Trouble buying extended warranty anyone?

I just wanted to share my experiences and maybe also solicit advice from the rest of the forum about this.

Long story short:

a) I bought the x220 tablet without the 3 year accidental damage and warranty (April 21, 2011)
b) I purchased the 3 year accidental damage plan afterwards.

Regarding the purchase of the 3 year plan:

a) Initially purchased on May 20, 2011. Part number was 78Y1652. He sold it to me for $269.00. I later checked this part on the website and saw that it was $201.75. I went and emailed my rep asking him about this discrepancy (the $201.75 price was without coupons or any kind of web portal shenanigans). My rep never responded.
b) Talked with a chat rep on May 25 regarding this price discrepancy and how my sales rep never got back to me. He advised me to cancel the order and place it online at the lower price. I did that. (Second order date was May 25) I followed his instructions to put my rep ID in the order so that my sales rep could attach it to the machine for me. I again asked this guy to confirm that part number 78Y1652 was appropriate for the x220t (4294 CTO). He confirmed and that was that.
c) Warranty never got fully processed.. ship date kept being delayed. I had a problem with my microphone, so I initially contacted chat regarding my warranty, and they advised me that I could just call in and tell the repair team that I had purchased a warranty and was waiting for it to attach, and to just provide the order number and all would be well. I again asked this chat rep if the part number 78Y1652 was appropriate for the 4294 CTO tablet. He confirmed.
d) Called in to tech support, explained my situation. They went and looked up the order, and then told me that the warranty was the wrong part number. They said that they would 1) call me back regarding the warranty repair and 2) have someone contact me from customer resolutions to fix the warranty part number. I never got a call back from repair to schedule the onsite visit.. though I did get a call from a resolutions agent who advised my original sales rep how to obtain the right part number.
e) Got a call from my original sales rep, after placing and canceling an order some 3 times (he kept messing up the part number and I only noticed after the order was in the system), I finally got the "correct" part number, as confirmed by the customer resolution specialist. This order was June 7.
f) After waiting a bit, I noticed that the ship date on this correct warranty kept getting delayed as well. First it said June 9, then June 11, then June 13. Now the estimated date has just completely disappeared. I emailed the resolutions agent about this on June 13. I noticed that I got a SECOND order confirmation with the exact same order number, except in this confirmation, the total was for 2 warranties (yes a duplicate warranty). No idea what was up with that. Went and checked the order tracking page, no estimated ship date. Now I'm also being charged for 2-3 day shipping (+$9) on a warranty purchase.

My question is... WHAT THE HECK IS UP WITH THIS?

I'm seriously fed up with this. It's been almost a month since I tried to purchase this warranty and despite me trying to throw my money at them, they won't take it. Also, I never got a call back from their repair team, which makes me wonder just how reliable and dependable they are... any thoughts?

I may just return my entire x220t purchase with this, as part of the reason I purchased a thinkpad was for their support (in the rare chance that hardware does malfunction).

My patience is quickly wearing thin. Does anybody have any phone numbers I can call to get results? I'm tired of getting this "2-3 business days" garbage that I keep hearing over and over again.

 

Bump/Update:

Spoke to some supervisor. He promised me that it would be resolved in 2 days or I could call back and speak to him regarding compensation. I told him I'd take his word on that. Still slightly :/ Thoughts anyone?

 

Lenovo is a ship of fools.

I had the same warranty woes with an X200 Tablet. Took them over a month to honor the warranty that I paid for. It's the year 2011. We have computers, no?

I can't see why it would take 30+ days to click a few buttons.

 

I thought accidental damage warranties have to be purchased from day one? And if you wondered, sometimes it takes a few weeks for your warranty to be updated on IBM's site.

 

accidental warranty must be purchased within 30 days of purchase (was 90 days for a while).

 

On Monday June 13th I purchased the accidental warranty upgrade on a W520 where the warranty began on March 18th.

