Blog

On May 23rd I ordered a new laptop from Lenovo.com, while I had been planning to get something cheaper, a good sale on the Ideapad Y550 was available, and Lenovo had a good reputation and reviews and I decided to go ahead and spend a bit more to get this system instead of a lower end laptop I was looking at elsewhere, that was cheaper, but not as powerful.

The computer shipped far earlier than estimated when I ordered it. Three days instead of two weeks. Had I known it would ship so much earlier than estimated I would have waited to order it until the end of the sale. The new timing was very inconvenient as I was out of town. A shipping estimate is only an estimate, and I get that, but the difference between 3 days and two weeks pretty much speaks of them not really bothering with estimates, and they are simply supplying random information which they think is least likely to make customers angry with them.

At first the timing only seemed annoying. It meant that nobody was home to get the delivery, so my husband was forced to leave work and chase a FedEx truck around while on the phone with the FedEx dispatcher in order to try to meet up with them. It took over an hour out of his day, but he got the computer and it sat at home waiting for me.

When I returned from out of town and was able to check out the new computer, it would not work properly. The DVD burner was unable to burn. I spent a great MANY HOURS troubleshooting the problem, not that I should have to troubleshoot a brand new computer, but I did, because I’d rather fix it myself then deal with support. Eventually it became clear that it was a hardware problem and I looked to submit a trouble ticket. I was horribly disappointed to discover you do not offer online tech support. I tried posting in the forum to no response. After a week, I gave up, and had to resort to calling tech support.

The person at tech support was very polite, which is lovely, but I do not want to have to make phone calls. I purchase online so that I can deal with things online. The first thing she wanted to do was to take control of the computer using showmypc.com. Because I had never used the computer, I went ahead and agreed to this, but if it was a computer I had already put into service, this would not have been acceptable to me, especially not as a first step. While polite and helpful, she was not overly knowledgeable. For instance, she typed in ‘rededit’ and then when surprise surprise that did not work, she needed me to hold on while she looked up the command she needed to type. I didn’t bother to tell her the command and waited for her to figure it out herself. She found the right word and then found that it did her no good. She put me on hold to ask somebody else what to do and was then able reach the same conclusion I had. She said that the part could be sent to me, or I could send the machine in for repairs. She went to look up the part information, and determined that the DVD drive was unfortunately not in stock and not customer replaceable on this model, and while I could send it in for repairs, this was a brand new computer that I had never even used, so I decided to return it instead. She then was forced by policy to make a sales pitch for an extended warranty. It was embarrassing.

She gave me the case number from support to use when calling sales to return it and told me what number to call, but I wasn’t able to call until Monday, because they were closed on the weekend.

Unfortunately the return center cannot actually look up case numbers. I am then stuck waiting while the return center CALLS technical support to ask them about the case number, and apparently they don’t have any better of a connection to technical support than customers do, because they were put on hold for a long time before they could get through.

Then customer support came back on the line to ask me what was wrong with the computer. I asked, doesn’t tech support have it in their notes? Yes, but they need to verify.

Now they are making me talk to tech support yet again, because apparently you hire tech support that your other tech support doesn’t trust.

Now I am having to jump through those hoops again.

All I want at this point is to return this defective machine. Which is what I called to do. Even if I should choose to give Lenovo a second chance and have it replaced, this excessive handling as I try to manage it, is making it less and less appealing by the minute. In the literally dozens of laptop purchases that I’ve made in the past, not even beginning to count all of the desktop purchases, really, this is the most unhappy with a computer purchase that I’ve ever been.

So, tech support guy number 2 says, oh, it is totally customer replaceable “you just need to remove one screw”, and we have it in stock. The thing is, because of the shipping early while I was out of town, I am now on the final day of being allowed to return it. I point this out, as at this point we are only assuming that the DVD drive is the only problem with the unit, I haven’t actually worked with it further.

Both sales and tech support say that I will be able to return it beyond the normal return time, if I will accept the option of trying to replace the part. I agree to it because I believe American Express will back me on the matter should it come to that.

Tech support tells me the drive will arrive in two days.

It doesn’t.

I call back to ask about the drive and am told it isn’t in stock. I am told it should be in within a week, and I agree to give it a little more time, because other things in my life were becoming very complicated and I didn’t have enough energy to fight with them about it right then. He verified my email address (which was wrong, STILL – I had actually already been through the email address thing 3 times before, and every time I corrected them, and they said they would fix it, but it was still wrong in the exact same way it was the first time the read it back to me. “So, your email is F – O – R – E -M…” “No! It’s FAMILY F – A – M – I – L – Y the word, ‘family’” “Okay, I’ll change that”.) and said he would send me shipping confirmation.

