My first encounter with Lenovo and the W510

[nhjo06]

Hello everybody - I just want to share my experience of buying a lenovo w510 with anybody who will listen.

Well it all started about 3 months ago, when I was in the beginning of my final semester at university, studying architecture.
I decided that I needed a new notebook, after using my (ugly) little baby - a dell 1704 for 4 years.

It was important for me that the notebook was powerful, reliable and had service with a good reputation - when you are buying a notebook costing about 2700 dollars, you want to know that somebody will deal with your problems in a professional way, if you ever have any. Some of my fellow students recommended that I looked into a lenovo, and after reading some reviews on the w510 I thought this could be the notebook for me.

I bought it over the Internet and received it only two days later - I was thrilled!
At the first glance the W510 is actually a quite nice notebook with a good screen (FHD) and a seemingly good build quality. Though a began to notice that the notebook had a very distinct and high pitched noise, and a periodic "flicker" like small sparks on the left side of the notebook. At first I thought the high pitched noise came from the harddrive, though also thinking that it was unusual high pitched for this. I called IBM support who adviced me to turn of the CPU powermanagement in the BIOS which I did. This of course had a negative impact on the already low battery life, but did nothing for the flickering sound - which was kind of annoying especially because it was so expensive.

After talking with IBM support again, they adviced me to send it to their repair center – which I did.
This was the 31th of april 2010. I was promised that I would have it back about a week later. A week later I called their repaircenter who told me that they had only received it two days earlier, and hadn’t fixed it yet.
I guess I’ve called the IBM support center 9-11 during the next 17 days, telling them that I really needed that notebook, and if they could at least tell me when I would get it back – they couldn’t. It seemed that they had to replace the motherboard, and that they couldn’t get a hold of a new one. During this time, I was promised multiple times that somebody would call me back with more information – but never did. Enough is enough and finally I demanded to talk with the manager – and a was promised that the manager would call me back the same day – but he never did.

The next day, this must be a little over 3 weeks after I initially sent in the notebook, I called, and emailed the dealer from which I bought the notebook demanding my money back, and expressing my utter dissatisfaction with IBM support and Lenovo. He ended up talking with the manager, and even though I had demanded my money back, arranged that I would get a new computer. I told him that I wasn’t interested, and had lost faith in Lenovo/IBM and their ability to sort out this problem I just wanted my money back, but after 20 minutes of arguing, I felt pressured to accept this offer.

I gave them five days, keeping in mind that I received the notebook two days of initially ordering it. Five days later I got a mail from a “technical escalation coordinator” in Slovakia who wanted my address in order to send a new notebook. When asking him how long the transport of this would take, he estimated ten business days. I did not feel this was acceptable and replied that I did not wish for him to send a new notebook – instead I called the dealer and feed up with the situation, I told him that I would not accept another notebook, but just wanted my money back – which I finally got. Now I have a dell precision M4500, which I’m quite happy about.

[thePCxp]

I'm sorry that had to happen to you but you can't give up just because of one bad experience. Really, I think that you would have enjoyed the W510 and being a Lenovo customer.

[freakwave]

I am also sorry to hear. I can just say it again and again, if you are buying a notebook in that price range, please get the on site support. It is awesome. Even if the technician would not have a motherboard available, you are keeping your machine and can continue with your work.
And it is just about 100USD for 3 years on site.

[dr_st]

Based on the experience I've collected from these forums and the various stories told on it, I find that the ROI (return on investment) of onsite support depends a lot on the availability and the quality of service depots in one's area. And these vary a lot, because different countries and even regions have different subcontractors doing the repair work for Lenovo's laptops.

It also depends on the second crucial factor - how vital your laptop is to your daily routine. If the laptop is your only machine able to perform mission-critical functions, I'd say you definitely need the onsite service.

While the company I work at buys onsite service for all its machines, I myself never felt the need to have onsite service on my personal laptop. That is because it's only one of a few machines I have, and also because IBM Israel, who are the subcontractor providing service for Lenovo machines here, tend to do their work professionally and quickly.

With the situation being noticeably different with other laptop manufacturers, I half-shudder at the thought of Lenovo deciding to stop paying IBM Israel for lab services (or IBM raising the price to something unreasonable), and every time I think about servicing my machines, I keep fingers crossed that this partnership continues to the benefit of the customers.

[Navck]

I have a three year onsite warranty for my T410 and had one for the T43 (Which did not get recognized immediately back then...) and I highly recommend it over the depot warranty. However if you're able to get them to send the parts to you and you're competent enough to take your own machine apart, I'd take that route.

[dr_st]

However if you're able to get them to send the parts to you and you're competent enough to take your own machine apart, I'd take that route.

That's a very good point. Many parts are CRU (Customer Replaceable Units), and as such, Lenovo will ship them to you regardless of whether you have onsite warranty or not. Big things (motherboard/LCD) they probably will never ship, but there are quite a few borderline parts, where in principle they are not supposed to ship, but sometimes do.

[Crunch]

Hello everybody - I just want to share my experience of buying a lenovo w510 with anybody who will listen.

Well it all started about 3 months ago, when I was in the beginning of my final semester at university, studying architecture.
I decided that I needed a new notebook, after using my (ugly) little baby - a dell 1704 for 4 years.

It was important for me that the notebook was powerful, reliable and had service with a good reputation - when you are buying a notebook costing about 2700 dollars, you want to know that somebody will deal with your problems in a professional way, if you ever have any. Some of my fellow students recommended that I looked into a lenovo, and after reading some reviews on the w510 I thought this could be the notebook for me.

