Lenovo ThinkPad Z61t experience

December 6th, 2007

Thinking about getting a Lenovo/IBM ThinkPad? Think carefully and read this story to be sure you really want one. Back in October I ordered a ThinkPad Z61t directly from Lenovo from their website at a great deal of $599 plus tax (they charge tax everywhere in the United States that your state charges taxes). The order went through after I selected a couple options like getting the one gig of ram as a single chip instead of two and getting the regular screen without the camera. A few days later Lenovo’s website said that my laptop will be shipped by the end of October about two weeks. Longer than I wanted away but I was willing to wait that long. It was a pretty good price competitive with the Dell laptop I was looking at. Then November came and I hadn’t received a laptop nor any notification of shipment. Checking the status online I would come to find out that my ThinkPad order had been canceled by Lenovo. They sent me an e-mail saying that apart was out of stock and that they would upgrade my laptop for free to one with a camera in the screen. I didn’t really want to camera but it didn’t look like I had much choice if I still wanted the ThinkPad from Lenovo. In the e-mail they said they were going to automatically process this upgrade for me. So a week later I checked again and still no update to the status. No change to my original order. That’s what I called Lenovo to find out what was going on and was told that my order had been canceled. But that it had not been reordered. I no longer had an order. If I wanted to place an order I could. Even though they were supposed to do that for me. Their explanation was that they must have been busy, too busy to do what they said. Frustrated, I still have them go with that order. And a few days later around the middle of November Lenovo’s website told me the laptop would ship on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Well, Black Friday rolls around and there are some crazy deals out there for laptops. I go online and check the order of my status and guess what. It has not been shipped. It will not be shipped until the middle of December. I have had my ship date pushed back several times now. Never with an explanation or even a notification. So at this point I realize it could be more than three months before I ever get that laptop and I order a Dell Vostro 1500 for the same price. I received that within a week. I then call Lenovo in the beginning of December to find out what was up with that Z61t and was told they probably would go out until the end of December now. I ordered the laptop in the middle of October and they still weren’t sure when they could ship it. Or they did know and they just didn’t want to tell me. I’ve owned ThinkPads before in the past and love them but this is the first time I’ve ever dealt with Lenovo directly in sales. The experience was frustrating and I would have to give them a failing grade on communications, what little of it there was. They either don’t know or won’t tell you what they have in inventory and this is why they can give you an accurate ship date. So keep this in mind if you’re ever ordering a laptop from Lenovo. How important is it that you actually get what you ordered within a reasonable timeframe and how important is it that the company you’re giving money to communicates reasonable expectations to you?

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Entry Filed under: ThinkPad, Lenovo, Laptops