UP2MyNeckSF

Junior Member
Dec 19, 2018
4
1
36
I have been researching new Laptops for a while (my eyes are bleeding) and all set on the Thinkpad X1 Extreme... was able to customize some options I wanted and ready to part with my money. There was a glitch in their "shopping cart" interface and I couldn't get it to go to the payment page. I tried calling Lenovo and was on hold twice for over 30 minutes. I finally was able reach them via chat. Was one of the most frustrating experiences... was like trying to teach trigonometry to a house cat. Can anyone weigh in on this? Is their customer support really this poor or was I just unlucky that day? I was really excited to be getting this machine (by far the most I have ever spent on a laptop $3600+tx USD) and if something goes wrong I want to know that they will stand behind their warranty. Any thoughts or advice from personal experience would be appreciated.
 

Jorgp2

Junior Member
Dec 19, 2018
21
11
81
The Thinkpad line from lenovo has some of the best warranty suppport you will find.

Just make sure you're doing depot repair instead of calling aupport first.

Usually they will fix and ship overnight, even with the base one year warranty.

I would suggest buying the extended warranty, just remember you can only do so while your original one year warranty is still valid.

Also, i also have an X1 extreme on order. But i used my Perks At Work code to get a large discount.
 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
37,734
18,005
146
My experience is Lenovo is on par with other vendors.

Use their support.lenovo.com for warranty lookup, initiating service requests if needed, etc...

Yea, sometimes there are hold times, but not always.
 
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UP2MyNeckSF

Junior Member
Dec 19, 2018
4
1
36
The Thinkpad line from lenovo has some of the best warranty suppport you will find.

Just make sure you're doing depot repair instead of calling aupport first.

Usually they will fix and ship overnight, even with the base one year warranty.

I would suggest buying the extended warranty, just remember you can only do so while your original one year warranty is still valid.

Also, i also have an X1 extreme on order. But i used my Perks At Work code to get a large discount.
Thanks for the quick reply and your kind advice Jorge! I had included the Three year extended warranty (PremiumCare and Accidental Damage) in the original quote. For me, this is a lot of money...I'll probably end up sleeping with it next to me! Bet that will go over well with my wife. LOL
I'm not familiar with Perks at Work we have a service through my job called Benefit Hub, they offer access to the full line of Lenovo, Dell, and HP. I checked a few times through their portal and the prices were the same as logging on to the regular site. Probably is only valid on the third full moon of a month ending in "t" during a meteor shower.
Thanks again and Best Wishes for the coming year!
 

UsandThem

Elite Member
May 4, 2000
16,068
7,380
146
The wait and hold times is long with just about company out there right now due to the holiday shopping.

I had the "pleasure" of dealing with a lost package from Newegg a few years back the week of Christmas. Wait times for online chat were 2+ hours, so I decided to send them an email instead. As soon as I sent it, I received an auto reply which stated if I needed to reach them, to use the online chat as they were not checking their emails until after Christmas due to being too busy. :eek:
 

UP2MyNeckSF

Junior Member
Dec 19, 2018
4
1
36
My experience is Lenovo is on par with other vendors.

Use their support.lenovo.com for warranty lookup, initiating service requests if needed, etc...

Yea, sometimes there are hold times, but not always.
Thank you Ch33zw1z! Appreciate you taking time to respond and prop up my confidence. Happy Holidays
 

UP2MyNeckSF

Junior Member
Dec 19, 2018
4
1
36
The wait and hold times is long with just about company out there right now due to the holiday shopping.

I had the "pleasure" of dealing with a lost package from Newegg a few years back the week of Christmas. Wait times for online chat were 2+ hours, so I decided to send them an email instead. As soon as I sent it, I received an auto reply which stated if I needed to reach them, to use the online chat as they were not checking their emails until after Christmas due to being too busy. :eek:
Totally understand about the additional holiday volume. What I forgot to mention is their phone system just cut off and disconnected after 30-40 minutes each time.. by the time I actually made contact with a real person in chat session the tech people were not there to address the non loading purchase "check out" page. I explained that I wanted to use the military/teacher/AARP/First Responder discount and the guy said they didn't have them because everything was on sale. I would need to wait until "next week".After that it was all down hill..Thanks for getting back to me, hope u have a good holiday!
 