I bought it over the Internet and received it only two days later - I was thrilled!
At the first glance the W510 is actually a quite nice notebook with a good screen (FHD) and a seemingly good build quality. Though a began to notice that the notebook had a very distinct and high pitched noise, and a periodic "flicker" like small sparks on the left side of the notebook. At first I thought the high pitched noise came from the harddrive, though also thinking that it was unusual high pitched for this. I called IBM support who adviced me to turn of the CPU powermanagement in the BIOS which I did. This of course had a negative impact on the already low battery life, but did nothing for the flickering sound - which was kind of annoying especially because it was so expensive.

After talking with IBM support again, they adviced me to send it to their repair center – which I did.
This was the 31th of april 2010. I was promised that I would have it back about a week later. A week later I called their repaircenter who told me that they had only received it two days earlier, and hadn’t fixed it yet.
I guess I’ve called the IBM support center 9-11 during the next 17 days, telling them that I really needed that notebook, and if they could at least tell me when I would get it back – they couldn’t. It seemed that they had to replace the motherboard, and that they couldn’t get a hold of a new one. During this time, I was promised multiple times that somebody would call me back with more information – but never did. Enough is enough and finally I demanded to talk with the manager – and a was promised that the manager would call me back the same day – but he never did.

The next day, this must be a little over 3 weeks after I initially sent in the notebook, I called, and emailed the dealer from which I bought the notebook demanding my money back, and expressing my utter dissatisfaction with IBM support and Lenovo. He ended up talking with the manager, and even though I had demanded my money back, arranged that I would get a new computer. I told him that I wasn’t interested, and had lost faith in Lenovo/IBM and their ability to sort out this problem I just wanted my money back, but after 20 minutes of arguing, I felt pressured to accept this offer.

I gave them five days, keeping in mind that I received the notebook two days of initially ordering it. Five days later I got a mail from a “technical escalation coordinator” in Slovakia who wanted my address in order to send a new notebook. When asking him how long the transport of this would take, he estimated ten business days. I did not feel this was acceptable and replied that I did not wish for him to send a new notebook – instead I called the dealer and feed up with the situation, I told him that I would not accept another notebook, but just wanted my money back – which I finally got. Now I have a dell precision M4500, which I’m quite happy about.

Wow...I'm also sad to hear about your experience. You have to distinguish between Lenovo and IBM. Lenovo is the party that has turned out to be quite disastrous in some cases, and yours is an excellent example of that. I am so glad that IBM still performs the warranty for the inept customer service that Lenovo subjects its customers to. I've owned nothing but ThinkPads (thus far anyway) and under IBM, it was a whole other ball game. IBM was the gold standard that other manufacturers were compared to and judged by. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

The biggest issue is the lack of proper management and the fact that their various departments within the company are so ineffective because often times, they don't talk to each other. Another thing is the constant lies, and while some of the lies are not vicious ones, but they're still lies. For example, you were promised call-back's. You didn't get them. You were promised certain actions and they didn't happen, and nobody notified you, nobody sent you so much as an email to let you, the customer, who has expressly stated that you need your ThinkPad, any ThinkPad, maybe even any notebook at that point, to be able to work on what's really important, which are your studies. They also wasted a lot of your time. I'm really glad that you did get your money back. I hope it was the entire amount, not an amount less "restocking fees", "administrative fees"...you know, just money taken from you without cause and instead of calling it theft, they put a label on it by calling it a fee.

It's infuriating to think that this horror story, which these kinds of extremely bad customer service experiences are often referred to as, might actually have had some part in hurting your college work and, even worse, your grades. I truly hope that this is not the case.

If you'd like, send me a private message with your contact info. We might just be able to get some damages out of them for mistreating you the way they did. You won't have to participate in anything, nor will it cost you one dime.

[thePCxp]

You can't believe everything that you hear. Remember, people mostly write about negative experiences rather than good experiences.

About the promised call-back's, they're not lies. They're simply too busy to get to everyone on time. I'm sorry but I just don't believe you about the constant lies thing.

Lenovo still has the best customer service than any other computer maker out there. Really, I think all the complaints out there about their customer service is in the minority becuse, as I said before, people tend to write about bad expriences instead of good ones. (I really wish that more people would tell us about their good experiences.)

[AMATX]

Wow...I'm also sad to hear about your experience. You have to distinguish between Lenovo and IBM. Lenovo is the party that has turned out to be quite disastrous in some cases, and yours is an excellent example of that. I am so glad that IBM still performs the warranty for the inept customer service that Lenovo subjects its customers to. I've owned nothing but ThinkPads (thus far anyway) and under IBM, it was a whole other ball game. IBM was the gold standard that other manufacturers were compared to and judged by. Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

Well, that ain't the only thing IBM used to be 'good' at. IBM is not what it used to be, just ask anyone who's worked for them lately. A shell of what it used to be. As bad as it may seem, Thinkpads under Lenovo are probably better off over the long run than if IBM still ran it all. And, don't forget, back in the day, Thinkpads were way over priced, compared to what one can get today. If you have a phat profit margin built in, it's much easier to be a premium manufacturer. However, IBM couldn't keep up the profit game, so they had to sell off the pc division.

[freakwave]

in regards to way overpriced, yes my first thinkpad I think it was a 560, that was an amazing 10500 Deutsche Mark. I think that was back in 1997. That was an insane amount of money. Back than that was 6170 USD.