A tale of bad customer service – Lenovo
17Mar10
I’ve been pretty gushing in the past about Lenovo and their netbooks, but more recently they’ve not been doing much to keep me happy.
About 6 weeks ago I ordered an s10-3t ‘netvertible’ (a netbook crashed into a tablet). It wasn’t exactly what I wanted – I’d have liked a higher resolution screen, and built in 3G, but it seemed like the best option available at the time. When I ordered delivery was supposed to be in 2-3 weeks, so I should have got it by the end of February.
As the end of February approached I started to regularly check my order status online. On Mar 4th my order status changed from ‘released’ to ‘scheduled’ – signs of progress at last.
After days of my order being ‘scheduled’ with no sign of it actually shipping I called the customer services help line to find out what was going on. The customer service rep said that she didn’t know what was going on, would find out, and call me back. I wasn’t called back. Meanwhile when I checked my personal email I found the following (why wasn’t the rep aware of this when I called? The email was sent before my call):
Hi Chris,
We are writing to you regarding your recent purchase of the IdeaPad S10-3T.
Unfortunately we are experiencing some delays with the GPS software that is part of the laptop.
We can ship the laptop out to yourself without the software to save anymore delays.
The software will then be available to download free of charge from our website in April.
If you would rather the laptop is shipped with the software pre-installed there is going to be a delay on the shipment.
Can you please advise us on how you wish to proceed?
Kind regards
Teleweb Team
I replied on the same day (Fri 12 Mar):
Please ship it without delay. I can live without GPS software (that I never even knew was part of the bundle).
No response from Lenovo. No change in status on my order.
On Monday (15 Mar) I tried to call the sales team again, but got routed through to voicemail (despite following the instructions not to do that).
Yesterday (Tue 16 Mar) I emailed again (as it wasn’t convenient for me to call, since I’m at a conference in Barcelona):
Has anything happened about this? When I check my order status online it still says ‘scheduled’. I never received the call back I was promised on Friday, and when I tried to call yesterday I got routed to voicemail.
No reply.
Today I checked my order status again, wishfully hoping to see shipping details, but instead I see ‘cancelled’. WTF?
Since I’m still in no position to call the sales team I’ve sent another email into the black hole:
My order is now showing as cancelled. What is going on? I asked 5 days ago for it to be shipped without delay. Nobody seems to be replying to emails. Return calls that I was promised haven’t happened. I can’t get through to the call center when I try to call. All in all – very poor.
I can’t even reorder from the site, as the s10-3t isn’t available at the moment.
Is there any way that you can reinstate my order and get it on its way to me?
Lenovo – you suck. Doubly so because my mum has had similar issues with the U450 she’s trying to buy from you (twice).
Update (pm 17 Mar):
Hello,
We are writing to you with regards to your order as above.
As you are aware from our previous email we had issues with the GPS software.
Unfortunately now due to component issues we are now unable to fulfil your order for the following product:
IdeaPad S10-3T Cosmic Night (Black) Cover
We therefore will need to cancel your order, the warranty will be cancelled and refunded.
Please find below a 20% voucher code to be used on our website for a future order with ourselves as an apology.
I am still left wondering why people have these machines in other countries? This looks to me like the fiasco with shipping that we had when the X60 was first launched.
Filed under: could_do_better, grumble, technology | 4 Comments
Tags: customer service, lenovo, s10-3t
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Chris Swan's Weblog 
Chris,
Sorry to hear it went this way for you. Can you shoot me an email with your order number and I’ll see what can be done.
Best regards,
Mark
I’ve sent Mark the order number, so fingers crossed that this has a happy ending.
My experience of Lenovo customer service is even more appalling.
We are a Lenovo Partner and regularly resell and recommend Lenovo hardware to our clients. We have been generally happy with the hardware. However, one computer we recently supplied turned out to have an intermittent problem with its on-board graphics card. This problem manifested itself from day 1 and the computer is still well within its warranty.
Trying to get this resolved has been an enormous problem. Lenovo “engineers” came to visit 3 times with new motherboards, that turned out to be “faulty” and the “engineers” had to take them back. Since their last visit last Monday, the computer in question has now been left *completely non-working*, whereas it was useable before, albeit crashing the monitor about once a day. The computer is now not booting, and the user is unable to work, resulting in significant loss of revenue for my client.
We have been left in the dark as to what Lenovo are going to do next, having to chase every day to get new visits scheduled, talking to different call centre people every day who are utterly unable to help, often can’t even tell us when the next visit might be, and visibly don’t understand the problem. Since Monday, three times, we have been promised that a courier would come to collect the computer to take it back to “the depot” where a “higher skill” engineer would look at it, although this computer has a warranty that says it should be fixed on site at my client’s. The couriers never showed up, Lenovo never called us despite promising they would. When we chase, they cannot give us any information. My client is understandably unhappy with this farcical situation.
We have raised a complaint, following the procedure given to us by the call centre. We haven’t even received an acknowledgement.
This is very, very disappointing, and without a doubt the worst customer service I’ve ever experienced in the UK.
We will not buy or recommend Lenovo again. I would advise you to do the same.
EJR
It’s true. The absolute worst experience. I placed an order for a new computer and received a confirmation. Next Day an email that the billing and shipping information didn’t match. Asked to respond I did and re sent the billing and shipping info. Another email that the bank needed me to change my billing address to include the shipping address and that I had to contact the bank to do this. Ok, 30 years of billing address to p.o. box and shipping address to steet address now needs to be changed? I’m wrong they’re right. Even though they bank had already released my money to Lenovo for a computer they won’t send because the bill to and ship to address are different? What?
I emailed 3 times and spoke to 2 reps. (One who hung up on me) still no result. Canceled the order, why go on if this is an example of the kind of “service” I can expect.