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Jorgp2

Junior Member
Dec 19, 2018
21
11
81
Thanks for the quick reply and your kind advice Jorge! I had included the Three year extended warranty (PremiumCare and Accidental Damage) in the original quote. For me, this is a lot of money...I'll probably end up sleeping with it next to me! Bet that will go over well with my wife. LOL
I'm not familiar with Perks at Work we have a service through my job called Benefit Hub, they offer access to the full line of Lenovo, Dell, and HP. I checked a few times through their portal and the prices were the same as logging on to the regular site. Probably is only valid on the third full moon of a month ending in "t" during a meteor shower.
Thanks again and Best Wishes for the coming year!

My Perks at Work discount is usually like 10%, but for the holidays it was the same discount as the Lenovo EPP, the same code even. Too bad I forgot to place the order through their site, so I didn't get any points.

And yeah it's a lot of money, I bought it to use while working out of town and I feel like i'm going to handcuff it to me when not in use.
 

pcgeek11

Lifer
Jun 12, 2005
21,279
4,406
136
I've only had one issue with Lenovo Thinkpad. It died on a Thursday afternoon out of the blue. Called tech support and spent 15 minutes on the phone and answered their questions about what happened etc. Received a shipping box via UPS the next morning ( Friday ) at ~10:30 AM. Packed it up and took it to UPS at noon that same Friday. Received the notebook back at 01:00 PM on Monday good as new.

Short version:

Thursday afternoon notebook died.
Friday noon shipped to repair facility in Atlanta.
Saturday and Sunday it was repaired.
Monday afternoon received it back repaired.


I buy nothing but Lenovo Thinkpads.
 

ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
37,734
18,005
146
I've only had one issue with Lenovo Thinkpad. It died on a Thursday afternoon out of the blue. Called tech support and spent 15 minutes on the phone and answered their questions about what happened etc. Received a shipping box via UPS the next morning ( Friday ) at ~10:30 AM. Packed it up and took it to UPS at noon that same Friday. Received the notebook back at 01:00 PM on Monday good as new.

Short version:

Thursday afternoon notebook died.
Friday noon shipped to repair facility in Atlanta.
Saturday and Sunday it was repaired.
Monday afternoon received it back repaired.


I buy nothing but Lenovo Thinkpads.

Yea, their Depot service is pretty good. Gets repaired in TN iirc.
 

Drassx

Member
Dec 5, 2018
25
8
51
In my experience lenovo is on par with other oems, my only beef with them is if you do have to rma something to them they want you to pay to ship it to them. If i have to rma an HP or dell they over night a box with all the packing materials. But its been probably almost a year since ive had to rma a lenovo, so maybe that has changed.
 

corkyg

Elite Member | Peripherals
Super Moderator
Mar 4, 2000
27,370
238
106
I have had several Lenovo laptops and accessories over the past years, and have never needed any support.
 
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ch33zw1z

Lifer
Nov 4, 2004
37,734
18,005
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In my experience lenovo is on par with other oems, my only beef with them is if you do have to rma something to them they want you to pay to ship it to them. If i have to rma an HP or dell they over night a box with all the packing materials. But its been probably almost a year since ive had to rma a lenovo, so maybe that has changed.

IMXP, Lenovo sends the box and a return label. Maybe depends on the problem and what you bought
 
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pcgeek11

Lifer
Jun 12, 2005
21,279
4,406
136
IMXP, Lenovo sends the box and a return label. Maybe depends on the problem and what you bought

I know they do on all of the Thinkpad Series ( business line ) notebooks. Thinkpads also use a different warranty service.

I'm pretty sure the Ideapad or consumer models may be different.
 
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bbhaag

Diamond Member
Jul 2, 2011
6,606
1,991
146
IMXP, Lenovo sends the box and a return label. Maybe depends on the problem and what you bought
Definately depends on what you bought. I bought my wife an Ideapad 510-15IKB laptop off Newegg and within 3 months the HDD died. I used their website to file an rma which they accepted but it was on me to ship it to them. All in all it was a pleasant experience dealing with Lenovo. The fix was free and the turn around was just shy of 4 business days to receive it back.
 
