Thinkpads Forum

I ordered my T420S on 5/3. It said that it should ship by 5/26 which is a bit ridiculous - over 3 weeks just to ship it? Anyway, it's 5/19, I chatted with Lenovo people twice and it's still not ready. Maybe the options are important? I got the base model with Intel card and base i5 as well as fingerprint reader, camera and BT. Rest was stock although Lenovo threw in upgrade to 4GB of RAM for free along with a 90W adapter. So I'm curious, what's the average shipping time on these?

i ordered a t420s about a month ago; it arrived a week ago, so about 3 weeks for me.

i had the i7 with ssd though, so that may have delayed it a bit

Ordered mine on 5/11, estimated ship date is 6/10. From my standpoint you're lucky

I guess I am lucky. I just don't get it though, why does it take so long? These are fairly regular machines. I remember custom ordering an Air from Apple about a month after its release last year and it took them about a week or so to ship it.

Lenovo's ship times, and their inability to accurately estimate how long the wait will be is our biggest frustration with the company. When I order new machines, 3-4 weeks wait is common - but nobody is able to tell me if it will be 1 week or 6.

synchromesh wrote:I guess I am lucky. I just don't get it though, why does it take so long? These are fairly regular machines. I remember custom ordering an Air from Apple about a month after its release last year and it took them about a week or so to ship it.

Apple probably gets less orders.

visionviper wrote:Apple probably gets less orders.

Dunno about that. I can't speak for every place but around here I see far more Apples than Thinkpads of any sort.

synchromesh wrote:Dunno about that. I can't speak for every place but around here I see far more Apples than Thinkpads of any sort.

It's just one place. It's like a university campus. You will probably see a lot of Mac computers, but if you take everyone into account they probably get less orders. They also don't really have too much in the way of configuration options.

visionviper wrote: It's just one place. It's like a university campus. You will probably see a lot of Mac computers, but if you take everyone into account they probably get less orders. They also don't really have too much in the way of configuration options.

Certainly true - buy Dell is directly comparable, and their ship estimates are usually spot-on, and much shorter.

Speaking of much shorter, my ship date just got bumped to the 25th which normally I would be happy about if I wasn't going to be out of town for the week after. I guess once I get the tracking number I will have to try and work something out so that they keep it at the local UPS place instead of trying to deliver it.

Dell probably has invested more in their assembly facilities over the years and I bet that is why they can get more systems shipped. Lenovo is probably experiencing growing pains. They do need to get their stuff together though to get ship times down. I imagine it gets pretty bad during their busiest times.

I ordered 04/18 and it was then shipped 04/29. It was i7 with Optimus. Originally the estimate was to ship 05/03, so it shipped ahead of schedule. I didn't complain obviously. I actually had to wait on a SSD replacement that came the following day to actually begin using it anyway. Shipments did seem to slow down after I originally ordered, thought I'm not sure why such a wait on an I5 with Intel graphics.

I had ordered a 2nd adapter (the 65W USB/power adapter), and that actually shipped separately, right away.

I guess I spoke too soon. My estimate ship date got bumped to June 14th. Fun :-/

I've had good luck in the past with being nice to their CS.
so, call your rep (or any rep) and complain. threaten to cancel your order in favor of dell, etc.

they'll fix it.

blackomegax wrote:I've had good luck in the past with being nice to their CS.
so, call your rep (or any rep) and complain. threaten to cancel your order in favor of dell, etc.

they'll fix it.

Been there done that twice already via chat on the website. It did finally get shipped today. Hopefully I'll get it within a week.