Tips on buying from the Lenovo Outlet

I am currently trying to buy a lenovo thinkpad s1 from the outlet. Thers a constant trickle of them, maybe 1 every 10-30 minutes. I however want a stylus model; these only seem to pop up once every 1-2 hours.
My issue is they go so fast I have yet to get one in my cart.
Are there any tips on how to get around this nuicense, or do I just need to refresh my screen every 30 seconds for the next 48 hours?
Has anyone had any luck getting a Lenovo rep to set aside one for you?
Are there any other sources that come even close to the prices on the outlet?



On another note, how much damage could you expect maximum from a "scratch and dent" model?

 

That's the beauty/hair ripping experience of outlet, camping for a feature you really want.

Scratch and deny really varies, I've ordered from Dell where it had like 1 teeny tiny scratch, and I've also seen horror stories of like the LCD bezel hanging on by a thread, the laptop in another life took a pretty big impact.

 

I've gotten the impression from googling that the scratch n dent models are typically 99-100% mint condition. It just means that the user powered them on, took them out of the box, or potentially left a small hairline scratch on the back cover or lid. Nothing major. And they accept returns as usual so no real risk.


I was afraid you'd say i'm stuck with this experience =o
I think i'll spend my afternoon trying to haggle a sales rep into grabbing me one before it gets posted if possible =|
If anyone else has advice or experience let me know!
Thanks!

 

Good luck with that one...

I'd just keep on refreshing the screen every 15 seconds or so.

 

It's a no go. been refreshing all day.
Thinking of setting up a script to automate this.. I feel kind of dirty taking this route though =p

 

There are thousands of others who have been doing it for years...so once again: good luck.

 

Thats exactly why i think i'm going to go this route. Seems to be the only way to get a laptop off the outlet when there's not already a surplus available.

 

What month of the year does the outlet usually go on sale if you are not in a hurry?

How often do they update the inventory?

Thanks!

 

i've seen sales around the beginning of the school year and around christmas holiday, the inventory system is updated randomly from my observation, sometimes frequently as "15 seconds" to sometimes a day, just depends honestly how much volume they are dealing with, just have to be patient with the outlet, i've made some bank buying off there, got a few x230's with IPS for $450 once (regret selling them, should have kept one for myself) , my y410p: was around 580?, i got a y500 SLI for $450, T530 for $500, x1 carbon for $600, few i5 desktops for $280 but i resold them all unfortunately..

 

Well it took over a week of persistent refreshes, but i finally scored big on the outlet! 8GB + Digitizer for $700!

$698.70
ThinkPad S1 Yoga
Part number: 20CDCTO1WW (MP05R9K1-20CDCTO1WW)
Ships in 1-3 business days
• Intel Core i7-4500U processor (2 cores, 1.80GHz, 4MB Cache)
• Windows 8.1 Professional 64 - English
• 12.5" FHD (1920 x 1080) Multitouch IPS display w/720p HD Camera
• Intel HD Graphics 4400
• 8GB PC3-12800 1600MHz DDR3L / soldered to systemboard
• 128GB Solid State Drive, Serial ATA3
• No Optical Included
• Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 7260, Wi-Fi + Bluetooth combo
• Bluetooth
• 1 Year Standard Depot Warranty
• UltraNav with Digitizer Pen
• 8 Cell Lithium Polymer Battery (Up to 7 Hours Run Time)

 

Is it always cheaper to buy from the Outlet than from the main Lenovo site?

 

Yes, significantly!
The yoga I just got for 700 would go for 1700 on the lenovo site before any coupons or deals. Usually the sales only drop it 10% or so.
Outlet is the way to go if your willing to put up with some frustration getting the right model.

 

Is this IBM certified T400 a good deal for 170 CAD? Once I've replaced that HDD, would it still last another 2 or 3 years?

Thanks.

 

It depends on quite a few things.

I can't speak about the Canadian portion of IBM's refurb website, but I've received some filthy units with weak hinges from its U.S. counterpart in the past. Obviously, YMMV.

While $170 CAD is not a bad deal per se, without knowing what you're going to use the machine for, it's rather tough to recommend it or not.

It should...

With that said, I'd save an additional few bucks and go for a T410 which can be found for not much more, and is a future-proof machine for the time span that you're interested in.

My $0.02 only...

 

Thanks for the prompt reply. It's mostly intended for Skype, watching movies or some MS Office.

The cheapest T410 is 400 bucks.

My main concern about this T400 is its longevity considering it may have been used for many years already.

 

That it will do just fine.

Duh. I've seen them pop up here in the $250 range on IBM refurb site...

Well...ThinkPads were once known for their longevity. I'm in possession of a couple of fully-working examples that are over a decade old.

