its cancelled but the order remains in the system (and who knows if it'll be shipped instead).

 

Last time I purchased through Lenovo.com I used PayPal and got a call from PayPal to confirm I had made the transaction. You could try using PayPal and funding it with a CC as an end run attempt around Lenovo's CC verification process if that's what's at issue here.

It's good to see Mark jumped in here to help out if possible. I know Kevin is pretty upset about this since he researched and helped purchase a laptop for his sister and has always been a loyal Lenovo (and prior to that IBM) customer.

 

Bummer.

Sounds like they do this for security reasons.

Get a good working card and address and I don't think you will have any problems.

 

If you go to the order status page, the link will be invalid and error out.

For those who might be curious about any sort of resolution, it is too late in the game to go through with the Lenovo order. Even with Mark's help since the payment never processed, it never got send to manufacturing. Even if he pushed it through with a rush, it would need to be built, packaged up, and shipped out. That puts me right on my deadline just to get the notebook shipped to me, not including the time to setup the software and ship it out to my sister before she leaves.

Tomorrow I need to raid the local BestBuy, Microcenter, Office Depot, Office Max, and Sam's Club in the hopes I can find something even remotely comparable. Bummer

 

Office Depot: Next Business Day delivery on T400? I don't think either Staples or OfficeMax sells business notebooks. The Despot has Lenovos, Elitebooks . . . even a smattering of Lifebook tablets.

 

Kevin, can i check with you - how long did it take between you cancelling the order and the status updated?

i cancelled my order on friday (US time) and i just click on the link and it's still there (the ESD still exists and the link works).

 

When the person on the phone said "ok I understand, your order is now canceled" the previous order status page went from loading to immediately returning an invalid order number. Say minute or so, if that.

 

>< i knew it... my order is not yet cancelled. do they work on weekends?

 

Not sure, support yes, sales probably not.


Also the new laptop is a MacBook.... nooooooooo