X220 Quality Control - there is none

I finally received my X220 only to find that the most rudimentary quality control - ie turning on the machine to see if it starts - hadn't been done. There's clearly faulty connections or other defect in the screen since initially nothing came up, but upon moving the screen back and forward I was sometimes able to get a severely distorted unreadable image.

How could this be? It's very obviously not a defect caused by transit. Is ANY quality control done at the factory? In this day and age, and for the money I paid for this machine it simply is not acceptible. What about not-so-obvious defects? Clearly if they don't pick up on a defetive screen they aren' testing anything else.

I immediatly tried to initite a DOA request. This is in itself an exercise in exasperation.

On the first call I was initially told that I needed an invoice - the only problem is that Lenovo hadn't sent me an invoice. I was then told they could do it with an order number, which I gave them. I was then told technical support would call me back within 24 hours to verify that indeed the machine was defective. I thought I already was speaking to Technical Support since that was who I rang!

24 hours pass and no contact, so I call again. This time I was told they were waiting to receive the invoice. This was news to me. The previous agent had lied to me and had put on the call log that they were waiting for me to send them the invoice. I was told I had to fax a copy through - who uses fax machines in this day and age? We finally settle on an emailed copy. Once again I'm told someone will contact me with 24 hours. Another 24 hours has passed with still no response.

To date I am extremely disappointed with a) Lenovo's quality control and b) their level of service. I'm considering doing a chargeback on my credit card and going with a brand that cares about its products and customers.

 

Agreed, I had a pretty bad problem too (DOA)

http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...20-constantly-blinking-display-even-bios.html

Sad to see thinkpads becoming like this

 

Most QC is done on batches of products and not 100% of them. At least this is how we do it in the automotive industry.

 

Try buying new digital camera equipment. It is like this everywhere. As long as CEO's make a $1 million a year and workers make $1 an hour you can expect more of the same. They (lenovo, hp, dell, etc) produce way more machines than they can afford to test. My suggestion would be to try and order another one.

 

strange mine showed up pristine and in fantastic working order. am I lucky or was there possibly a bad batch or issue?

Lenovo, HP, Dell and most others dont even make their laptops but are OEM'd out to Quanta, Compal, Foxconn and others.

 

It's an unfortunate fact of chinese made mass produced/cheap labor products. A bad apple will sneak through now and then.

 

ok that comment is seriously ironic for me today. 2 DOA MBP 17" came in this morning

 

Gave a simple answer to you on the Lenovo forum if you go back there as to how I handled it and how it should have been done with you. You can try another tech support rep if you wish, but all you really need is the Serial number and Product ID number plus the issues you are having. No Invoice is necessary.

Get a case number and tell them you are going to return it for a full refund. Than call the RMA section of sales and procede with a return. Should not be that difficult. Be calm even though you are at your wits end.

 

Last I heard, Lenovo outsources IdeaPad production, but ThinkPad production is actually still done in-house. This was the case in 2008 at least -- I suppose it might have changed in the interim.

 

I have a Quanta mark on my Elitebook 8740W and Compal on my x220. I think ASUS, Clevo and Panasonic are the last of the make your own crap companies. Sony may still on the Z series but the SA is certantly Foxconn

 

Has nothing to do with it being made in China. Mass production items in the U.S. have the same issues. It costs a lot to run all items off the production line through QC. Most places run a fraction.

You'll always get a bad apple now and then, regardless of brand/origin.

 

The first rep told me I needed an invoice, then changed his mind (I'd given him model/serial and order number) and said he didn't need an invoice number. Unfortunately he lied, and had entered on the system that they were waiting for me to send them an invoice. Luckily I rang back a day laterto find this out. The second rep whom I found this out from wouldn't do anything till I sent them a full invoice.

Day 1: Receive defective machine - call up Lenovo who fob me off with lies.
Day 2: Call up Lenovo, send them an invoice.
Day 3: Call up Lenovo, they now tell me I am within the DOA period and to wait another 24 hours for a DOA number (no evidence required this time - they asked me NO questions). Apparently I am unable to get a DOA number though till I have progressed past this rep stage.

I have never had this much hassle on any product ever. Any other product it's usually a one stage process.

 

Well I think so, for the fact that if you work your employees to death 14+ hours a day, and pay little, they're going to get tired and slip up and make mistakes, plus morale will be lower, which means quality will suffer.

 

I work in manufacturing in the U.S., Quality issues will happen with every plant, in any country.

 

I don't deny that, but I think the instances of quality control issues are probably greater in china, for the reasons I already stated.

 

Quality control also tends to be worse at the beginning of the run, and during high demand.

 

I'd rage quit using Lenovo, if that were to happen to me. Since it hasn't, I now own three T61s, though only one I bought new.

but if a company does care about their products, they'll for sure implement proper quality control. That's a must, or their sales will suffer.

 

And Mondays/Fridays - for 5 day work weekers.

 

As it's been stated, very FEW people actually make their stuff in house. Most of it is outsourced to ODMs, and Dell/HP will just put their name on it.

