My bad experience with Lenovo support

For nearly 7 weeks I have been trying to get my Lenovo laptop repaired.

It was an exhausting experience to deal with Lenovo support service. 

Here is a short summary of what happened. Read this before you buy an on-site repair warranty along with a Lenovo product. 

• End of March 2014 my Laptop broken after 3  months use. No power.
• Phoned Lenovo and they promised to send me a technician next day.
• The technician appeared after two days. 
• The onsite repair (probably outsourced to a third party in Melbourne) did not go as I expected. Few days have been lost due to following funny reasons.
• During the first visit the technician did not have enough equipment to properly diagnose the issue. I said OK.
• When diagnosed, the spare parts were not available locally. Had to be shipped from somewhere else.An excuse for few more days. I said OK.
• The technician has forgotten to collect the parts before he come to repair the laptop. He was reluctant to go back and collect. His office was less than 10kms away, but I said OK.
• Wrong parts have been ordered. So the laptop did not work well with the new part  (this reason was bit dodgy rather than funny) .I said OK. He said he will contact Lenovo regarding the issue.
• Then the technician asked me to use the laptop without the battery. This wasn't successful. 
• Then, over the phone the technician said, he has ordered new battery and once arrived I can install it myself. I said fine and waited.
• No parts have been shipped. Tried to contact Lenovo few times to inquire about the delay. Usually the wait over the phone is painfully long listening to a machine. But I had to wait until I talk to a human. All the time the humans I talked to asked me to wait... wait... and wait a bit more. Lenovo did not even bother to give me a phone call even if I asked several times. 
• And then on my final inquiry about the delay Lenovo said Oh! Sorry. Something's gone wrong. Lenovo promised to look into the matter. Still what went wrong was a mystery. 
• After few days of silence, I phoned them again. Looks like one case officer do not know what the other one said. So I had to explain the whole scenario again and again. Seriuosly a log file??? Oh! this one too asked me to wait a little bit more.
• And then for some reason my case has been marked as resolved (I got an automatic notification).
• Finally I had enough and threatened them to either repair the laptop or give me a full refund. I do not want a broken laptop along with a paper warranty sitting on my desk.
• And I went on twitter too. That had some impact. #Lenovo_ANZ replied and asked me to provide details. And I did. I got assigned a new case number. And that was it. No reply from #Lenovo_ANZ so far as a follow up.
• After another phone call, a new case number has been given and the case has been forwarded to a Lenovo Resolution Owner (RSO : a person who resolve similar issues).
• An agreement has been made with the case officer to resolve the issue as follows on 8th of May. Instead of the full refund, If Lenovo can provide a brand new laptop by 13th of May, I will take no further actions against Lenovo on this case. Although I was exhausted and wanted a full refund, decided to go ahead with a replacement laptop. 
• Laptop did not arrive on 13th as promised. I contacted the RSO again. He said he will look into the matter. Even though this is a violation of the agreement, I decided to wait another day. Laptop arrived on 14th. Finally, some relief. 
• Well... not really. Lenovo has shipped a used laptop with wrong configurations instead of the promised new laptop. The laptop even locked to the administrator of  NSW government (Department of Education and Communities).
• So I contact RSO (who is very slow in reading his emails, and tend to skip reading emails, apparently). He said he will contact me again.
• I waited until today (Monday), and had to contact them again. RSO apologized for the mistake. I asked him to give me a full refund as I can no longer put my faith on them.

After all these blunders and not fulfilling their own promises, now I am trying to get money back, which I probably should've done earlier during the process.

Being a customer for last 8 years, I would like to emphasis following points for Lenovo.

• We go for these pricey high-end laptops, simply because the availability is very important to us. As a software engineer/consultant I am not ready to wait to wait 7 weeks (and counting) without a laptop.
• Please find a reliable partners to do the on-site repairs and have your replacement parts available locally.
• Please contact the customers promptly without waiting for us to contact you. Or at least reduce the call waiting time. 

Having gone through this experience, I have following advice for potential Lenovo customers.

• Do not assume that on-site repair warranty is quicker than a normal warranty. It might be slower to get the repairs done locally due to lack of tools and parts.
• If you think Lenovo products and its support service is good as it was in few years ago,  think twice. I see a large number of similar incidents shared online.