Rant: Lenovo Parts

[WizardOfBoz]

Forgive the rant. Cross postedon Lenovo Forum (feel free to delete if this violates any rules).

I just tried to find a part on the Lenovo website, and found it to be just about as bad an on-line experience as one could imagine. Without a doubt, the worst example of e-commerce I have ever experienced. My situation: I know what FRU I need. So first, the site makes it impossible to look up directly. Why? Why, if I know a part number, does Lenovo make it hard to buy that part directly?

Ok, you play the cares your dealt. So I played by their rules. I tried to look up my model as requested. First, I filled out the asked-for model number (on http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/cont ... ow-categor... But entering the number doesn't do anything! Hmmm. There is also a spot for me to "select my product". This is a pull-down list with 100s of items long - literally every Lenovo products ever - that is NOT ORGANIZED IN ANY WAY. Are these people crazy? Do they value my time so little, or customer satisfaction so little, that they don't care if their site wastes my time and I can't get the product I need? Then more fun. After putting in my model number and actually finding "W530" in a random list of dozens of thinkpad laptops, the site threw an error. It explained to me that I must have entered a number wrong. I've managed SW products, and this is unacceptable. The customer should never, ever, be allowed to enter anything close to something that is not recognized.

I've gotten good service when I 've called in. But based on this site alone, I'd never buy another Lenovo product again. And I'd recommend the same to others. I'm going on a rant to several forums about this, as well. Seriously, the worst website I've ever used is ... from a computer company? Really? A parts site, which you may be calling under extreme stress, does nothing but add more stress and frustration? :smileymad:

This is not to mention the decline in information available about machines and parts (compare the T61p parts lists with the W530. The latter is almost unusable).

The W530 may be my last Lenovo. Which bums me out: I love the machine.

Smart people will recognize that i wrote this to vent, yes, but also to suggest to Lenovo that they have a significant opportunity for improving a competitive disadvantage and making it an advantage.

Two W530s, i7-3820QM, 2.7Ghz, 500Gb Samsung 850 Pro, 1920x1080, nVidia K2000m/100m, Win 7 Pro
T510, M540, 2.53Ghz, 1Tb hybrid drive, Win 7 Pro
Two T61ps, T9500/T9300, 2.6GHz, 8Gb RAM, 256Gb Samsung 840 Evo, 1900x1200, nVidia 256Mb FX 570m, Win 7 Pro/Ultimate

[rkawakami]

Sorry to hear of your experience. Personally, I've never ordered replacement parts from the factory. The only support dealing I've had is with ordering recovery disk sets. That said, I Googled "lenovo parts order" and found these two pages:

http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/migr-50278
http://support.lenovo.com/us/en/documents/ht074546

Both appear to offer parts ordering by FRU, either by phone or online via model lookup. Model lookup requires your 7 character MODEL TYPE (i.e., 24384ZU), not W530. In the first link I provided above, there's this site: http://www.lenovo.com/services_warranty/us/en/parts/

Going there, you have a choice between Think products and Idea/Lenovo products. Under Think, there's a "click here" to order online. Click that and you'll be taken here:

http://www-304.ibm.com/shop/americas/co ... _main.html

Click on Retail store. Enter the FRU. Does that work?

BTW, your "shop.lenovo.com" link doesn't work. Also, somebody on the Lenovo Forums already beat me with the answer a couple of hours ago. I don't hang out there often even though I'm one of the original moderators.

[WizardOfBoz]

Ray, I've had the same experience ordering replacement disk sets. Very pleasant, helpful folks.

This was for a T61p, and for a T510. Now I've got a W530, and I'm finding that

1) Lenovo is providing less information about the different W530s (not allowing you to figure out what you're suppose to have in your 2346, as opposed to a 2441. I actually called and got help from service to figure that out. This seems WAY less efficient - having to have a live person rather than a scaleable website - for LEnovo!

2) The actual info you do get for the W530 (and later? I don't know) is less clear and is not helpful.

3) It seems that if your SN goes off warranty, the website won't give you any info at all.

4) And the points I've raised in my rant. It just seems to me that having a website that helps people enjoy their Lenovo products bolsters the value of new products. If I'm buying a machine with poor support, I'm apt to be willing to pay less or will go to another company. I have a friend who will not, under any circumstances, buy HP for this reason. Given that the guy has a cluster of 8 Xeon E5 CPU machines in his house (he runs a charitable foundation fighting cancer, and does molecular simulations of DNA stress, strain, and breakage) he's not the kind of guy companies like HP or Lenovo want to put off.

So I guess I'm ranting, yes, because I want better service. But also because I like my Thinkpads and want Lenovo to be successful.

But what do I know? I'm only a customer...

[ajkula66]

Given that the guy has a cluster of 8 Xeon E5 CPU machines in his house (he runs a charitable foundation fighting cancer, and does molecular simulations of DNA stress, strain, and breakage) he's not the kind of guy companies like HP or Lenovo want to put off.

I've got news for you: Lenovo, Dell, HP or any of their smaller counterparts couldn't care less about who they put off, and they've all proven it on numerous occasions.

[UMPC2024]

Wasn't there an easier way just last year to look up and order FRUs for all models? I could've sworn that I looked up FRUs on the Lenovo site and didn't have to be redirected to an IBM site.

[WizardOfBoz]

I've got news for you: Lenovo, Dell, HP or any of their smaller counterparts couldn't care less about who they put off, and they've all proven it on numerous occasions.

ajkula66, I think you're right. It's a crazy world. People are successful by creating very high-quality stuff (Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard), build a great, successful company, and then some yahoo comes in and destroys the company by building c**p and providing c****y service. And you get:

Company Profit Margins (%) Qtrly Revenue Growth (yoy) Quarterly Earnings Growth (yoy)
Hewlett-Packard -10.86 -5.60 -16.10
Dell 4.17 -10.70 -30.6

You'd think that some genius would connect the dots... For example, UMPC2024, there WAS an easier way to look up FRUs in the past. Not now. Will this decline in service continue? We'll see if Yang Yuanqing can build Lenovo back up. Right now, nobody seems to be listening...

[brchan]

Have you tried looking on ebay or amazon for genuine new parts? I have got many genuine replacement parts from good sellers, and they all turned out to be good. I have also heard that buying direct from Lenovo costs more, though I do not know if this true.

One thing I do wish Lenovo would do, is to keep the quality control for the replacement parts the same. Most of the newer genuine parts (~2010) that Lenovo made for my T61 and T60 (palmrest, LCD covers, hinges) are poorer quality than those which were made at the time of the Thinkpad model (~2006/07).

[UMPC2024]

Yes, brchan, the parts from Lenovo are a lot more expensive than the ones that can be found on eBay or Amazon. For instance, I looked up a T430 keyboard and it's $151 while one amazon, it ballparks around $60.

[Sleepy664]

I live in Europe and in my country there is a company that is the official Lenovo spare parts distributor.

Usually it tooks an E-mail with part numbers to order and in a week or two it arrives.


But not this time. I was told that all the parts are in stock so I placed an order and then nothing has happened for almost two months. Then I was told that the manufacturer didn't deliver it to them yet

They've probably meant that the manufacturer has it in stock. On a Mars or somewhere...