Defective laptops happen. If you think Lenovo's ThinkPads are bad, I suggest you try a consumer Acer or Toshiba and try your luck lol.

 

When did you hear it last? From whom? 2008-2011 is a very long time! At least you wrote "I suppose" after writing "actually still."

Conversation piece, yes. Fact, no. Anyway, even if ThinkPads are still manufactured in-house, quality and QC can still be going downhill -- fast.

 

Ummmm..... vs what? Over paid, lazy, 40 hour per week union workers?

Random example: Out of all my friends with Toyota's...... guess which ones have the most fit and finish issues, the most warranty issues, and the most problems........

The ones that Toyota "built" in the US.

Sorry for going off topic, hope you can get your issues resolved. Just keep at it, warranty claims are almost always a pain.

 

I think Thinkpads are manufactured by Wistron and Compal, etc they are all outsourced to these type of contract manufacturer, since they have the necessary expertise and production scale to keep the cost low.... just like Foxconn produces most of the Apple products.

Quality Control depends on how much you are willing to pay for the product, and also how much the brand company pays the contract manufacturer.

Obviously, when people expect to pay as little as possible for their laptops, i.e. buy only during discount and with eCoupons, then the brand company would make less profit and therefore have to cut corners in other areas to maintain an acceptable profit.

 

Unfortunatey, those (outside the US) who don't pay as little as possible, are subject to the same cut corners.

 

the X201i is going in singapore at the moment going for 1300 USD

ON CLEARANCE!!!

at least they're throwing in a free external dvdrw drive

 

Well yes, the petrol prices in Europe is also more expensive and you can probably get a new Rolls Royce cheaper in US than in UK. I guess that is more to do with the market size, taxes, cost of employment, and harsher environmental standards, etc.

 

Meanwhile on the production line: "Note: this customer got 30% off -- screw him over"

 

there are no duty or taxes for computers in singapore, just GST of 7%. in malaysia there are no tax duties or anything at all, and the price is still pretty ridiculous. shipping cant cost more since they're made in china ....right?

 

Pricing takes such regularly offered "discounts" into account.

Will Lenovo please come out and confirm: "Yes, we cut corners because our customers are cheap"?

In this very forum, I often read the party line: "Lenovo customers are business corporations that buy/lease in large quantities and do not care about display quality."

Love is irrational.

And a note to the service staff: "This sucker paid full price -- be nice to her when she calls."

 

A W520 in China apparently retails for about twice the price of an equivalently specced W520 in Canada, coupons notwithstanding. =/

 

If I may.......

The quality of a product and its price are based on a lot......one of those "lots" is quality control, with the budget in mind they will produce a number in which gets pulled from the line, tested fully and then put back on the line (if it passes)

If it does not pass then they pull (depending once again on the quality control budget) 2...maybe 3 ahead and behind that 1 that did not pass.

Its the same as a car....when I had my Pontiac g8 gt, a lot of people were complaining about having to get alignments after 400 miles.....because only 1:200 were actually put on an alignment rack to see where they are, if they were way off then they were fixed, and put back on.

None of these practices are new...

 

Probably easier to invest in quality assurance rather than quality control.

 

yes.. you are right!!!! no tax duties for computer in malaysia, but the price for a thinkpad is so much more expensive then if i buy via lenovo's US website... the problem is... i can't... so i'm stuck with the ultra expensive price of thinkpads in malaysia...

 

But does the Singapore government impose a high duty on petrol? and standard of living in Singapore is also higher and the rent for offices is to? These do all add up, obviously there is also the possibility that in order to keep the price low in USA, lot of countries have to pay a higher price (or what some people call subsidies).

 

Obviously?

Somewhere in this forum, some "expert" has claimed that the lower prices in the US is directly related to the huge market size.

 

"Huge market size"? What do you mean? That more people buy stuff in the US than other countries?

 

If shipping out of the US is the problem, you could buy it from another US retailer and have it shipped to a MyUS.com address (or similar service). Doesn't work with Lenovo itself, however.

 

I got my x220 (i5 2410) replaced due to the backlight bleed. Unfortunately, the new machine is almost as bad as the last with bleed several spots along the bottom, bottom corner and top right corner.

Using Real temps with approximately 22 degrees celcius ambient temp, the new machine averages around 39 to 42 when browsing compared to around 35 to 38 with the older one. But 35 minutes of continual wprime is the same at 82 degrees max. So not bad on that.

Unfortunately, the constant whooshing of the fan is slightly louder, but still gentle, and there is slight movement with the battery, where there was none before.

Wish I'd just kept the other machine.

 

dosent explain how dell can offer similar-to-us prices then.

 

Yeah...good question but if I am not mistaken, I think Dell has a much broader and globally distributed manufacturing system in place as compared with Lenovo. Though I am not sure that makes a difference in any way. I need to check and compare the Dell pricing in India and, say, in the US.

 

You missed a reason: everything is made in China. Ever heard of Panama having quality control issues?

 

Perhaps one of the problems with a new model is that they don't know which parts of the assembly process are easy to get wrong. I agree that products shouldn't be shipped with problems in the first place but there will be more cause to complain if products continue to be shipped with the same problems once there has been time for the issues encountered by customers to get back to the factory.

