Warranty upgrades and options

[wolfman]

Hello all. I spent a few minutes searching for thoughts on warranty upgrades and options, but wanted to ask again in case folks thoughts might have changed over time.

I have the T420 in my signature below and it's working great for me. However, it has about 43 days of the 1 year depot warranty remaining. Given that I'm not super encouraged by what I'm hearing about the upcoming models (but will wait to make judgement till it's all official), I'm thinking I might extend the warranty to 3 years. I've already checked online and have the pricing, etc confirmed for my model.

The options available are:
1) 3 year depot for $99.
2) 3 year next business day on site for $159.

I live in a rural area, but work in a metropolitan area where there should be onsite coverage available. Some of the questions I'm looking for feedback on are:

1) Any one know of an actual onsite warranty coverage map?
2) Would a tech meet me at my workplace to look at the machine as it's in a metropolitan area?
3) Preferences between depot and onsite warranty?
4) If you were tech savvy and willing to fix some things yourself would you just keep the $99 / $159 in your pocket and let the original warranty period expire?

Thanks for the feedback!

[RealBlackStuff]

If that machine came only with a 1-yr depot warranty, it was probably bought from the Lenovo Outlet.
Laptops purchased there are NOT eligible for warranty extension!

[wolfman]

It wasn't bought from the outlet. It was purchased from http://www.lenovo.com new. I knew I could extend the warranty within the first year, so I chose to defer the cost of extending it till later as I wasn't interested in the Thinkpad accidental protection.

I've already gone to the Lenovo site and plugged in my serial number and that's where I got the upgrade prices listed above from, so I know I can upgrade it.

What do you think of the upgrade options?

[RealBlackStuff]

I've never bought a new Thinkpad, and I'm experienced enough not to need any external Service personnel.
If you need that laptop for your business, then yes, I would extend the warranty.
If not, I wouldn't bother.
You can most likely DIY replace whatever would break during the warranty period, for a total sum that is smaller than the warranty cost.

Please note: the extension you buy would be only for 2 years extra, for a total of 3 years since you bought it!
Make sure to read the smallprint!

[wolfman]

Thanks for the info. Yes, I'm aware that the 3 year upgrade is 2 additional to the 1 year that was with the unit new.

I have a W520 from work, this is my personal machine. I've replaced various parts on other Thinkpads before, so I'm giving a lot of consideration to just letting the warranty expire and deal with fan, board, etc replacements as they come (or not).

What I don't really know is if the onsite warranty tech would meet me someplace like my work office to do troubleshooting / repair or not. I wasn't able to find anything searching that mentioned that specifically, though I might've missed it. I did find lots of people recommending depot service because of horrors of onsite techs and more horror stories the other way around.

[mpcook]

I have had onsite come to my office in a different state from my home, although usually to my home office. They will come to whatever address you give. As to rural areas and a coverage map, I don't know but you can probably call and ask. I have had good luck with depot, and mostly good luck with onsite. One time, a replaced main board was installed incorrectly according to the second tech, who installed another new board and all was fine. First tech came to my home office in Ohio, next I was traveling and the second MB swap a week later was done in FL. My philosophy is if use is critical and for work (tax deductible) extend the warranty. Otherwise, if you're handy or have a friend who is, you can probably handle most items, except a new main board could be expensive. I had had a couple of drives replaced under warranty, and that would have exceeded the cost of warranty. However, I have owned a large number of Thinkpads, 30+ I think, and most lasted 3 - 5 years or more with no problems.

[ajkula66]

I live in what's considered a rural area (UPS adds a surcharge when shipping to my zip code, not kidding) and we had an on-site tech come out dozens of times without a problem, driving 60-70 miles to get up here.

When we were in Upstate NY - literally in the middle of nowhere - the same held true.

Obviously, YMMV.

NBD onsite is well worth the extra $$ IMO, but it's yours to spend...or not...

