pros and cons of buying from Lenovo vs. reseller

It appears that if I buy my machine from an online-only reseller I can save 10% or more, get prompt delivery and a three-year warranty.

If I buy online from Lenovo I can get exactly the config I want, but no assurance of prompt delivery and an extra charge for the longer warranty. Also, to the extent that early releases may have been prone to issues if I buy from Lenovo I am more likely to get a recent build.

Of course, I'd prefer to purchase from an independent brick 'n mortar store, but I expect that the likelihood of such a store having what I want in stock is remote, and the wait time for a special order would be as long as the wait time for an online order from Lenovo (and the cost would be nowhere close to the pricing available from online resellers).

Thoughts?

 

Ordering directly from Lenovo means you can get CTO (custom to order) models, whereas resellers for obvious reasons sell preconfigured models. If you are okay with a preconfigured model, then order from a reseller, it will be far cheaper assuming you can find the specs you want. That's what I did for my X220 tablet. I bought it from Provantage, it had everything I wanted (Sandy Bridge i5, 6 cell battery, Intel 6205 Wifi, FPR, webcam, stock Intel SSD, W7 Pro, 3 year on site warranty for 1250) whereas Lenovo would have charged 1900+ for the same specs. Made no sense to order CTO.

 

You can also haggle over the phone with OEMs like Lenovo, whereas resellers are usually very firm on their prices. For example, I was able to get ~25% off my brand-spanking-new W520 with Lenovo by haggling.

 

I'd second that it's basically price versus customization. Oftentimes you can also get it faster from resellers too.

I usually go for the cheapest... I bought three of my last four ThinkPads from eBay (both new and used) and one from Lenovo.

 

Thanks for that.

I suppose that one concern... given the number of issues that users seem to have with the fans and displays in the T440p... is whether buying from an online reseller complicates matters if a machine is defective.

 

No.

Warranty coverage is the same (depending on which one you choose, obviously) and handled by the same system whether you purchase the system directly from Lenovo, or a reseller.

Personally, all my "work" machines (while they were still ThinkPads which is not the case anymore) were upgraded to NBD on-site warranty. If your time is expensive, this is something you may want to look into.

Good luck.

 

Thanks for that. I discovered while exploring the dusty dark corners of Lenovo's website that notwithstanding that the standard warranty offered on custom configurations is one year they seem to offer fifty or sixty preconfigured models of the 440p series with a variety of warranties, including 3-year onsite. In any case, I am considering a preconfigured model from a reseller, and while this model carries a basic (depot) 3-year warranty it appears that I can upgrade to 3 years (or 4 years, or 5 years) of onsite at a reasonable price, and can also upgrade to premium tech support.

 

I'd upgrade the warranty to NBD on-site and make the term as long as you intend to keep the machine, since the warranty can be upgraded/extended only once.

Personally, I'd pass on the premium tech support, but that's me.

Good luck.

 

Nasty thing about Lenovo is that they don't anymore allow resellers to sell abroad. I bought my T61 from Euclid Computers (now defunct); it was more expensive than direct from Lenovo. But they didn't ship internationally. I called them up and offered $500 for shipping, but I got a "no". When I bought my W520 I checked again at US resellers... and surprise: Lenovo doesn't allow them to ship Thinkpads abroad. So yeah... I got my US model W520 off eBay.

Back in 2007 I paid $110 for shipping and I still saved $500, even after customs, shipping and VAT.

 

More recently, I built a X240 system on lenovo.com and tried to get sales to offer some kind of discount. This was a loaded system with a fast i5, 8GB ram, 256 SSD, 3 year warranty but no FHD option. I was thinking there was a lot of margin that they could have offered some discount.. But nada. I called three times and they never offered any kind of discount and the X240 is very expensive compared to the X230 which they used to regularly offer discounts. I never did pull the trigger on the X230 last year. I did not think they would destroy the design so badly on the newer model. Ended up buying a mint condition X230 on Ebay with 850 days of accidental left which had 8GB ram and i5 2.9 Ghz mobile processor for 610 dollars. Only had 30 cycles on the six cell battery so I got lucky. But in my experience, its impossible to get Lenovo to budge on price, at least with the X240.

I don't like the newer models of Lenovo anymore. If I had to buy new today I would get the Toshiba Portege Z30-ASMBN22 which has a 300nit FHD matte display and still has 3 USB ports with point stick and mouse buttons on the top of the touch pad. That model will run about 1500 with 8 GB ram, i5, FHD, camera, 3 year warranty. Seems like a well made machine that has the spill proof KB etc. Its the closest thing I have found that offers the features of the old X230. In fact, the Portege can be ordered up to 16GB of ram. Only real drawback is no IPS. But the battery life will be better.

EDIT: My bad, the sales guy at Toshiba does not seem to know the newly offered FHD screen on the Z30 Toshiba is in fact an IPS. Thanks to a poster on the Toshiba forum, here is the link, http://www.notebookcheck.com/Busine...-neue-Portege-Z30-und-Tecra-Z40.115977.0.html

This changes everything. Anyone who likes the older designs of Lenovo need to take a close look at the newer Z30 Portege.

 

For me, I am not suggest to buy a re-seller.

 

From Lenovo: No restocking fee if you open, don't like, and return it.

 

Thanks for that.

The pros for me were cost savings (purchasing from PC-Canada I could save $468 for a configuration which would cost $2,447 if purchased from Lenovo) and speed of delivery (given that my old Latitude E6410 has taken to crashing every hour or so, and I have a lot of work to get done in the next few weeks).

Given that the configuration I that I wanted was available for immediate delivery from PC-Canada I decided to go that route, notwithstanding that the restocking fee would be 20%. In any case, I don't feel that a restocking fee is unreasonable, given that the machine would need to resold as a refurb. Indeed, reading some of the posts of users who have returned their machines to Lenovo it seemed to me that it was the users that were be unreasonable. Certainly I could not imagine a scenario in which I would return a functioning machine simply because I had decided that I didn't like it as much as I had expected.

As noted, I was hoping for speedy delivery, but was certainly not expecting the machine to arrive within 24 hours of the placement of my order. Full points to PC-Canada for that.

Nonetheless, I guess that I owe an apology to those users who have returned their machines and may feel that I slandered them a few paragraphs back. In truth, had I purchased the machine from Lenovo I would send it back.

I'll give it a few more days to redeem itself, but I might just end up taking a $400 hit.