I dont like Lenovo returns policy

[ronan_zj]

For a new Product that is unopened and still in it's sealed package, you may return it to Lenovo for any reason within 21 days of the date of invoice and obtain a refund or credit. Lenovo does not provide refunds or credits for portions of a packaged offering provided at a single price or for preloaded Programs installed by Lenovo. You may return the complete package for a refund or credit.

This policy is so chinese, I feel like I am in china again.
If I cant open it, How do i know the quality of my order?
I cant just judge it from the box.
[/quote]

[christopher_wolf]

I do know that, if there is a problem with a system out of the box, that Lenovo will listen to and take seriously valid customer complaints and handle it on a case by case basis. In short, if there is a real problem or you don't like something about it, you now get to call them up and talk a bit abou it instead of just shipping it back.

[rocketman]

Yes it kind of sucks that Lenovo has changed their return policy so drastically from when IBM owned the Thinkpad brand. It was one of the last companies to have such a liberal return policy. Sometimes there isn't anything wrong with an item per se, it just might not be to your liking for many reasons.

[ronan_zj]

with this policy, we will hardly see any recertified IBM in EABY.
and EBAY SELLER WILL CRY.

[K. Eng]

I do know that, if there is a problem with a system out of the box, that Lenovo will listen to and take seriously valid customer complaints and handle it on a case by case basis.

And if you get a dead pixel, you are SOL!

[christopher_wolf]

And if you get a dead pixel, you are SOL!

Ehhh, true....Maybe if you get a kind rep you could get off the hook.

[JHEM]

And if you get a dead pixel, you are SOL!

Ehhh, true....Maybe if you get a kind rep you could get off the hook.

Highly unlikely at present.

James

[christopher_wolf]

Just for a single dead pixel? Yeah. Really, though, you aren't suppoesd to return the system for just a single dead pixel although that is what alot of users used it for to get around the policy on dead pixels under warranty. That, at any rate, could not have been cheap for Lenovo to continue to field until somebody got a system just right.

[marlinspike]

There's a reason IBM sold off their PCs branch, and there are changes that have to be made to make it work. We need to just get over them. Just pretend this is a long long time ago when return policies were few and far between (admittedly, that's before the computer age).

[underclocker]

It's actually Lenovo's NO Return Policy.

Caveat emptor.

It should help profits.

[rssb]

Towards the end it states that " Products purchased through the Lenovo Employee Purchase Program are not eligible for return."

Does it mean once you buy, no matter what, you cannot back off ?

Can credit card companies or BBB do about these terms like product has to be returned unopened ? Where is the question of finding a fault unless you open it.

No wonder they are playing cheap tricks to cover up the lack of quality. If they are confident about thier quality and have confidence that customers would come even if the prices are higher , then there is no reason to have such terms.

[carbon_unit]

They probably need to stop bleeding cash by stopping all the returns that are caused by people returning a perfectly good thinkpad because it has one bad pixel. Then a new thinkpad has to be sold as a refurb at a lower price. No wonder the policy changed.
Blame the people who abused the return policy. That could not go on forever.

[rssb]

That might be true.

May be they need to tighten up the quality control on the manufacturing side. If they take precautions , or atleast verify before it is sealed and sent in the first place, then the question of something bad would not araise in the first place.

That way they could keep all the bad ones aside in the factory in the first place and return them to the original manufacturer. They cannot pass on their mistakes and cheap parts to the end user.

If one pays around $2500, is it not reasonable to expect a perfect machine atleast on day one?. What would justify this price range, if quality is as bad as other cheap sellers.

[tfflivemb2]

They probably need to stop bleeding cash by stopping all the returns that are caused by people returning a perfectly good thinkpad because it has one bad pixel. Then a new thinkpad has to be sold as a refurb at a lower price. No wonder the policy changed.
Blame the people who abused the return policy. That could not go on forever.

I don't think that it is just the bad pixel issue, but there have been many people that order several NEW Thinkpads, and send back all but the one that they want. There have even been threads on here, where forum members have stated that they ordered 2-3, and wanted to have them side-by-side and determine which one they wanted....then send the others back....THEN Lenovo had to take a cut on the returns.