[wolfman]

Great, thanks for that information. I did call into Lenovo a few minutes ago and got them to confirm that my address would be acceptable to dispatch a service technician to if needed. We're about 37 miles outside Harrisburg, so I was hoping it wouldn't be an issue.

[pianowizard]

4) If you were tech savvy and willing to fix some things yourself would you just keep the $99 / $159 in your pocket and let the original warranty period expire?

I think a fifth consideration should be whether you have a tendency to break laptops. I have owned about 75 laptops since 2002, and so far only the very first two of these had problems. My first laptop was a Dell Inspiron 8200, and one day I accidentally dropped its optical drive 4 feet onto the floor. It was replaced for free because I had accidental warranty -- I upgraded the warranty because this laptop cost me almost one month of my salary. My second laptop was a refurbished Thinkpad 600E, and one day its original 6.4GB HDD died. I had to shell out $104 to replace it with a 40GB HDD. But for my next 73 laptops, they didn't have a single problem during my ownership. I think I have been so lucky because I use my desktops at least 90% of the time, and because I rarely move my laptops around much (I use USB drives to transfer files to and from work, instead of transporting laptops). So, if I were to buy a brand-new laptop today, it wouldn't make sense to upgrade the warranty.

Therefore, I don't think you can decide whether or not to upgrade simply by polling a bunch of people. Each person's situation is unique to some extent.

[wolfman]

Right, point taken.

I've personally never had an issue with my A31p, R40, X61, T410 (we had 2) or T420. I was hoping not to have a poll of should I or shouldn't I, but to get feedback from folks on things like "I've had good experience with onsite, it was worth the money" (or the opposite), "Having the warranty helped my resale value", "I can fix pretty much anything that goes wrong, so I don't get the warranty", "I had a good depot service experience" (or the opposite), etc.

A number of these things seem to change over time. Like you mentioned, the costs of the machines have dropped significantly. The onsite warranty for 3 years would be about 18% or so of the purchase price. In the past it might've been a good bit less as a percentage.

Folks often talk here about whether or not the quality of the machines is still there or not, so things may also change over time with the quality of service technicians.

So I figured I'd ask and get a discussion going.

[doherrick]

If that machine came only with a 1-yr depot warranty, it was probably bought from the Lenovo Outlet.
Laptops purchased there are NOT eligible for warranty extension!

Recently I saw several refub Thinkpads for sale on Ebay from a vendor I know and trust that had 3 year on-site warranty upgrades. I asked about this and he said Lenovo has changed the warranty policy on refub Thinkpads because HP, Dell, & Apple all offer the same warranty upgrades as for new laptops.

Can anyone confirm this? I can;t find anything on Lenovo's site and I haven't bothered to call or chat about this because my recent dealings with customer service questions have been beyond horrible.

[basketb]

...
Recently I saw several refub Thinkpads for sale on Ebay from a vendor I know and trust that had 3 year on-site warranty upgrades. I asked about this and he said Lenovo has changed the warranty policy on refub Thinkpads because HP, Dell, & Apple all offer the same warranty upgrades as for new laptops.

Can anyone confirm this? I can;t find anything on Lenovo's site and I haven't bothered to call or chat about this because my recent dealings with customer service questions have been beyond horrible.

There was some discussion about this in another thread a few weeks ago. If you go to the main page of the Lenovo outlet, there's a field "PROTECT YOUR MACHINE" in the middle of the right hand side and there's a link to "Learn more".

[RealBlackStuff]

I can only praise their unproblematic EZServ service.
Recently I bought a Thinkpad that had a cracked LCD, but it was still under full parts warranty!
Called Atlanta, they delivered an empty box the next day (Air express overnight), shipped it out and had it back 3 days later with a brand new screen, compliments of the Lenovo warranty.
Got to luuuv' those freebies!

[peterdo]

I used to go for the warrantee but now I don't bother. It's probably cheaper in the long run for me.