hilarious lenovo failboat update

In amusement: The laptop I wrote about earlier is  now for sale, again, on lenovo’s website. Right down to the model number.

If you’d like to NOT purchase this laptop you can click here.

Staggering work of brokeness.

lenovo customer service/sales failure – the failboat is setting sail

I finally gave up and bought a new(ish) laptop. I went to lenovo’s refurb’d site and bought a nicely configured x61s on thursday of last week. I didn’t get a confirmation email but I let it ride for a day. I called them on monday to find out the status and see if I could get a shipping tracking number or an estimated ship date. See, I wanted this laptop here before I left for fudcon next week.

So, I call them on monday. I give them my name and order number and they tell me that “You called on friday sir to cancel the order”. Now, I never called on friday (or any other time) and certainly not to cancel the order. I tell them this and ask: If I cancelled it then the laptop is still available? If so, can we just re-place the order? They say they will confirm with inventory  and call me back.

Unsurprisingly, no one called me back.

I call back this morning (tuesday) to find out what the hell. I speak to a different person who tells me the same thing as before, that I cancelled the order on friday (which I did not do) but he tells me inventory claims they still have the laptop. So, I say, great, then let’s order it right now and get it shipped! He says “yes, we can do that.” He puts me on hold for about 15-20s and comes back and says “no, we can’t do that”. He says, he’s trying to find out what happened and could he call me back later? I say, no, that’s what happened yesterday and could I please speak to a supervisor. I go on hold for a bit.

I get a supervisor who does some more research. She tells me that inventory is now telling her that the laptop is NOT available and, in fact, the order has shipped! I say “What? Shipped where?” She says she doesn’t understand this and asks me to hold. I hold. She comes back and says the laptop was ordered by two people at the same time. My order was automatically cancelled b/c apparently mine was the second order. However, no one told me this, no one ever notified me at all. So, I say, since I can’t get that laptop, is there anything you can do for me to get another laptop ordered at that price. She says she’s going to transfer me to a sales person who can help get me a laptop. I transfer to him. He tells me he cannot give me the same price on a similar refurbished laptop – I’ll have to pay MORE for this one. I tell him, that sounds like bait and switch and it sounds a lot like I’m having a scam pulled on me. He offers to give me an employee discount on a new laptop (which will take 3-4 weeks to arrive – which puts it beyond when it will be most useful to me). Furthermore the ‘discount’ he offers me is LESS of a discount than I can get by using the discount that red hat employees get for lenovo/ibm products for personal purchases.

So let me make sure I understand this:

1. I can’t get the laptop I wanted

2. they can’t do anything to help me

3. I’m welcome to buy another laptop, for MORE money

4. no, they can’t get the laptop to me sooner, either.

Now, I ask to speak to another supervisor. He’s less helpful and proceeds to tell me that I cancelled the order on friday and this is my fault. Seriously, this is monumental failure, considering I’d already been told by a DIFFERENT supervisor that this was NOT my fault that it was lenovo’s failure in tracking and inventorying their hardware. Not to mention contacting their customers with problems that have occurred.

I explain to him that since apparently there is nothing they can do for me that will help me in any way whatsoever that I’d just like to get this investigated so it does not happen to another customer. The supervisor I’m speaking with is clearly not listening to me and barely acknowledging my presence on the phone. I say ‘good bye’ and I’m done with it.

I think I’m going to buy a laptop from dell or ebay, at least they can get it to me in a few days rather than a few weeks.

Just for the record, if any lenovo employees would like to research the full details of this massive cluster fuck my order number was/is “141247 10″ and it is listed under my name “Seth Vidal”.