[carbon_unit]

If one pays around $2500, is it not reasonable to expect a perfect machine atleast on day one?. What would justify this price range, if quality is as bad as other cheap sellers.

I agree most of the machine should be perfect, but a couple of bad pixels isn't enough to warrant a new machine. That is where people have hurt the return policy. That and the people who bought two different models so they could eveluate and then return the one they don't want. It may have been a perfect machine but now has to be sold as a refurb because someone wanted a convienient evaluation. Abuses like this cause a change in policy. If you don't think this has happened, search the forum.
I've had stuck pixels before. A few of them are not hard to ignore. You get to where you don't see them unless you go looking for them.

I am not affiliated with IBM or Lenovo but I run my own business and I can see why they changed the policy.

(edit: I see Steve brought up my point while I was composing.)

[rssb]

People getting more machines for evaluation is true, even I have seen people say that.

I have no problems with the restocking fee, if the machine was perfect. One or two bad pixels which dont bother are also ok.

What is not ok, is having white pressure spots, you end up with a different keyboard than others even though the model is same and money paid is the same.

If there is no quality difference between various manufacturers ( LG, TMD, Samsung etc..) why would people crib in the first place.
If something is popular and good, why dont they stick to it, instead of introducing something problematic which would come back .

Are they trying to mix 10% bad parts with 90% good parts and save more money on those 10% !!

If that is the reason for selecting various vendors ( they definitely should be getting cheaper price from one vendor when compared to other ), they should absorb the returns with the money saved by using cheap parts.

[K. Eng]

If one pays around $2500, is it not reasonable to expect a perfect machine atleast on day one?. What would justify this price range, if quality is as bad as other cheap sellers.

I agree most of the machine should be perfect, but a couple of bad pixels isn't enough to warrant a new machine. That is where people have hurt the return policy.
...
I've had stuck pixels before. A few of them are not hard to ignore. You get to where you don't see them unless you go looking for them.

I am not affiliated with IBM or Lenovo but I run my own business and I can see why they changed the policy.

I disagree.

Stuck pixels are annoying when playing games, editing photos, and viewing or editing video. The plain fact of the matter is that a person buying a machine with an XGA display buys one that displays properly at 1024x768, not (1024x768) minus (# of bad pixels).

It is unfair that some people get perfect displays and other people get defective displays, even if they paid the same price. It is unfair that Lenovo does not disclose its pixel policy up front when the consumer purchases the machine.

Giving manufacturers a pass on stuck pixels only encourages them to take shortcuts. I encourage everyone with a bad display to return their machine and send a message to manufacturers that this is not acceptible.

Lenovo's current return policy is not very consumer friendly. Having been burnt by dead pixels before, I can say that I will not purchase a machine directly from Lenovo until the return policy becomes more favorable to the buyer.

[dr_st]

Stuck pixels are annoying when playing games, editing photos, and viewing or editing video. The plain fact of the matter is that a person buying a machine with an XGA display buys one that displays properly at 1024x768, not (1024x768) minus (# of bad pixels).

Stuck pixels can sometimes be very annoying and sometimes they can be not noticeable. I have four stuck pixels on my screen. Two visible on white/yellow, two visible on red/green. By visible I mean that you run Dead Pixel Buddy and look for them. Otherwise you won't find them. They don't bother me at all and no one but me has ever paid attention to them.

There are two reasons for this: one is that it's an SXGA+ screen, where the pixels are very small, and the other one is that it's an IPS screen, where dead pixels are dark and not bright, like on TN panels.

It is unfair that some people get perfect displays and other people get defective displays, even if they paid the same price. It is unfair that Lenovo does not disclose its pixel policy up front when the consumer purchases the machine.

Fairness is not the right word for it. Annoying, true, but not unfair. There's nothing fair/unfair in being lucky. What if someone was lucky to catch a $200 discount and someone else had to pay full price on the same machine? Is that unfair? The fact that they don't disclose their pixel policy is expected, because who does? It's business.

Giving manufacturers a pass on stuck pixels only encourages them to take shortcuts. I encourage everyone with a bad display to return their machine and send a message to manufacturers that this is not acceptible.