I made several calls between then and Monday to inquire about this upgrade. Some reps said you had a year to add the upgrade and others said 90 days. I asked about the 30 days after the warranty began which I thought was the time frame and most said it used to be 30 days and now it is 90 days.

After I gave them my credit card information I received an email confirmation instantly. I know there will be a much longer wait for the warranty database to be updated with the upgraded warranty information.

As of now my experience has been good. I was able to work out a $100 discount off the warranty upgrade which I was satisfied with.

This is my third time upgrading or extending warranties directly with Lenovo. The first time when I needed service I had to talk to entitlement to confirm the warranty extension after a few weeks. The second time the purchase went smoothly from a telephone rep. I discovered though shortly afterward the rep sold me the incorrect part number. I was able to email the Lenovo Executive Customer Complaint Advocate (the title listed on his email) who was able to take what I paid which was probably less then the right part was going for and converted it to what I thought I paid for. A miracle in my eyes. The process was not quick though. When you are adding two years to a three year warranty you usually have plenty of time.

Brad

 

Huh that's interesting. Dell makes you buy Complete Care up front due to people who buy a brand new laptop and during the return period would crack the screen or something then buy the accidental damage warranty and wait out a few days and make a claim.

 

I have a quick question..

I ordered with the computer the 2 year extended warranty plus 2 year ThinkPad Protection. However, when I press the ThinkVantage button it says I only have 354 days left on my warranty (standard 1 year). Do I need to call anyone to make sure that my extended warranty will be honored? Or are they just that slow on updating the warranty, etc.?

Thanks!

 

I spent way too much time on the phone and reading documents (that were hard to find) on the Lenovo web site to learn what I do believe it their current policy on the purchase, upgrade, downgrade or cancellation of Accidental Damage warranties and and regular service warranties on Lenovo products:

1. You have up to 90 Days from Invoice Date (shipment date) to add the ADH coverage.

2. You have one year from Invoice Date to increase (non-ADH) coverage by 1-3 years, but it will cost you about 25% more than when you bought your computer because it is a "non system purchase."

3. You have 21 days from Invoice Date to cancel any warranty purchase, but you will be charged a "restocking fee," just as you would if you returned a product you had opened and used! (In my experience, well more than 75% of the extended warranties sold allow cancellation any time, with a pro-rated refund minus any costs actually incurred for repairs.)

4. Lenovo doesn't even allow you to reduce coverage, within seconds after you hit Enter on the order. Rather, you have that same 21 days from Invoice Date and you must cancel the coverage in whole, pay the 15% restocking fee and order whatever less costly policy you want, but again, you will pay about 25% more for whatever new warranty you want than you would have when you ordered your computer even minutes before!), because, again, it is treated as a "non-system purchase!

(And yes, you probably can often call and find a Rep or their boss and plead for a cancellation of the whole order - for no charge - and a "do over" to get it right. But it's not their policy to allow it - ever - and they want you to believe you're out of luck as soon as you hit Enter.)

General Comment:
I am about to purchase an X-220, my first Thinkpad since, like, 1996! I have purchased many Dells, HPs, Toshibas, Sonys and a smattering of other laptop brands, probably 100 computers in the past 5 years alone. No computer company is a joy to deal with, lol, but I find Lenovo's sales reps, sales policies and even pricing policies, as generous as they can be, to be the most intentionally confusing and unhelpful of virtually any other company I've ordered from. I had to excuse myself and hang up to redial a rep three times just to get one who was knowledgeable and willing to do more than just take my order, which I was expected to have decided upon in every detail.

From all I've gathered, the X220 is a good product, a very good value - if you know how to get the best deal - and that Lenovo makes generally well made and reliable gear. But the overall purchase experience with this company feels like buying a cheap, low-budget outfit, that keeps its prices low by under-investing in staff and training (pray, not also in tech support!) and having hidden "gotchas," that can cost, not a great deal of money, but can easily add up to 10% of the purchase price. And perhaps the greatest cost is the queasy feeling you get from the transaction, particularly if you didn't know to ask certain questions and they're grabbing fistfulls of $20 bills from your wallet.

