Thinkpads Forum

Hello,

I just found a crack in my T520 laptop case ...on the keyboard side in the lower left corner right below where they put the "Intel Inside", "Windows 7" and "Lenovo Enhanced Experience" stickers. Even though the machine is only 4 months old and the crack was not caused by dropping it or any abuse of any kind, my "Enhanced Experience" with Lenovo customer service was to be told that this is a "cosmetic problem" not covered by my warranty. When I asked to speak to a supervisor, Derick told me that I could send it in to be repaired, but, I would be charged for the repair work.

This should absolutely be covered by the warranty since it is obviously a defective part or a defect in the manufacturing process but I seem to be getting nowhere with Lenovo customer service. Does anybody on this forum have any ideas on how I can either 1) escalate this problem to someone at Lenovo who actually wants to stand by their product quality and back their warranty, or 2) send me URLs to all of the Thinkpad consumer ratings sites so that I can warn others not to buy Lenovo products because of their bad product quality, their worthless warranty, and their uncaring customer service?

This is an unfortunate situation. At least the palmrest costs around 20 USD. You can very easy replace it yourself in less than 5 minutes. I would very much prefer do that on my own so I dont have any downtime at all.

I have never heard of ANY manufacturer that would replace a busted part under a standard (non accidental) warranty because a customer is pitching a huge fit. Think of all the people out there in the world that could just be lying (not saying that you are, just a hypothetical) after their laptop was dropped or handled improperly. The manufacturers would be put out of business. Laptops are sold at such low prices because you are given the option to decline damage protection. You can go around bad-mouthing Lenovo quality at all the review sites, but you will do more to make yourself look like a fool rather than persuade buyers away from the brand.

I ran a small laptop repair business a few years back when I was in between jobs, and I have heard all of what you say so many times before about every manufacturer. People get so mad and will never buy that brand again because the brand had the nerve to deny their warranty claim. Busted screens, broken power jacks, cracked cases, etc. All of them broken while never being dropped, never going through rapid hot/cold temperature changes, and never being picked up or lifted by one corner, etc. It is not up to me to decide if you or any of those people were telling the truth or not. I would just smile, nod, and charge them what would in most cases result to about half of what the manufacturer was going to charge. Every now and then I would include a PITA fee in the labor price for a select few of my customers that would go on and on whining and complaining to no end about the manufacturer and their build quality.

To answer your question, I would think that all of the Lenovo service and support employees "actually want to stand by their product quality and back their warranty." What you have is something different, and for some reason they aren't able to effectively communicate that message to you. If you look at your paperwork, I am sure that somewhere in there it says cosmetic problems are not covered. As far as a list of URLs to all the ThinkPad consumer ratings sites, you will probably have better luck with google or bing.

Do what ssd_thinkpad says and save yourself and a lot of other people the headaches.

ssd_thinkpad wrote:This is an unfortunate situation. At least the palmrest costs around 20 USD. You can very easy replace it yourself in less than 5 minutes. I would very much prefer do that on my own so I dont have any downtime at all.

Where can you order one? Would you just contact the repair center and have it shipped in?
(Hey, maybe I can get the version that doesn't have the color sensor hole! I'd still need the fingerprint reader cutout, though. Maybe it might not even creak when I press on it!)

To the OP- my W520 has almost the same issue; I've never mishandled it in such a way that would yield a crack in that spot (mine, however, is above the two USB ports).

It's still not going to deter me from buying another ThinkPad 5-7 years down the road when this one becomes too slow to be useful (Customer Service is really good with other issues, BTW; I'm not going anywhere else)- it's a pain to deal with, but it's not worth kicking up a fuss about.

I always have bad luck with computer parts anyways; it's nothing new (boards dying "out of warranty", coil whine, SSDs that sound like hard drives when accessing information, to name a few) to me. It'd give me a good reason to change the thermal paste on the CPU and GPU, at any rate.

Q-Ball wrote:Where can you order one?

I order it directly in the IBM Parts Shop. However in some countries you have to be an official business to do that. You can find most parts also on ebay, sometimes even cheaper. When ordering, you can also order additional things like the fingerprint reader, and sometimes the battery is also cheaper to buy directly from the IBM Parts Shop.

The official Hardware Maintenance Manual (HMM) is a great guide.

The palm rest is 40 Euro without fingerprint and a bit more than 50 euro with fingerprint. Unfortunately I can not buy only the fingerprint. On my T520 I can see where the fingerprint would be, I thought I could just buy the fingerprint. But no, that's not possible. You can also buy a palm rest with color sensor, but that makes it more than 200 Euro.

100 bucks for a molded piece of plastic? If that turns out to be the case (ha!) I think I'll pass.

How did you get on, I only ask as I have a crack in EXACTLY the same place (to the left of the 'Intel inside CORE i7 sticker).
Given that I purchased a padded rucksack AND extra sleeve and treat it better than a newborn it would suggest there is a stress point for sure.

Did you manage to get a new part to fit or send it back for repair?

Simon

it is interesting that the OP (jbolan) registered, made his original post and has not been back here since..!

makes one wonder..

I thought, that if you want just the fingerprint reader, you could use the FPR from a T60/R60/T61/R61 palmrest, and that the FPR has a separate cable feeding into the touchpad.
Unfortunately the cabling is quite different between T6x and T5xx, and as it turns out, the FPR cable goes directly to the motherboard connector, and not somewhere under the touchpad.

BillMorrow wrote:it is interesting that the OP (jbolan) registered, made his original post and has not been back here since..!

makes one wonder..

Makes me wonder if didn't already have a list of "URLs to all of the Thinkpad consumer ratings sites so that I can warn others not to buy Lenovo products" and our forum was on it...

simoneaster wrote:How did you get on, I only ask as I have a crack in EXACTLY the same place (to the left of the 'Intel inside CORE i7 sticker).
Given that I purchased a padded rucksack AND extra sleeve and treat it better than a newborn it would suggest there is a stress point for sure.

Did you manage to get a new part to fit or send it back for repair?

Simon

I have exactly the same problem! in the bottom left corner. I have sent pics to warranty support here in NL. Mine has only left the house twice, both times in a well padded laptop bag, and other than that it gets carried between desk and table at home. I bought a Thinkpad partly because of their supposed durability, but after two months it has cracked, whereas my Samsung lasted 7 years with identical treatment (if anything I have been far more careful with the Lenovo). There is definitely a weak point in the casing here...

I think we should post on the main lenovo support site. It seems there has been a similar issue with USB ports that Lenovo are looking into... and it seems there is definitely an issue here.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/General-Dis ... 967#M12743

I have just found this post...

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T500-a ... lse#M57097

which it might be worth adding to...

I received a reply from Lenovo NL this morning that the crack in my T520 is not covered by warranty:

Thank you for the pictures, I have escalated this issue to the backoffice and we're sorry to inform you that this kind and physical damage/wear and tear does not fall under the warranty agreement. If you wish, we can pick up the machine and fix it at your own expense, our customer service team could sen you an estimate of the repair.

There are a lot of other people with this problem, the T410, T520, W520 and X210/220 seem to be problematic, although the X models more around the palmrest. Lenovo deleted my messages from their forums. There is talk from a user about setting up a blog for this problem. It all suggests a manufacturing problem Lenovo are unwilling to investigate or acknowledge.

Most active discussion is here:

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/X-Series-Th ... d-p/670587

Also, if anyone knows of a reasonable place to buy a new casing in Europe please let me know, my crack is spreading and may eventually lead to my missing the corner!