Thinkpads Forum

Better hurry up if you want to order a scratch and dent battery from lenovo - this was on Slickdeals.net today:

"Lenovo Outlet has a few of their Thinkpad Batteries marked down substancially. Shipping is Free. Thanks trandy1001

ThinkPad T/R 14W 4 Cell Standard Battery $32
ThinkPad T/R/W/SL Series 6 Cell Li-Ion Battery $37
ThinkPad T40/R50 Series 9 Cell Li-Ion Battery $39
ThinkPad T/R 14W 6 Cell Enhanced Battery $39
ThinkPad X60s Series 4 Cell Slim Line Battery $39
ThinkPad T/R/W/Z/SL Series 9 Cell Li-Ion Battery $48
ThinkPad X60 Series 8 Cell High Capacity Battery $57
ThinkPad X60 Series Extended Life Battery $77"

Just checked and it appears these are all that are left:

ThinkPad T/R 14W 4 Cell Standard Battery (Scratch and Dent)
$119.00
Now $31.99

ThinkPad T/R/W/SL Series 6 Cell Li-Ion Battery (Scratch and Dent)
$159.00
Now $36.81

ThinkPad T/R 14W 6 Cell Enhanced Battery (Scratch and Dent)
$139.00
Now $39.07

ThinkPad X60s Series 4 Cell Slim Line Battery (Scratch and Dent)
$129.00
Now $39.27

ThinkPad X60 Series 8 Cell High Capacity Battery (Scratch and Dent)
$179.00
Now $57.32

ThinkPad X60 Series Extended Life Battery (Scratch and Dent)
$179.00
Now $76.62

Before everyone gets excited about the Lenovo Outlet's low prices, I want to point out Ken Fox's experience with the outlet and emphasize his is not the only such account:

Ken Fox's Lenovo Outlet experience

Now, Ken was eventually made whole by the Outlet, but that's not to say he didn't suffer much for what he purchased. To quote him directly:

Ken Fox wrote: Unless you REALLY REALLY REALLY REALLY want something from the outlet, have LOTS of patience, a very high level of frustration tolerance, and lots of time on your hands to waste, a Lenovo outlet purchase is much more aggravation than any savings you might get if they in fact ever do ship whatever it is that you thought that you ordered.

Caveat Emptor!

~tdr.

I think his was a VERY atypical experience. My battery was delivered in 3 days, zero cycles on it and for a quarter of the normal price.

And I just checked the batteries Scratch n Dent section of the Lenovo Outlet - it's empty - they're all gone!

ALL of the accesories categories there are empty.

Received a scratch 'n dent x61s slim battery in 1 week. This included the 2 days for UPS to deliver it. Ordered last Friday morning, received it today.

Box was a little beat up, but battery casing is flawless (seems new) and the info shows 1 cycle with manufacture date of Dec 2008.

YMMV.

There was a mention of the scratch n dent batteries on dealmac.com so I guess it caught a wider audience!!

Well, we have that person to thank for cleaning out the stock of discount batteries. If it was a member here, that was a foolish thing to do.

Harry,
Not sure where they get their info from but it certainly was a great resource for the members here. I picked up a couple of batteries a couple of months back and they were pretty much new with nary a scratch!
Oh well, perhaps they will restock once the outside interest dies down.

Harryc wrote:ALL of the accesories categories there are empty.

Just noticed that too. Maybe there is still stock and the web engine is having problems. Surely they whole store could not be cleaned out all at once.

GatorHawk wrote:Just noticed that too. Maybe there is still stock and the web engine is having problems. Surely they whole store could not be cleaned out all at once.

I went to buy a T4x 6-cell battery the other day and could only buy one, then it was out. Did not reappear over the next week and a half. I think that there are actually very few scratched and dented batteries, especially older.

Maybe more later.

Just spoke with a Lenovo rep at the 800 number on their page. She found it very odd that the accessories and upgrades section of their outlet was completely empty. She said she could not do any searching beyond what I was able to do, so she could not say if this was an error, or if they didn't have any accessories or upgrades, however she did say that it was very odd for that section to be empty.

If you go under Special Offers, it states "There are no items in this category." However under Accessories and Upgrades, it's just blank.

Go figure. I suppose that's IBM for ya...

Two of the 3 batteries I got from the outlet were satisfactory; the third, in unacceptable condition (too old; 18 months after manufacture, with 3 cycles on it, the first of which had been put on 8 or 9 months before it was sold to me) was returned. None of these 3 batteries got shipped to me before 2 weeks after the order was placed. Some may consider that reasonable service and at the time I wasn't pressed for time so I really didn't care. And, they did take the bad battery back, giving me a refund for it.

The biggest problem with the outlet is that they have no inventory control and have no idea of what they actually have. They may or may not ever discover whether or not they have what they claim to have sold you, and if it doesn't ship out within a couple of weeks, three at the outside, it is probably not in inventory and you will probably not ever receive it. Calls to Lenovo will yield no further real information than you are going to be able to get from their online order tracking system, which itself will be useless in such a circumstance.

This sort of thing doesn't matter as much for an accessory purchase as you can always find it somewhere else, but for a computer system it can be maddening, especially if the limbo they put you in causes you to miss other opportunities to purchase a hard to find, out of production, system. In my (recent) cases I was searching for X61s machines with the Ultralight screen.

Lenovo doesn't actually handle outlet orders themselves; this department is now handled by a subcontractor, channeladvisor.com, which probably accounts for at least some of the confusion in the ordering process. The subcontractor does not appear to have a very good control system for enabling them to be sure they haven't sold the same system (or other item) twice. If they have aleady sold it and the item remains for sale on the sale page, they will accept and even confirm your order, but it will then never ship, rather the ship date will simply be advanced by 1 or 2 weeks each time it passes. This appears to happen automatically under the control of the sales software, without the intervention of a human being.

In the end all you can really do in such a situation, where shipment gets delayed repeatedly and no information is forthcoming, is to cancel the order and look for the system or other item elsewhere, rather than to risk having them ultimately find it and then end up having two of them rather than the one you were seeking.

On occasion the outlet will show that they have no items whatsoever in a particular category that usually has many items. Now there are a couple of categories that never seem to have any items in them, so I'm not talking about those, but in particular the more common accessories and systems categories they sell can show up as having nothing available. This appears to be either a software issue or perhaps something that they do when they do a major restocking on the outlet website, however it is common for this to go on for several days or even a week or more at a time before all of a sudden the items reappear. If it does happen, it is very unlikely that Lenovo's telephone reps will have any more information than you can get from the website and hence won't have anything to sell you, either. All you can do is to check back every day or two and ultimately the items will probably reappear.

None of this should stop anyone from making an outlet purchase if it appears to offer real savings and if the purchaser can put up with the potential aggravation. I would, however, consider this potential aggravation before placing any orders for outlet items, in order to be prepared for it and to be prepared to cancel the order once it becomes evident it likely won't ship.

ken

There was a ton of batteries there and until this recent surge there was absolutely no shortage for some time to come =/

I assume some guy will be listing them on ebay.