You may be right, but there's a reason for the stuck pixel polcies. I don't know the exact stats of how many monitors come with stuck pixels or develop them during the warranty period, but I assume this to be at least 10%, maybe even 20%. If all these monitors had to be replaced, this would cause the manufacturer to raise prices accordingly, and in today's world where everybody tries to sell fast and cheap, and people don't want to buy expensive, it just wouldn't do good.

In principle I agree with you, however, I wouldn't stop at bad pixels. Ideally I'd like manufacturers to ban the stupid TN panels that look like crap, and to use IPS (or at minimum the new VA) panels only. But they don't do it, because it's cheaper for them to flood the market with inferior technology, and most people don't care enough.

[rssb]

There is nothing being lucky about ending up with a chicony keyboard, where are as others end up with NMB keyboard. That is purely something the manufacturer ( in this case Lenovo) is trying to maximize thier profits.

If only they had uniform parts , why would people even request keyboard exchanges, lcd exchanges etc..

[K. Eng]

It is unfair that some people get perfect displays and other people get defective displays, even if they paid the same price. It is unfair that Lenovo does not disclose its pixel policy up front when the consumer purchases the machine.

Fairness is not the right word for it. Annoying, true, but not unfair. There's nothing fair/unfair in being lucky. What if someone was lucky to catch a $200 discount and someone else had to pay full price on the same machine? Is that unfair? The fact that they don't disclose their pixel policy is expected, because who does? It's business.

Fairness is the right word for it. In mass produced items like computers, the consumer expectation is that products will be uniform. If two people pay the same amount for a product from Lenovo or any other company, and one person gets a defective product, while the other gets a working product, that is unfair. Do a Google search for stuck bad pixels and PSP for a good example.

Luck is entirely irrelevant. In your example, both consumers willingly paid a set price for their machines. They knew what they were paying. Contrast this to pixel policies, which are hidden -- the consumer doesn't know of the problem until they get burned.

Just because something is an industry standard does not make it right.

Giving manufacturers a pass on stuck pixels only encourages them to take shortcuts. I encourage everyone with a bad display to return their machine and send a message to manufacturers that this is not acceptible.

You may be right, but there's a reason for the stuck pixel polcies. I don't know the exact stats of how many monitors come with stuck pixels or develop them during the warranty period, but I assume this to be at least 10%, maybe even 20%. If all these monitors had to be replaced, this would cause the manufacturer to raise prices accordingly, and in today's world where everybody tries to sell fast and cheap, and people don't want to buy expensive, it just wouldn't do good.

I have never known an LCD display to develop individual stuck pixels over time.

Bad panels should be sold at lower prices and put into non-premium products. People buying expensive machines will probably be willing to pay for the guarantee of a perfect display.

You may be willing to put up with bad pixels, but myself and many others are not. Companies that knowingly sell potentially defective products, and leave consumers no recourse, will not get my business anytime soon.

[K. Eng]

If only they had uniform parts , why would people even request keyboard exchanges, lcd exchanges etc..

Lenovo may not want to be tied to a single source for certain components, and single companies may not be able to supply all of a certain type of part that Lenovo needs.

This was a huge problem with Dell LCD panels a couple years ago. People ordering UltraSharp displays on notebooks got wildly varrying quality of parts.

One would hope that system builders attempt to enforce uniform standards on their suppliers as a condition of getting their business.

[dr_st]

Fairness is the right word for it. In mass produced items like computers, the consumer expectation is that products will be uniform. If two people pay the same amount for a product from Lenovo or any other company, and one person gets a defective product, while the other gets a working product, that is unfair.

Depends on your definition of defective. Suppose that the two products arrive at the same condition, but one malfunctions and dies after a month. Is that also unfair? This scenario probably wouldn't bother you, because usually something like this will be replaced under warranty, while in case of LCDs and stuck pixels manufacturers won't replace them unless the number of such pixels is unusually high. But what if one product dies a month after the warranty expires, while the other keeps working for years and years, as often happens?

Contrast this to pixel policies, which are hidden -- the consumer doesn't know of the problem until they get burned. Just because something is an industry standard does not make it right.

The consumer should research. Everyone in the industry will tell you the good things about his product, not the bad ones. I agree with you that it doesn't make this right, but Lenovo here is the rule, not the exception.