John

 

I keep in touch with a couple current and former IBM employees. Lenovo's not *that* estranged from IBM. Still, you're right in that there's plenty of time for things to have changed since I last inquired about it.

At any rate, I'm well aware that Lenovo outsources other systems to Wistron and Compal (and probably some others) and has done so for a long time, but I hadn't seen any confirmation that they were no longer doing the final assembly of *any* ThinkPads themselves.

Speak of the devil... Well Compal could indeed be doing the assembly. Then again, I know that my T60s have Foxconn marks on various parts, and thought Foxconn didn't do the final assembly of those machines, so what do I know...

TBH, I don't really think it matters. Somebody's got to build the machines, and if they can do a satisfactory job who cares what company owns the production lines?

 

An addendum to the above:

I did a bit more research, and there doesn't seem to be much consistency when it comes to who put together what machine. Wistron did the W701, but not (as far as I can tell) the smaller W series. Compal did the X220 (according to KCETech1), but I don't see any trace of them on the X61 that I've got here.

Of course, IBM outsourced the G series to Quanta and the R and X series to Wistron, so this isn't exactly a new phenomenon...

 

on my shipping box, there's a label that reads
Ship From:
Wistron infoComm (Kunshan) Corporation
For Lenovo ...

back to quality control -
1. first impression - packing quality is terrible;
it's inevitable when everyone is cutting costs - but with the power adapter unsecured? Before I opened the box, I could hear something sliding when the box is tipped.
Definitely unprofessional.
oh yes - which leads me to the conversation that I had with the UPS lady; she was claiming that the driver wouldn't know what the package is. Funny, there are labels all over the box that gives the particular specs, and with the big ThinkPad in black.
The driver would be pretty illiterate if he didn't know what the package contains.

2. Lack of DVD recovery media option;
I still don't know where to find a clean win 7 installation media;
I created a bootable USB stick by running the Q drive recovery app; if that's only an image of the existing, then I'm not interested.
I guess I need to dig around and read more.

3. Pros
build quality is pretty solid in my mind;
keyboard, construction, design is top notch.

Heat is an issue though; saw it go up to the 80s while running Prime95, and I quickly placed it on a laptop cooler, so the highest that I saw was 83C.
Doesn't look like it's got enough vents to draw and expel hot air, although the temp dropped very fast down to 40s.

4. Ports
I'd mistakenly jammed a USB male into the RJ45, or into the display port.
My suggestion would be to add some kind of colored ring around the different types so as to increase awareness *or is it because I'm old... LOL*
ie, normally USB ports would be stacked or close together - so the assumption is that if they are close by, then it should be a USB port.

5. Puny sound
I remember reading about suggestions to go into SmartAudio and fiddle...
still sounds pathetic.
does better speakers cost that much more?

6. IPS Screen?
well I have U2711 and flanking 2311s so I guess I don't really find it special.
Would be calibrating the replacement later.

7. Odd rubber feets
perhaps to elevate and allow more airflow? I find it rather flimsy and would be one of the first items worn off.
A thought - I'd rather accept a bulkier CPU "compartment" where heating is handled better. Cooler CPU = longer life = better return on investment.

 

This has been the case for a few years now!!!

Illiterate??? Many people in this forum wouldn't know what's in the package if the labels mentioned medical stuff -- heck, some don't even know what RAM to buy. What does "ThinkPad" mean to anyone, anyway? Who cares about an X220 but the buyer? Even an "IBM" logo on the box does not necessarily mean that the box contains computer stuff. The driver may be "ThinkPad illiterate," but they may be an expert in something that all of us in this forum are ignorant about -- after all, their job is to deliver hundreds of packages a day, not to "know" about package contents!

ThinkPads are not shipped with recovery media.

 

Well, that's the original topic: quality control. Nobody cares about "in-house" vs. "outsourced." After all, it's Lenovo that must stand behind its products, not the contractors and subcontractors.

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/win...-7-download-links-just-like-vista-before.html

you can download win7 at that link, and then use your product key.

keep in mind if you dont install power manager, your battery life will take a hit, and if you dont install some of the other stuff the hotkeys etc wont work.

 

The US is the single largest consumer market by purchasing power and what i said about the subsidies was a tongue in cheek comment (maybe there is some truth to it if you look into hard enough).

Why cars cost more here than in the US | carsguide.com.au <-- while not 100% relevant, this is another example that illustrates the price differences between what the US customer pays compared to customer in other parts of the world (i.e. Australia).

@afhstingray, Dell has a different business model and they have many localised manufacturing centres around the world, i think some of the Dell laptops are manufactured in Malaysia.

This thread is about Quality Control, so maybe we should keep on topic and discuss the price differences in a new thread something.

 

I'm not sure if that is still true. My E6400 (2008) was assembled in Ireland, my E4300 (2009) was assembled in Poland and my E6410 (2010) was assembled in China. A friend recently bought an Alienware notebook and that also came from China.

John

 

It is true at least insofar as India is concerned since 2007. See here. A little more detail and background available here.