A week went by and no sign of the drive or the shipping notification arrived. I called again and was told it was still out of stock and to give it two more weeks. I refused and told them that it needed to be returned. I was told that somebody would call me back to start that within 72 hours, but hopefully sooner. Yeah. Hopefully sooner.

The next day, the drive appeared on my doorstep.

It is nice to know how organized and on top of things they are. Obviously, not at all.

I was able to install the replacement drive, but it was not just “one screw”. I’ve done a lot of repairs and replacements on laptops and am comfortable mucking about with the hardware on a laptop. I’d have to say that for the average consumer, that was probably not really a consumer replaceable part.

I got it put back together and it didn’t work properly AT ALL. I fought and fought and fought with the system, and eventually after much fighting with drivers and updates I was able to get it working. The brand of the replacement they sent was different than the one I pulled out, although according to online research the core manufacturer was the same. Lenovo really should be shipping with all drivers and software installed that is needed to make the basic functionality of the product WORK. After all, the first thing THEY recommend that you do is burn recovery discs, so…

Yeah.

Well, that is more or less my tale of Lenovo woe.

I am not a fan.

MSP is a major hub for NWA, so we use them more than we have for a long time. Many years ago, I liked them fairly well, but not so much these days.

Now, I do prefer them to Sun Country, which is a locally based airline. In a world where I hate to fly, and I think customer service has plummeted in general, airlines have taken a really spectacular nose dive in my book.

Actually, I guess it has been a long time since I flew actual NWA, because NWA is in the process of being assimilated by Delta (it grows and grows with each passing flight) and I have NEVER liked Delta.

I hate flying, and could go on and on about it, but I have other things to do today, so I will try to stay focused.

NWA (like many of the others) is all about nickle and diming you to death now. The price for the ticket is not the price for the ticket as it used to be to travel. I know many of the others are charging for food and for checked luggage now, so I will leave that for another ranty post. One of the things that has really been bugging me about NWA is that they are holding so many of their seats aside now as preferred seats, so it is almost impossible to choose a seat when you book unless you are willing to pay extra. They hold them back until the last minute, and then seemingly randomly assign them to passengers.

The Boston flight, the number of people who were traveling together, who were not assigned seats with each other was just shocking. There we all are on the plane, making trades with people, so they we could sit with traveling companions. Bad enough to be in such cramped quarters, I’d really prefer to be pressed uncomfortably close to somebody I know, instead of a stranger. It is like in the seat lottery they are not even taking tickets purchased together on one reservation into account.

On the flight to California, the seat in front of me was completely fucked up. It was leaning to the right, and slightly back. One of the support bars was broken. A second one appeared to be missing. It was held partially back together with a zip tie. Seriously, I took a crappy cell phone photo. That zip tie was what was keeping the tray sort of vaguely… less broken. The tray was unusable. It was completely crooked because the seat it was attached to was crooked, and then further broken because the support bolt was gone. It was straining at the latch and bowed out badly. I had to keep adjust the latch to keep it from popping open because of flight vibration. I did try to open it to put water on it and work on a Sudoku puzzle, but it wasn’t usable, and then I had a horrible time getting it closed, totally pissing off the person in front of me.

At my destination, my suitcase (which I paid extra to be able to travel with) was broken. Just a big gaping separation along one seam, and from the placement it seemed pretty obvious that they had caused it by picking it up by the rolling handle inset, instead of by one of the two actual suitcase handles.

I reported it to somebody, who tried to convince me not to file a claim.

“Well, you know, it takes like 12 weeks.”

“Umm, okay.”

“I mean, they try to repair it for you. You don’t even get any money unless they can’t repair it for you.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, is it even… I mean, how old is it?”

“Less than a year.”

“Well, how much did it cost?”

“$150”

“Is it even worth the trouble for you?”

“Umm… yes.”

“Well, you have to fill out a form.”

“Okay. Then what? You keep my bag?”

“Yes. We send it off, it will be gone about 12 weeks.”

“How do I get my stuff home?”

“You have 24 hours to turn it in. You fill out the form, and then empty your stuff and bring it back within 24 hours.”

“But, this isn’t home. I don’t go home for two weeks. How am I supposed to get my stuff home?”

Delta lady calls somebody to ask about this problem. How can this be an unusual problem? Am I actually the first person ever who has persisted in filing a complaint who actually had the problem on the front end of their trip?

Eventually she determines that I can turn it in within 24 hours of my return flight. They have no solution as to how I get my stuff safely home in a broken suitcase.

Then we go to fill out the form. It turns out I have very little to do. She must type a whole lot to fill it out. I don’t write a thing, or sign a thing. I mostly just stand there and tell her some addresses and phone numbers. It takes a long time.

When I opened it last night, several little things inside were broken. Like my plastic pill minder was broken and pills were all over the inside of my suitcase. It was aggravating. They obviously treated it fairly roughly.

Bah.