Depot Warranty slow and irresponsive!

[petsam007]

I ordered a brand new T430u on New Years day this year and it arrived a week later. A week after arrival, I found that the ethernet port wasn't working and had to send it to Lenovo after being adviced to do so because of the depot warranty that it came with. Since I have sent it to them (I'm in Toronto, Canada and the place where I sent it is in Canada) I have only got updates that the part is out of stock. It seems that all the time I call Support, the same guy talks and gives me identical responses. "I can only see the update posted by the repair centre and it's 'Part is out of stock' "

I had sent it back on the 20th and it's Feb 3 and still no progress.

Is there any other way to approach this issue? I haven't used my new ThinkPad at all as it's been with them for almost three weeks now. I am really disappointed with the customer support and also the warranty in general. My respect for Lenovo's quality is decreasing, as I used to think very high of them earlier.

Just for details : The warranty is Depot and is mentioned as EasyServ on Lenovo's website when I put my machine details in. http://support.lenovo.com/en_CA/researc ... =EASY-SERV

Is there any other way to find out what's happening? Also, when I tried to see the status on http://www-03.ibm.com/support/ezserv/viewstatus.wss I get the message "The service call was not found" Has this happened to anyone else too? Any information or advice would be appreciated. I'm a student and it sucks to have spent so much getting a state-of-the-art laptop and then losing it only to get half-answers and bad service is totally bad.

[Brad]

Welcome to the forum!

Sorry for your trouble.

I would call again. Let them know that this time without your new ThinkPad is unacceptable. Ask for your case to be escalated. The escalation team, at least here in the US, can source the required part from another area. If the part cannot be found within a reasonable time ask for a new replacement.

Brad

[petsam007]

Thanks for your comment Brad!

Well, things have gotten worse since then, and I did call them so many times. I have found that the customer support on the phone is nothing more than a computer interface type service, in that the person on the other side of the phone line just tells you what s/he can see on the screen and nothing more. Any more questions and immediately comes the reply, "Sir, I can't tell you anything else, this is what appears on my screen!".

Did not dream in my wildest imagination that such a thing would happen with Lenovo Canada! I am from India, where it's sometimes normal to have delays and incompetent responses, but this is beyond everything I have ever heard of even there. Here, things can go bad and basically you can't do anything about it other than talking to people on phone who don't help you whatever you say.

First, after ordering a brand new THINKPAD t430u (yes, the legendary thinkpad series reputed to be reliable) I find that the LAN port isn't working. Then I send it to Lenovo and the warranty repair takes a whooping 1 month, with terrible customer support (little to no info provided on what's going on). Then when I get it back, I find half the RAM vanished from the system(I had 8GB when I sent it for warranty and it came back with only 4GB installed), and customer support telling me they had no idea what happened and advised take it to the service centre again.

The customer support wanted me to have the RAM slots checked for presence of the RAM sticks by any service centre nearby. So, I have given the laptop now to a authorized service centre nearby my place in the city. They said it would take another 1-5 business days to just check this out.

[Brad]

Sorry you have to go through this.

Its no help to you of course that in the US I have found their support to be quite the opposite where they bend over backwards to be sure you are satisfied. They certainly would take the customers word if you made mention that your ThinkPad arrived back to you with less.

Was the original lan port issue resolved?

Brad

[petsam007]

I couldn't check that Brad. I had to give it to the new service center within hours of getting it back from warranty so didn't have the chance to check that.

[petsam007]

And it seems there is the same person in the customer support phone reception all the time. It's the same guy, for escalation or anything else. All the same, any time of the day. And he is very non-cooperative. Maybe he indeed can't do much in his capacity, but I find it odd they have just a single person handling the customer support section.

[RealBlackStuff]

Insist to speak to his supervisor, then escalate.

[Brad]

It is too bad you couldn't get service in the US as you are close by. If you come to the US often you could have used that address for service.

I am certain you would have a completely different service experience in the US.

What you describe could happen in the US if there was a parts backorder. Even then after a relatively short period of time they routinely offer a replacement.

Brad

[killer]

RBS is quite correct to advise you to escalate.

If you still get a brick wall then old-fashioned letter writing comes into its own. Write directly to the director of finance or financial director or whatever title is used in that part of the world. FDs never normally receive complaints so, when they get one, it takes highest priority and they move mountains quicker than a nuclear bomb.

It has worked for me so often I have to share it with you.

Good hunting ... and let us know how you get on.

[ibm350]

One thing we noted here in Australia, is that calling outside of the local 'office hours' gets you routed to other support centres around the world

and thus the trick becomes timing things to get the USA support center, and then to escalate it internationally.

years ago, I went and found some old email addresses that I had corresponded with previously, and by a wild piece of luck, one of the support team I'd previously dealt with had gotten to be a VP over the years.

so the lesson seems to be that it helps to kick up a stink - here in AU Lenovo support is outsourced about 4 levels - so often thinkpads are returned unfixed, or you get told the motherboard is broken or other clearly incorrect things - so I've gone from a $6,000 thinkpad per year habit to buying them cheap from ebay

Sven