

Ask HN: Have you had a good experience with ordering from Lenovo? - phaus

I've noticed over the past year that quite a few people around here prefer Lenovo laptops. I've been shopping around for something small and light, like the X230. (also looked at the MB Air) The X230 looks like a great machine at a great price, but I keep seeing posts in several different forums that claim ordering a computer directly from Lenovo (the only way to get a decent discount) is a nightmare and that the company takes forever to process and ship orders. I have also heard that if your system has a problem that you are pretty much on your own because their support is almost non-existent. Is anyone willing to share their opinion on Lenovo? Thanks.
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donniezazen
I have a Lenovo Thinkpad T420. I ordered it in late 2011 through their
website. I wanted to buy a Windows free laptop as I use Linux. I called them
up. They agreed to send me a Windows free laptop at a reduced price. All
hassle free and quick. I have never had any problems with my system and hence
never had to contact Lenovo. I personally highly recommend Thinkpads.

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blcArmadillo
When I bought my customized Thinkpad my credit card rejected the purchase as
unusal spending. This was of course not Lenovo's fault but for some reason
even after I got the billing issues straightened out, Lenovo still wasn't
shipping my computer. I figured I'd give them a chance so I waited a week
before finally calling. They were very apologetic and ended up overnighting it
to me to remedy the situation. This meant I actually ended up getting my
computer earlier than I should have since it usually takes a couple weeks to
get a custom computer shipped. So as far as I'm concerned it was a very
positive experience and I'll continue to purchase laptops from them.

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shrughes
Lenovo has had some problems with suppliers in August and September. My order
of a custom laptop a year ago was super-quick, and I've only been hearing
about it taking multiple weeks to get a laptop shipped since mid-August. I've
only heard about bad customer support with Ideapads (edit: also the only
complaints I've heard were from hysterical bad customers), and Thinkpads are
known for having good customer support, with a separate customer support
department. I had great turnaround time on getting problems fixed 6 years ago.

A recent datapoint on shipping speeds is that a W530 ordered Sept 28th arrived
at the door on Oct 18th.

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shrughes
Actually I'm hearing its awful from people waiting for Thinkpads to ship too.

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grumps
I purchased a w520 just under a year ago. It did take a while to get. Approx 3
weeks, but I did customize it. I'm extremely happy about the purchase. I do
remember a funky issue about 4 years ago with my address or something.

What kind of "issue" are you worried about? Microsoft doesn't help you? I had
a HD failure with one about 4 years ago, and I didn't have any issues.

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meaty
I've not had any problems and we've ordered 63 machines from them since July.
To be fair they are not customised ones though.

As for support, all companies suck but they are several orders of magnitude
better than HP and Dell. We've had not had anything break for a year or two
which is good and when we did (a t420 doa), it was resolved in 4 days.

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octaveguin
You might try a third party reseller. For some reason, ebay seems like the
place to get new thinkpads. I guess they also have a large refurbish market
there, too.

I just bought a t430 off of a reseller there - needless to say, it wasn't
customized but I got it in a few days time. It also cost around $150 less than
the lenovo website.

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JoachimSchipper
One side note: some international Lenovo sites (notably, the Dutch one) offer
a very unimpressive selection. Obviously, this doesn't hurt you if you're in
the US.

(I ended up buying a refurbished T61 from our local eBay equivalent. Really
cheap and works great.)

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webstartupper
Bought a customized T510 during Christmas 2010 online from lenovo website.
Absolutely no hassles with shipping. Dunno if things have changed since then
though.

The reason I love Lenovo is for their build quality.

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epikur
The x230 or X1 Carbon are great. I have an x220 and recently put OSX on it. I
got mine off a forum, though, so I can't say how well the online ordering
process works.

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lsiebert
Expect to wait a month regardless of what lenovo says. Also, apparently ibm
retirees can get you a crazy discount at lenovo. I personally really like my
T530.

