Terrible experience with Lenovo/IBM Technical Support Agent

Just want to share with you guys a terrible customer service experience that I had with the Lenovo ThinkPad technical support agent this afternoon. It totally ruined the rest of my day.

I called ThinkPad Technical Support Center from Canada this afternoon regarding a general and simple question on whether my ThinkPad X201s supports DDR-3 1333 MHz memory chips. A gentleman with a little accent took my call. I told him it was only for a general question as mentioned above, he then asked for my computer type, model number, serial number, phone number and names. I gave him all the necessary information and thought he was just looking up for answers; however, after a little while, he returned back and said because my computer is currently out of warranty (the warranty only expired on May 26,2011 and not even a month since), he will not answer any of my questions. I said again I just need a simple answer as to yes or no which wouldn’t involve any further helps from Lenovo and I would appreciate if he can help me, as I am not a computer guy with hardware knowledge. He repeated that no questions would be answered and then goodbye.

I was a little shocked by his unfriendly response as a customer support agent. So I called again and said as a customer I am not satisfied with the answer he just gave me. I tried to explain that I was not asking for any physical check-up or repair services from Lenovo, and just want to know if the computer supports the latest memory chips and that's all, because I have nowhere else to ask at that moment. It would not be hard at all for him to just answer yes or no to my question. Surprisingly, he didn't even let me finish talking and then very rudely hung up my call.

I called the third time; it was still him. I said I wanted to talk to his supervisor and complain about this as I was inappropriately treated as a customer by him (careless and rudely hanging up calls without letting people finish). He answered no way I can talk to his supervisor and go find somewhere else if I want to make a complaint. It seemed to me he didn’t care and that was the end of our conversation.

Having been a long-time ThinkPad loyal fan and supporter, I was so shocked by how the "respected" customer was treated by Lenovo. I was totally disappointed and not happy at all. The rest of my day was just ruined by such terrible experience. If this is the way how Lenovo treats customer, sorry, no way I will buy anything from Lenovo any more. I don't know why Lenovo would even let such careless and rude person become a customer support agent. It was just totally unbelievable.

Lenovo, I have to say I am very disappointed and you are losing my support as a loyal fan. You probably don’t even care at all.

 

I would suggest that you write to the customer service people while this encounter is still fresh in your mind. I would have expected the support person to give you a helpful answer, whether or not the warranty has expired. I'm sure that the customer service people don't want to lose potential repeat customers.

And the answer to your question is that 1333MHz RAM should work. All the 1333MHz modules that I have come across (albeit not many) include timings for 1066MHz (there's a table called the SPD stored on each module - CPU-z will show you this). Perhaps the support person didn't have this answer because it's not on his scripts and tried to use the expired warranty tactic as a cover-up.

John

 

Thanks John for the answer and suggestion. I actually called Lenovo idea-product support center later today and was told that the IBM people take all the ThinkPad product support services separately and he didn't know how to file a complaint against the IBM people, though he apologized. Hopefully he was not covering up for his "colleagues". Anyway, it was just a very bad experience talking to the ThinkPad support center today. It would be acceptable if he can just honestly say I don't know instead of saying the warranty is expired. This is not the way Lenovo should treat customers despite of the warranty. Been a customer service person before, I was trained under no circumstances that the service person should hang up customer's phone calls without even letting them finish. This was so rude and hurt.

 

That issue of support being provided by IBM may be part of the problem: IBM may bill support time back to Lenovo, for which they need valid warranties.

In this case Lenovo should have another system for handling technical questions that are outside of warranty issues.

I still suggest that you write, to someone senior in Lenovo, describing your experience and suggesting that the system may need modifying to cater for issues such as yours. Try to be constructive and you may get a positive reply.

John

 

Idea and Thinkpad after sale support are sometimes supported by different systems. For complaints against IBM services, you would usually need to get a customer support satisfaction agents on your case (but you would need a call reference number to do that).

For many questions like these, forums are usually the better place to find the answer. And Not all customer supports are very knowledgeable about everything that a computer company may sell, and sometimes finding an answer from their back-end systems about a computer they never used before can be hard.

 

they do.   it's called forums.lenovo.com.

as lead_org said, basic system specs on out-of-warranty systems should be researched online.   tech support isn't set up to answer non-support questions posed by customers who don't have an active warranty.   if someone seeks basic specs then the internet is the best resource, especially since everyone involved here knows how to use a forum.