I do hope and trust that it all goes uphill from here.

 

This was purchased within 30 days. The problem is that they can't seem to bill me for the damn thing. The order still has not gone through, and 2 business days has again come and gone. sigh...

 

Does anyone know of a REAL supervisor I could contact to get this issue resolved? I'm tired of talking to people who have no power to do anything and only make empty promises.

 

MidnightSun posted this in another thread: Regarding CS/sales, always keep the Golden Rule in mind. Are you being courteous and understanding while making your requests? Are you staying calm and polite? Often, if you give them no reason to treat you poorly, they won't. That said, not all your experiences with CS/sales will be positive: if it's not going well, take a deep breath, calm down, and try again.

I do agree with this, on the other hand, it took upwards of 400 minutes on the phone (cellular line.. the only phone I have.. fat phonebill coming in this month......) to get my issue finally resolved. Ultimately it landed on the desk of a senior sales rep after I repeatedly asked to speak with a supervisor over and over and over again. At no point in time was I impolite to my rep. In fact, I told him I understood his position and that he could not do anything about it, however I wanted to speak to somebody that could. He kept telling me there was nobody, but finally he relented and transferred me. The senior sales rep fixed the ENTIRE situation in a matter of minutes. She went and got done what 4-5 other reps missed/failed to fix/etc and was able to get to the root cause of the problem. My initial sales rep had put in garbage data for some of the forms, which backed up the entire system. None of the other reps who looked at it even questioned it.

I'm going to put this here in hopes that it saves someone else all the hassle. Long story short, the reason the warranty wouldn't go through invoicing was because the machine type on the warranty was wrong. The way I understand it, when you get the correct "part number" for your warranty, your sales rep also has to add on the machine type and serial number. If any of these 3 are wrong: your part number, machine type, or serial number, the entire process will get backed up. If none of the reps you speak to double check this, you will be put on this endless "wait 2 more business days" loop because all they do is resubmit the initial request, which had errors in it which is why it wasn't processed, and everytime nothing will come of it and none of them apparently look into it further to figure out what is actually wrong.

If anybody else has major ordering problems like this, PM me and I'll put you in touch with the nice lady who fixed all of these problems for me in a matter of minutes.

Overall I'm pretty disappointed in the inability for several members of their team to make any progress in my case. Like MidnightSun said, you do get sour reps every once in a while, but at this frequency it really reflects badly upon the company as a whole. Personally for me, the most frustrating part of the ordeal was the fact that it kept getting delayed by another 2 days, yet no rep could tell me what was going on, because essentially they were telling me they have no idea why it didn't work out internally, and they were just going to blindly try again with no promise that anything would work out. Mistakes happen, I understand that. I was willing to wait 2 days the second.. even third time I called in about it. At some point though it just really seemed fruitless. Imagine hearing this everytime you call in: "I don't know whats going on. It should have worked. Let me retry that and ask that you wait another 2 business days."

My main gripe here isn't even with being treated badly by the reps. Most of them were fairly courteous to me and I reciprocated. However their refusal/inability to properly escalate situations and grant solutions is what bothers me. If the rep had properly escalated the first time I asked for it, this would probably have been taken care of by a much more experienced agent. Instead it got dragged on and on, and he only finally transferred me to a supervisor who fixed it when I told him to transfer me to returns so I could get an RMA for my laptop...

Just my two cents.. great machine, TECH support team is pretty decent and responsive, however their sales team seems mediocre at best. It shouldn't take 400+ minutes on the phone just to get an order done properly. I hope I am one of the few and far between cases, but if other people have had similar issues, sound off and say how you resolved them. Maybe we can tackle this sales team beast together.