Thinkpads Forum

I ordered a t60 on Dec. 14th. I had tried ordering on the night of the 11th, before the end of the original Holiday Sale. Part of the sale was an upgrade from 512 mb RAM to 1 gb (2 dimms). At 10:15 p.m. the Lenovo site refused to let me buy with the sale prices.

Long story short, I called a rep who told me that he would have to get authorization, etc. etc.; to send him an email with the screen shots I had (which I had taken to precaution of saving). I sent him the email, and three days later he had not answered me (to this day he hasn't) and that he would get in touch with me. I called on the 14th and the new rep said that he would give me the extra RAM right then, without any further ado, so I said yes. He said that the only caveat was that I would have to install it myself.

Today I received the T60, but there was no extra RAM. Now, bear in mind that the extra memory was listed in the original order. I am somewhat distraught about this, as there was no other shipment in the order.
I already called and sent an email to the original sales rep.

I am just curious, is this a common occurrence with Lenovo? Am I going to have a hard time getting them to send me the promised extra RAM?

update: Lenovo called me and said they would NOT ship me the memory because they sent me the "free" messenger bag. I told them that I had not ordered the bag, and in fact, when I was asked what I preferred, I had said the memory since I was not allowed to get it during the original sale (Dec. 11th). The memory is even listed in my original order. I am waiting to hear back from them.

Hopefully it will arrive in a separate package.

Not to make light of your situation, but if you think this is bad/a problem then try dealing with DELL and HP.

I order about a hundred systems a year and I STILL cringe when I get on the phone with their CSRs.

brentpresley wrote:Not to make light of your situation, but if you think this is bad/a problem then try dealing with DELL and HP.

I order about a hundred systems a year and I STILL cringe when I get on the phone with their CSRs.

I hope that, as pianowizard said, it arrives in another shipment.

As I said in another post, I have a Dell, and although I am aware of all the horror stories, I have never had any problems with them. The couple of times that I have needed to contact tech support, I have done so over email, and they have resolved my issue satisfactorily without much hassle. Just two weeks ago, my AC adapter started to fail (broken wire). I fired and email to Dell tech support, and they shipped me a new one a couple of days later, without asking any questions. I could have been lying (I wasn't), and they would have never known.

Now, I don't know Lenovo tech support, but from other posts I gather that the majority of forum members think it's pretty effective, with a small minority who have had horrible experiences. I hope my experience dealing with them falls well within that majority

I will keep you posted as to what happens with the RAM. Thanks for the replies.

It's very possible that the system and RAM may ship from separate places. When I placed an order, and added RAM to the system, the website said my order included parts from different warehouse locations, hence the slow shipping. Surely if you persisted, they would come around. I've had better luck with some reps than others.

rmendoza wrote:As I said in another post, I have a Dell, and although I am aware of all the horror stories, I have never had any problems with them.

You'll hear lots of people here claim that IBM/Lenovo's customer service is fanTAStic whereas most other companies' are pathetic. But if you look at laptop customer surveys (I've seen three of those; unfortunately I don't remember which magazine/website did them), the top company doesn't score much higher than the bottom one, something like 81 points versus 62, with an average of say 70 across all companies. IBM/Lenovo and Apple tend to get the highest scores, which are only several points higher than Dell's.

Like you, I have dealt with Dell's customer service representatives, including replacing a defective CDRW drive (I had dropped it onto the floor!), and they were very helpful.

Here's one (service & reliability survey) from PC Magazine a couple of months back:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2006499,00.asp

Apple and Lenovo score on top.

Thanks Ray for finding that survey. I probably had seen the 2004 and 2005 editions of it. See, Lenovo's overall score is 8.4, and Dell's 7.9 is not far behind.

I think part of the equation is the difference in demographics. Without having any proof of this, I believe that the population segment that is willing to pay for the TP premium tends to be more computer literate. If this supposition is true, it means that the TP owners, while more demanding, are also better equipped to deal with potential problems, be they software or hardware issues.

Now, this is just an interpretation of that data in the surveys. For all I know, Lenovo tech support is indeed superior to most other manufacturers'.

However, do not forget that the opposite interpretation is also possible, that since most TP users are pretty adept at working on their own computers, they call tech support less frequently, hence the higher rating!

I personally believe that even if the tech support services are the same, the TPs have an overall quality advantage over their competitors. That's why I switched!!!!

One has to remember that with the PC Mag survey I referenced (been a long time reader), they obtain their data from subscribers, who they believe are mostly computer savvy. I believe that I saw in one of the issues that ran the service and reliability ratings, they profiled the "average" user. I'll see if I can find it.