X120E dead system board & intl warranty woes

[flrthinkpad]

After 6 months my X120E died. I bought it in the US in April. The lead time from Lenovo was too long so I had to buy a pre-configured one and the only one I could get with short lead time was an E-240.

The computer died while I was in the US, but was leaving for Japan within 2 days. I called Lenovo in the US and they said to use the intl warranty and repair it in Japan because they can't ship internationally. I called Japan and they confirmed that there was no problem in sending it to them for repair. They warned about keyboard replacement and OS issues; obviously not an issue. (However, if you look up the X121E for sale in Japan then you can select English keyboard and English OS!)

So I have it picked up by a courier. They call me back a half week later and say "your computer needs a new system board but we cannot obtain one in Japan so we can't fix it and we will return it to you". I talked to the US and they are baffled by this response. How hard is it to get a system board from China?

Does anyone have any suggestions? They sell the X121E in Japan so there should be a number of system boards that would work with this unit. I think I am facing typical Japanese "never think outside the box": if we can't get the system board specified in the book then we can't fix it. There is already a replacement FRU for the specific system board from 04W0366 to 63Y1638. I couldn't find the latter reference on Lenovo's website.

Any suggestions? Or has anyone else had international warranty issues?

Re the unit. I guess that I got what I paid for. The unit saw limited use. Only when I travel. Well, I guess that's close to 50% of the time. So about 3 months of regular use before it died. I am typing this on a 3.5 year old, rock solid T61.

[lead_org]

if the machine is covered in Japan then they can obtain the parts through whichever means, whether that is to courier the parts from overseas (which do occur on lot of occasions, and can take a little longer). I am not sure why they would return the laptop to you.

I suggest you post this on the Lenovo forum, forum.lenovo.com the Lenovo staffs there may look into this problem for you.