Anyone familiar with IBM repair service ???? Need advice

[gk1998]

First of all, I LOVE my T40. I've had it for two years now and it has been quite reliable.
Last week the screen started to shut itself off intermittently without observable reason. I was only working in Word and nothing else. This started happening 2-3x per day. I tested this on an external monitor as well, same thing. Screen goes black, but the computer is still on, the fan is still working, but nothing else is. If after a while the screen comes back, the picture is all garbled with thousands of different colored pixels, it looks like a TV with no reception. Most of the time I have to do a restart and then everyhing seems to be fine for a while.

I already sent in my T40 twice for repairs and each time the turnaround time was more than one week. When I called IBM now, they said that they should send my T40 back within one day after receiveing it. How reliable is that information ? I heavily rely on my T40 every day, it would be a disaster for me is I had to wait again more than a week to get it back.



Any recent experience with IBM's service ?



Any help is highly appreciated

Thanks

 

[imported_nerve]

Hi
I do alot of warranty work for IBM.
I have been experiencing extremely long B/O for system boards and such.
Thats what looks to be the problem with yours.

 

[gk1998]

Hi

Thank you so much for your reply. I am sending it out today.
I have a T40 with a 1.5 Ghz Centrino chip. Are those boards affected by the long wait ?
I am a heavy user and rely on my trusted T40 eveyday, I really hope I'll get it back soon.

Thanks again

 

[Baldy18]

I've sent in both my T40 and previously my i1500 for service a 3-4 times over the past 4-5 years and every time I go tit back within 5 days. The most recent time was about a month ago for a cracked power jack.

 

[mcfreiz]

we send back thinkpads for repair on a reg basis at work. turnaround time is usually less than a week.

 

[mehmetmunur]

Hate to hijack here, but are power adapter plugs on the motherboards sturdy? My old compaq laptop became a desktop because of that adapter plug issue. If i moved it for a mili-second it would disconnect, and as you can imagine battery life is non-existent on a 6 year old battery. My new x41 has a plug on the left hand side that basically stops me from putting it on my lap all the time, I am wondering if I should be more careful...

 

[fbrdphreak]

I'm surprised to hear so many people have ~1 week turn around times. I have a 3-year warranty w/Thinkpad protection: they ship me a box overnight/2-day, work on it and ship it back the same day they get it. I've never been without for more than 3 days

 

[TROAB]

Wow... my T41 has the same exact problem. I started about 7 months after I purchased the machine.

I sent it back to IBM, it was very quick. Here was the problem though, about 6 month prior I had spilled a glass of water on the machine. I immediately shut it off, and took it apart, careful to make sure every component got dry. A day or two later I reassembled the laptop and it worked good as if nothing had happened...

Fast forward 6 months. The problem you describe starts happening. I send it to IBM, they tell me the system board is shot and that there is evidence of spill damage which isn't covered and I have to pay $900 for a new system board. I explained to them the truth (I didn't really see any point in lying because I honetslty don't see how a single spill 6 months prior would cause this) well that didn't work. I told them to ship it back unrepaired. I wasn't paying $900 to fix a machine that cost me $1400 to begin with.

Fortunately it usually only occurs when the mahine gets jostled while it's running, and it's not my primary machine anyways. I intend to replace the system fully in another year or two.