Zen and the Art or Lenovo. Or, an extreme exercise in patience.

hello again notebookreview community. It's been a while.

You may remember me from such memorable threads as FX artist needs to replace stolen hel-80 from earlier this year.

After careful consideration and finding a decent deal, i decided to order a t61p from Lenovo using the visaperks.ca website deal (up to 25% off). I configured a 14.1" to have the t7500, 1 gb ram, 100gb 7200rpm HD, dvd-rw, 1 year warranty. It was smaller and more powerful than my old Hel-80, so it's needless to say how difficult it was awaiting it's arrival which Lenovo said should take 3-4 weeks to deliver.

It priced out to roughly $1700 CDN when all the taxes and shipping were factored in. I ordered the thing on January 7th and it just arrived last Thursday, APRIL THE 3RD! 87 days of grueling torture. Of course, I was on the phone with customer support about a half a dozen times by then, trying to prod the reason for the delay and some kind of compensation for my anguish. They coughed up $100 and chocked it up to a delay on a component (what component? they didn't say) and the fact that it was a custom build.

Ok. That's all fine and dandy, but I've got work to do and every day that machine is late is a day of lost productivity. So I decide to see if the price has come down at all in the past 3 months (this is early March) and I go through, re-spec a machine on the visaperks site and discover that it only costs $1400 or so with a coupon. They have already promised me a $100 reimboursement for the delay, but their customer support reduces the price for me to the $1400-$100 and they quote me just under $1300.

Another month passes and we're at the present situation. The first thing i do when i get my t61p setup and on the internet is spec out the machine on the visaperks site and what do I find? My processor isn't even offered anymore, the price is quoted as only $1250 before taxes and shipping, and my visa has been charged with almost $1780.

So what do I say to these guys when I call them tomorrow?

I saw in ZaZ's Thinkpad Sticky that there's a 21 day cost guarantee policy? I got charged on my credit card March 22nd, so I figure I have until April 12th to negotiate this. They haven't reimboursed me yet for anything, in fact there's a mystery $80 charge to boot! It's secondary charge for shipping probably, but still. Anybody here have any experience with this price protection policy? I haven't been able to find any info on their website about it, so I don't know how to phrase my request.

Thanks for letting me vent about about this here. The customer support has been fairly accommodating so far, but I did find it a tad insulting when I called to ask why my order was so late and the rep asked if it was a problem with my credit card. My credit is just fine thank you, how's your inventory supply line?

 

The 21 day's thingy works from the day of receiving the computer. So even if you paid for it on 22nd of March, and it was shipped the next day, and stayed lets say at the UP for 3 months, it wont make any difference and the 21 days thing will start from the day you sign for the delivery.

i ordered t61 two days ago and it said 2 to 3 weeks, and upon check out the estimated shipping date was April 23rd. I heard so much about order delays and I pray this doesn't happen to me. But anyways if they dont ship my computer by the May 1st I'll be calling my bank and claim a refund on my credit card and call that lenovo's online store a scam site.

about the credit card problem, I got the same thing from them last week. Apparently my shipping address must match my billing address. they only said I should contact my bank to have my shipping address added to my "credit card file". but the bank says there is no such a thing. there can be only one address. And since my bank is in Kuwait, and the laptop is in the US, it would be crazy to send by bank statements from Kuwait to the US and then back to Kuwait only to be able to buy from Lenovo.
well, i canceled that order and placed another one (the t61 that i'm expecting) and this time I didn't even use my credit card. lets see how things work.

 

anyone have any advice on this?

What's the cheapest price i can find on a t61p in canada so i can price match stomp these guys?

 

Get a detailed invoice of your build so you can see the totals.

Then see if you can get a quote using their system configurator. The quote of course should be with the exact same components. I'm not sure how it'll work if parts are different (like the processor). I think people haven't had too much trouble price matching a quote in their system.

That kind of delay does suck. Hope you get what you deserve from them.

 

After that long of a wait, I hope you're at least happy with the system!

 

I should have mentioned that so far the system has performed admirably, no missing pixels, and setup was a breeze. I'll be upgrading the ram soon, so that will most likely give me the performance I'll need to do some high-end work.

There is the problem of the processor not being offered anymore, so doing a 1-to-1 component match may prove difficult unless i let the guys on the phone take care of it. I'll see what happens. It's too late to call them today, but I'll try and get it sorted tomorrow and let you guys know how it turns out.