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ringtail

Golden Member
Mar 10, 2012
1,030
34
91
I have been researching new Laptops for a while (my eyes are bleeding) and all set on the Thinkpad X1 Extreme... was able to customize some options I wanted and ready to part with my money. There was a glitch in their "shopping cart" interface and I couldn't get it to go to the payment page. I tried calling Lenovo and was on hold twice for over 30 minutes. I finally was able reach them via chat. Was one of the most frustrating experiences... was like trying to teach trigonometry to a house cat. Can anyone weigh in on this? Is their customer support really this poor or was I just unlucky that day? I was really excited to be getting this machine (by far the most I have ever spent on a laptop $3600+tx USD) and if something goes wrong I want to know that they will stand behind their warranty. Any thoughts or advice from personal experience would be appreciated.

Don't patronize Lenovo!

They've "apologized" officially 3x now for spywear, including spy hardware, in their cosmetically pretty laptops.
 

fire400

Diamond Member
Nov 21, 2005
5,204
21
81
Depends on the channel partner/purchase -
Consumer versus business. You can still get business support if your team ordered consumer level products on a business channel - but don't expect the remote techs to care about your issues on lesser quality products.
Can go both ways. But the business support will usually always have better results.

If you want to save money, buy the warranty pre-purchased on the units from eBay.
Some sellers are offering like-new 3yr + ACC w/WWAN-ready on ThinkPads for around $1K.

When in IT or development or whichever demanding profession, just get the extended plan, why waste several hours trying to fix your own stuff when the rest of your team is wondering why you tried to save $300 on short term?
Service plan runs for 3-4 years - that's a long time for on-demand support for a few hundred dollars.
Many large IT firms with reputable enterprise support tools will charge thousands of dollars before they even consider your business an investment to them.

The remote techs have special tools that can detect BSOD's faster than most and have access to upper tier engineers that can escalate issues.
Most of the time, they won't care about your particular business or your clients, or the time you've lost, and more so that they've taken care of your 'problem' so they can close the case and move onto the next project/issue with someone else.

Consumer level IT support in business environment is mostly trash.
Your BIOS could be bricked, and the techs, not to mention potentially hours of hold time, will tell you that it's a different issue, for example - as if the quota is to prevent computers returning to their repair facilities?

At a certain point in your career advancement, laptops will be like tools that need to be resharpened or disposed of; so might as well see if the balance plays out with warranty and overlap with a second spare unit if the first product goes defective. Just because you send a product in for repair, or that a part is over-night'ed, that it will be coming back, or that the right part was guaranteed when it arrives next business day.

One thing I do want to add, is the consumables warranty - why the battery warranty exists?
For some reason, the battery life sucks hardcore, on a the T-4xxS lines and on the ThinkPad Yoga X1 series, it's wildly random. Like, seriously, WTF is going on, how did HP and Dell get it right on the Elitebook and Latitude models, and Lenovo on their flagship products, did not?
...Year after year, we keep testing these products, and the battery life just blows? Like, what is going on in R&D and QA at Lenovo, Asia?

There are some defects in boards that cannot be seen by software tools if ever a remote tech helps you out, just FYI, someone will be the luck of the straw.
If you need to escalate, go talk to customer service on social media. Open a ticket somewhere else, but attack it at different angles if the extended warranty service isn't taking care of you. The ideal situation is to just use the company credit card and buy a new computer, but sometimes it doesn't always work that way, because the units are leased, or the contract requires you go through the manufacturer's warranty team, or whatever the run of the river is.
This works out in the opposite direction if you know the aspects of your issue/product even slightly better than the remote service technician and you try and sound smarter than them?, don't do that, just let them run the tools, and then patiently ask what you think they could escalate and do - to help speed up the situation in your favor.
If they send you to a supposed sup's voice mail, or don't know what to do, call back and get a different technician and on a different ticket if need be, but they'll find your ticket(s) eventually.

Just some things to know. Everything can go right with an extended business warranty on a laptop, and occasionally, everything can go wrong with it. It's a fancy word for "insurance."
Expectation versus anticipation.