With that said...once you receive the machine, you'll get a pretty good idea of its previous life. If the hinges are weak (known bad spot on T400), the LCD is dim and so on, just return the poor thing ASAP.

Good luck.

 

If your buying from the outlwt they havent been used for more than a few days or weeks tops.

 

He is NOT talking about the Outlet, but about IBM's refurb site which is a whole different entity/ballgame...

 

Nice deal, exactly what I am looking for!

How have you done it? Just sit there and refresh the page every 10 seconds?

 

Did I just score a good deal on a no-nonsense everyday basic laptop? Thanks!

ThinkPad Edge E545

20B2X001US

AMD Accelerated Processor A6-5350M (dual-core, 2.90GHz, 1MB L2 cache)
Windows 8 Professional 64 - English
15.6" HD WXGA (1366 X 768) LED Backlight w/ 720p HD Camera
AMD Radeon HD 8450G Graphics
4 GB PC3-12800 DDR3 SDRAM 1600MHz SODIMM Memory
320GB, 5400RPM Serial ATA 2.5" Hard Drive
DVD Recordable Serial ATA

$264.18

 

Heck, yeah.

While the specs are unimpressive, the price is outright ridiculous.

Enjoy!

 

Theres an extension for firefox/chrome/IE called Imarco. It'll record button clicks within the browser. I set up a recording that changed how many items display on the screen (5, 10, 20, 50). This reloads the items without reloading the whole screen. Alternatively you can just record a page refresh. I then put a 1 second pause in between every number change and played it on repeat effectively refreshing the screen every 2 seconds or so. With the free version there is no way to add logic (if item exists, add it to shopping cart), so you have to sit there and watch it refresh over and over. You have about 5 seconds to get them in your cart before someone else grabs it lol. Took me almost a week of doing this off and on.

 

Hi guys,

I was about to pull the trigger on a Thinkpad Yoga S1, when I read on a review that just certain S1's have the digitizer and the pen.

I am confused now!!! What does that mean? The screen needs to be digitizer enabled and then there is also a separate pen? How do I know if the outlet offer has those things? I cant see it in the product description.

Thanks for your help.

 

it will say "UltraNav with Digitizer Pen" in place of "UltraNav (TrackPoint and TouchPad)" under pointing device.
Just a heads up, over the past two week they only posted maybe 5-10 a day with a digitizer, and they literally go in under 10 seconds. It took a ton of effort to get one myself.

 

Thanks for the feedback. Just canceled my order.

Do you have any tips on what time of the day it is best to look out?

Did you run a script that puts such a laptop into your cart automatically or did you do all of this manually?

 

I did it manually. They seem to update there stock in bulk once every 3-5 days, you can follow the outlet on twitter to get a heads up on when, but ive never seen a large amount of thinkpad yogas put up even then. Today is actually the first day ive ever seen any sitting stock (non stylus models). However throughout the day they constantly put 1-3 up at random times, usually every half hour to an hour from what I could tell. No set schedule. They seemed to get posted 24 hours a day 7 days a week, I grabbed mine off the outlet on a Late Saturday night (10PM EST). My advice is run the script to refresh every 1-2 seconds, and just stare at your monitor for a few days...
Add them to the cart as soon as they pop up and then read the specs, you don't have time to check the specs before or someone else will grab them. They really do go in 5 seconds or so.
20CDCTO1WW Was the only model number i ever saw that listed a digitizer and pen, but there could be others. look out for that model.

 

Weird stuff going on the outlet:

If you try access the laptop section of it via the chrome browser I am seeing that there is no content there and I get a Lenovo-error message.

When I do the same thing with Firefox though, I can see the content but not Yoga machines for example. With Safari I see Yoga machines.

So I get three different results for three different browsers...

 

What's the best way to score a nicely equipped refurb T540 or W540? I look at the Outlet round the clock. A T or W will show up for 5 seconds once in a blue moon. By the time you see it it's already too late and "sold out" each and every time. Drives me nuts.

 

This is what I'm talking about.

 

Hi guys,

after weeks of checking the Outlet I finally was able to order a nice machine (THinkpad Yoga with digitizer) last week Wednesday.
I got several confirmation emails from lenovo saying that my order would ship out till the 21st of July.

Today I got a cancellation email...

I am super pissed! I spend so much time and now they just send me a cancellation email?!

Is there anything I could do about that?

Thanks for you help.

 

No.

This type of event is far from being unusual, at least in my understanding.

 

What's the best way to cancel after you placed an order on the Outlet? I placed an order in the afternoon and called CSR to cancel the next day first thing in the morning. He put in a request to cancel but the order got shipped out anyway. Now I have to go through the trouble of return and wait for the refund. Thanks!